Prometheus 6

This one is almost as good.

Race is like pornography in the United States — the dirty stories and dirty pictures that everyone professes to hate but no one can resist. But I suspect that even porn addicts get their fill sometimes.

The challenge for the working press right now is to see if we can force ourselves past the overwhelming temptations of Wright and race and focus in a sustained way on some other important matters, like the cratering economy, metastasizing energy costs, the dismal state of public education, the nation’s crumbling infrastructure or the damage being done to the American soul by the endless war in Iraq.

A highly decorated Army ranger named David McDowell, a 30-year-old father of two from Ramona, Calif., was killed in Afghanistan this week. As I read his obituary, I noticed that he had been deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq seven times. What does that tell us about our shared wartime sacrifices?

I’d like to hear a lot less about Reverend Wright and a lot more about why the U.S. can’t close the deal in Afghanistan and hardly even seems interested in extricating our G.I.’s from Iraq.

Let me repeat the key statement.

The challenge for the working press right now is to see if we can force ourselves past the overwhelming temptations of Wright and race and focus in a sustained way on some other important matters, like the cratering economy, metastasizing energy costs, the dismal state of public education, the nation’s crumbling infrastructure or the damage being done to the American soul by the endless war in Iraq.

The challenge is to the working press.

You got guys saying right up front they're going to keep covering irrelevancies.

The ads are a mark of how difficult, with the nomination apparently within his grasp, Obama will find it to stay above or outside the traditional, bitter partisan divisions he so often deplores.

The vast majority of coverage is covering the same few things over and over. Maybe it's not so much evil as lazy. But everyone gets defined and run through the media pinball machine because that's what's done. They have ads to sell, and need stories to wrap around them.

You've got to remember, all media companies are businesses and YOU are not their customer. Advertisers are their customers...you (and your attention) are their product.