Our Intolerably Stupid Political Conversations

I've been posting on the subject of politics less often lately, because American political discourse is increasingly idiotized. For example, with violence in Iraq ramping up again as the war enters its sixth year, and our economy going into the tank, we've been yammering and hollering for weeks now about Obama's relationship with his former pastor, who has turned out to be a headline chaser and a ridiculous person.

However, the best commentators document the depths of the stupidity into which our political conversation has descended rather than avoiding the subject, and Tom Tomorrow is consistently among the best. See his cartoon for this week on the stupid and phony topic of "elitism." You'll probably have to click past an ad to get to the page.

Besides documenting the moronified nature of what we're talking about, T.T. both writes and gives space on his excellent daily blog to friends like Bob Harris to document what we're not talking about: As pointed out by Media Matters and many others, the networks have managed total silence — total — on the New York Times disclosure that many of their military “experts” have actually been financially-interested Pentagon flacks, although there’s plenty of time to report on Miley Cyrus showing her naked back.

The TV news networks are obviously the biggest problem. There's galloping stupification in the print media too, but there's also intelligent and non-hysterical analysis and information available in print. TV, from whence most folks get most of their information, is devoid of any viable info outside of Moyers and Jim Lehrer.