I saw Dean’s infamous caucus speech once on C-Span the night he delivered it.
I’ve been very critical of Howard Dean but the attention being given this just seems stupid and contrived.
My 19-year old, a college student who watches much more tv than I do, tells me she’s lost count of the people rebroadcasting it. She’s not as stumped as I am why it’s been getting so much play. In her opinion, desperate comedians just want something to talk about. The speech itself, she said, impressed her as “someone trying to rally a crowd.” Her opinion is noteworthy as she doesn’t follow politics closely yet hasn’t been able to escape this to the point she’s sick of seeing it. She also doesn’t have a favourite in the race and isn’t tainted by preconceived notions of how a politician is ‘supposed’ to act.
That makes sense for the comedians looking for a laugh. But what excuse can be made for the media and others who ignore much bigger stories and focus on this instead?
Desperate doesn’t fit their reasoning. Manipulative does.
Exploitive too, it seems:
Iowa scream has Dean looking like a real doll
The $36 “Mean Dean” action figure is the latest in a series of inspired-by-current-events dolls from Herobuilders.com. Other products include a captured Saddam Hussein doll (complete with long beard and ace of spades T-shirt), a talking Governator action figure (“I will go to Sacramento and I will clean house”), a miniature George W. Bush in Baghdad (“I was just looking for a warm meal somewhere”), Osama bin Laden and a Michael Jackson figurine dangling his child from a hotel balcony.