Mainstream Media At Work

Heads We Win, Tails You Lose

Today is election day in some parts of the country and the mainstream media is poised to tell us what it all means – unless it doesn’t mean that, in which case they’ll still tell us.

Or they might tell us that just because it looks like the results don’t mean much is the exact reason they do mean a great deal. If fact, the only rock-ribbed certainty about today’s election is that the mainstream media will tell us something – after all, it’s what they’re paid to do.

Hopes that whatever we will be told might have some connection to what actually happened are merely naïve and betray no understanding of the principles that made mainstream media what it is today.

The most sacred of these principles is that no matter what, you gotta fill the space around the ads. If you don’t do that, you’ll lose audience, and losing audience means losing advertisers, which – steady yourselves for the unthinkable – means losing money.

Devotion to the Sacred Principle is what has driven the endless coverage of what amounts to two ho-hum governorships (New Jersey and Virginia) one gay marriage referendum (Maine) and the 23^rd Congressional District of New York, which no one, including many who lived there, had much noticed before.

In New Jersey, incumbent Democrat Jon Corzine of the Fat Wallet and Bald Pate is being challenged by Republican Chris Christie, who has hair and carries with him a memento of every donut in his life. An Independent, Christopher J. Daggett, is challenging both. Most popular sentiment seems to favor None of The Above, alas not on the ballot.

In Virginia, Republican Robert F. McDonnell seems to be running comfortably ahead of Democrat R. Creigh Deeds in a race that distinguishes itself in that unlike New Jersey, the winner might actually have the support of a majority of the voters.

And in that New York congressional race, the Republican withdrew to endorse her Democratic opponent after the full-moon madness of the Limbaugh/Palin GOP suggested that policy debates with Democrats would be squeezed out by time spent fighting off the RRR (Rabid Republican Right). To which Rush Limbaugh responded in elevated fashion by allegations of bestiality involving RINOs (Republicans In Name Only).

As for Maine, the legislature had earlier passed a law permitting gay marriage and the question on the ballot seeks to repeal that. Ayup.

All of which wouldn’t amount to much ad-padding, whether in print, on the air or on the web, assuming any of it was important enough to mention in a sane world, or even the mainstream media world.

So if there’s an election in your neck of the woods today, please go vote. Never mind the candidates or the issues. Even the mainstream media can’t tell us what your vote means if you don’t cast one.

Then learn the next day why you did what you did or didn’t do what you did or did what you didn’t because you wouldn’t or couldn’t as only the seers of the mainstream media can tell.

Bet you can hardly wait.

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