caucus schmaucus

Oh my! Aren't the ladies and gentlemen of the Fourth Estate all in a dither about the results in Iowa. They are beside themselves with the historic implications, the groundbreaking this, and the breathtaking that. Clearly it is good for the news business to have something to write about.

They are making dire warnings that the Clinton campaign is in trouble, that Edwards might as well pack it in, that Giuliani is as good as dead, and that Romney is out of it. These serious journalists are just about peeing in their pants with the excitement.

Excuse me, but one win by a Bible Belt fundamentalist in a state full of Bible Belt fundamentalists does not a nomination make, so hold on right there before anointing Huckleberry Hound the new savior.

I admit that it's newsworthy, historic even, for Obama to win, even though it's the state next door, and in the heartland his youth plays better than That Woman and That Southern guy.

And so it's on to "Live Free or Die" New Hampshire. Again the headlines blare the shock, the surprise, the remarkable comeback of one thought dead. Give me a break. These people are apoplectic about a 3 percent difference in a state with as many voters as Steubenville. I think I'm reading today's reaction by reporters to yesterday's reaction by reporters to what someone said on TV the day before in response to a statement last week by an unnamed source. Classic pseudo-events, per Daniel Boorstin's critique of manufactured 'history' as a dressed-up form of public relations.

Since we seem to live in an era of media saturation, those journalistic guardians of democracy will continue to wag the dog while the rest of us consumers of random information listen with rapt attention. The electoral process will devolve into the soap opera of whether the sagacious old soldier McCain, doing his best Ronald Reagan routine, can sustain good Nielsen ratings for another ten months; whether That Woman can fend off her shadow-selves, the weak weeping wench and the cold calculating Cruella deVille, and sing the finale "Don't Cry for me, Argentina" with words changed to "I listened to you, and in the process I found my own voice."

This really big shew is on the road again, next stop Michigan, where a slightly different song and dance will try to win the hearts (forget the minds) of audiences in the slumping rustbelt. Will George Romney's square-jawed boy come through in car country? Will Obama make up that "shocking" three-point difference? Is this just another ploy to divert our attention from the war that has killed 16 Americans in the last 10 days? What do the polls say?