Public discourse

It never ceases to amaze me how the so-called "public" discourse is conducted through the media these days. The news snippets and the clearly and perhaps maliciously skewed interpretations of those snippets all lead to a distraction from what really matters.

Take the statements by Senator Clinton about the 1992 primary and the 1968 one (reference to Bill Clinton and the RFK). Those who wanted to be sensational and controversial, I speculate, interpreted Sen Clinton implying that something terrible might happen to Sen Obama and thus she should stick around. I think that that misinterpretation is so ugly that those who are driven by it and continue to harp it over and over should suffer a good dosage of tar-and-feathering.

Those in the news business do this fear mongering probably for the purpose of increasing viewership through sensationalism and I can not blame them for that, however. This is capitalism, after all, and the only measure of success is the bottom line for the owners of the business enterprise, which is what the media are -- they are business enterprises. If the general public were more savvy they would shut those fear mongers off and thus cause them to get it right for once, perhaps.