It's been a long day. I attended a forum on the presidential election. I've been struck many times during the primary process at the trivial, sexist, racist, and just plain silly coverage of the election in the media. This was driven home to me last night when I turned on CNN and was greeted with interminable coverage of Hillary Clinton's house - well gee, we THOUGHT that Obama would come here to meet her. Papparazi journalism at it's finest. Only the celebrity photographers don't get any points for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Certainly CNN shouldn't. One of the hopes of media reform is that media coverage can start talking about something more substantive than Hillary's clothes, cleavage, voice, etc. Or Obama's minister, middle name, or whatever else some right-wing nut job came up with today.
More importantly though, I wish the media could realize that politics in the US is more than who is winning the presidential race. There is a world of politics outside of the presidential arena, and a world of presidential candidates who don't get heard. If just once boring policy decisions could get a tenth as much coverage as Paris Hilton's latest embarrassing behavior, our news would be changing in the right direction.
I also attended a workshop on local activism, and how to organize on a local level. This didn't tell me anything earth shattering that I hadn't thought of - but it did produce some handy ground rules for organizing events, and demonstrated a number of successful media actions that the groups in the panel had run. This was at least as much inspirational for what is possible as it was informative on how to get things done.
Oh - and this just in - Bill O'Reilly thinks I am one of the craziest, farthest-left people in America. Me and Dan Rather.