[extropy-chat] kerry remark

[spike]

>Al, I notice your email address is kerry_prez. The irony here is that
>senator Kerry destroyed any remnants of his possiblity to become president
>with a single comment similar in spirit to this one.

>Careful, Spike. What you should have written is "with a single ironic 
>comment at Bush's expense that was maliciously and misleadingly spun 
>by his opponents as a comment similar in spirit to this one."

...

>Damien Broderick 
  


Damien you may very well be right on this one.  Here is why I think Kerry's
comment is significant.  We have seen cases where the mainstream news media
decide to dogpile on some otherwise insignificant incident.  Two such
incidents come to mind instantly.  The first is when Dan Quayle misspelled
potato while playing spelling bee with the school kids.  He read it off the
card, which said "potatoe".  The press used this to show he was the biggest
idiot in history, when in fact it was a minor error that any one of us could
have made.  He is merely the biggest idiot in *recent* history.  

The second incident which pops into my mind is Howard Dean's screaming into
the microphone at a rally.  Again a rather minor gaffe, but the press had a
field day with it.  Again, Dean is not the craziest politician in history,
merely the craziest in recent history.

In both cases, the press decided they would no longer take those politicians
seriously.  In both cases future historians may record those days as the
high water mark for each, the beginning of a steady decline thereafter.
Quayle faded into obscurity, Dean is still around but no one takes seriously
his chances for even maintaining leadership of the DNC.

Perhaps the mainstream press has now decided to retire Kerry as it did with
the other two.  Time will tell, but I expect he will begin a slide starting
31 October 2006, and little will come of his bid for the white house in
2008.  It worries me that the mainstream media have this much influence on
history.

spike