popular thinking

What's so funny about this election? 

W's speech this morning (read the transcript here) to the United Nations general assembly (10:30 a.m. Eastern, 7:30 a.m. Pacific/Arizona) certainly will be politically significant. But just as certainly, John Kerry's appearances on the late-night TV circuit will carry weight with the voters come Nov. 2. Most of the mainstream media will try (as NBC's Nightly News vows it will tonight) to paint Kerry's "interviews" as soft or as attempts to avoid hard questions. As if any presidential candidate could expect to get a realistic interview out of the mainstream TV news organizations (network or cable). They're still busy rehashing Vietnam and giggling with glee over CBS getting bad intel. If only they talked this much about the Bush Administration getting bad intel -- that started a war, you may recall. Iraq. Heard of it? So Kerry showed up Monday for the Late Show with David Letterman -- not because he wanted to avoid questions, but because he wanted a chance to reach the voters. And believe you me, the undecided and usually apathetic voters are tuning out the mainstream TV media. But they are watching Leno, Letterman and Jon Stewart. Those viewers are still debating whether or not they should even vote on Nov. 2, so Kerry's appearances will go further in helping these undecideds make up their minds than will any "investigative" TV report. Especially since fewer and fewer of us even trust mainstream TV news enough to watch it.