January 27, 2004

Struggles With the Truth

Howard Mortman, producer of MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews, has written a rather funny look at the paranoid ramblings of some of the wackos who infest Howard Dean's campaign blog.

For the 2004 presidential campaign, Howard Dean has picked up that theme. Us vs. them - with "them" being the media. These days, when he's not shrieking war whoops into a microphone, Dean talks of "the struggle between us and the Washington politicians and the established press. And they have attacked us for months, every time they have an opportunity, but we're stronger than they are."

The "struggle" theme may not be of Marx and Engels' class proportions, but it's there nonetheless. And Dean supporters are fighting the struggle against the press every day in the trenches - the Internet trenches. That's where you'll find the Dean campaign’s "Blog for America," and its abundance of theories (paranoid or not) about the established press' attacks on poor 'ole Howard Dean. Those theories predate the media piling on Dean after his nationally broadcast exuberance (irrational or not) at the news that he came in a disappointing third in Iowa.

The right has made a franchise out of identifying and attacking media bias. Now it seems the left wants in on the action. Now they're blaming the media. This reversal is one of the most fascinating quirks of the 2004 campaign - and the entire Howard Dean phenomenon.