Dear Washington Post: Stop That
 

This sort of thing was already embarrasing in 2000, before George Bush turned the world to shit.

I'm not actually sure what my particular argument is here, except that this sort of illustrates previous comments I've made on how the media elevates meaningless trivia to the level of national importance and treats actual issues of national importance like mindless trivia.

See also - John Edwards getting his hair cut, Barack Obama's middle name, Nancy Pelosi flying on airplanes.

It wouldn't even be so bad if there were anything resembling any kind of rough ideological parity, except there's just this sort of pre-existing template for all candidates where Republicans = Manly Adult Leaders of Mature Stalwart Down-Home Americannessity and Democrats = Teh Girlie-Mens who loves France. The article linked sort of epitomizes this here --

-- where the article's subject is openly praised for being the phony which Al Gore spent an entire election was continually and baselessly accused of being, because apparently Republicans are Manly, Authentic phony millionaire lobbyists, whereas US Army veteran Michael Dukakis is a silly-billy Democrat, so silly!

But one way or the other, it's just kind of sad and continually depressing that this shallow, condescending soft-lens biopic frivolity seems to constitute the bulk of our media's coverage of the selection of the quadrennial search for the person who is supposed to, you know, hold the office of the Federal Executive of the United States of America.

Let me just say that this seems to be a shameless plug merely because he's from the same state, as I have NEVER heard of the guy before this.

He plays the DA on Law & Order. A lot of Republicans have been hoping he'll run for president because he has a smidge of charisma and has been out of the game long enough to not have been implicated in this last round of ultra-scandal. Plus he's an actor/politician, so they'd be able to play the hell out of the "OMG so was Reagan, and Reagan was the greatest president of all time" angle.

That being said, the greatest political coup the Republicans ever pulled was making liberal a four-letter word. It turned our discourse to utter shit, and I think/hope its finally starting to wear off/backfire but its how they got the three-way lockdown on all branches of government there for a little while.

Uhm.. It isn't just the Washington Post, have you seen this Time article? They seem to base their entire opinion of him, based on the characters he played. They only cite the accomplishments of his actual political career once, and certainly not in any great detail.

I will grant that of the Republican contenders, he actually has the most chance. Mostly because of public image, but his stated positions that I've heard, seem to reflect what the rest of them have said. What I'm really worried about, is that Thompson is planning on getting into the race late enough so he intentionally keeps his positions & political goals secret during the Republican debates. Then, once those are over, he's given a free hand to placate any position he chooses, just to get elected.

Regardless of the positions he'll necessarily take once in office (much like George Bush).

SWB

This is completely absurd. They're trying to claim the guy could be president just because he used to have a political career and acts? Just because Reagan was an actor, now to be a successful Republican an acting career is more important than any political qualifications?

I'm still confused as to how the word Liberal - the name of Canada's most successful political party - was made out to be such a bad thing. The fact that you can just hurl it at your opponent and everyone treats him like the spawn of Satan really seems detrimental to any meaningful political discussion.

Thats because people that aren't from Canada see Liberal as a word meaning "willing to accept/tolerate nearly anything". The U.S. call their Liberal party the Democrats, and their Conservative party the Republicans. Canada just took a less creative approach and called them exactly what they are... Liberals and Conservatives.

And while I like some Liberals, you can not tell me Paul Martin wasn't some sort of conniving devil spawn. "Oh me oh my, sure I was the minister of freakin' finance, but I never knew our party was spending money illegally."

So to sum it up, in the States liberal=adjective, in Canada liberal=noun of political party. However, its questionable if its the most successful party or not.

I'd say the fact that they end up governing for ten-twenty year stretches, interrupted only when they become so corrupt that the Conservatives are able to take over for four to eight years before they implode upon themselves, leaves the Liberal Party in the dominant position. But that's really a discussion for another thread entirely.

But to get back on topic, I also really dislike the roles which are being imposed upon the parties. The fact that Democrats are always weak-willed fools, no matter how many years they spent in the army or otherwise protecting their country, while the Republicans are always heroic, no matter how much alcohol they consume or baseball teams they ruin (ooh, cheap shot).

It's funny that the liberal left-wing supposedly control all forms of the media, yet can't get that altered.

Wierdly here the Liberal Party is the dominant right wing and current government party, they're economic liberals, ie Lassiez Faire. More on topic, while they obviously didn't make liberal a dirty word, they suceeded on making union and intellectual ones(which really screwed over the Labour Party for a while, seeing as that's pretty much all their politicians), though Rudd(the current oposition leader) seems to have avoided the mudslinging intellectuals have gotten for the last 32 years, which is also interesting in it's own way how when something like that suddenly doesn't work anymore.

Anyway I've always found the focus on image in American politics to be terrifying, more so when I noticed it creeping in over here. I wonder if Snipes had been the candidate who ran against Bush would the media have tried to do to him what they did to Kerry with that "Swift Boat" shit.

I disagree, there are liberals in each party, in the US it is as you said:
Which is exactly why it is crap, they are bottom feeding, lobby pleasing jackasses who will take anything to get more. Now I'm not saying "conservatives" don't do this, I'm saying that they are conservative in how they do it and stick for something. This is the same in either party, the conservatives are people that stick to something, while liberals flip-flop and take it up the ass.

Not quite. In Canada, the Liberal party is really more centrist than left wing, whil the NDP, and to a lesser extent, the Quebec Bloc parties are more left wing.