Amid these pages we've documented the decline of traditional media, from television to newspaper and newsmagazine brands.
It occurs to me that the slavish devotion to the Obama campaign is probably less about ideological affinity (Obama's only ideology is his self-interest....), and more about the little-discussed aspect of his campaign that the left and the media hope isn't the mirage its been in past elections.
I'm talking about Obama's appeal among the very young. As Hugh Hewitt observes in his "Letter to a Obama supporter", the very young have virtually no exposure to traditional media sources, no sense of history and appear to be basing their support of Obama on the basis of his "coolness".
Clearly this group is both powerful and politically malleable and Obama has successfully penetrated their social networks. The media is hoping that this demographic is the light at the end of the tunnel, that the rising generation will be socialists.
I strongly suspect its the triumph of hope over experience. Young socialists generally don't become old socialists--I'm a case in point. I distinctly recall a discussion with a friend in which I vigorous defended the merits of socialized medicine--sorry Murray, I was wrong.
They also don't turn out to vote.
The hopeful point out that political campaigns didn't have MySpace and Facebook to access young people and encourage them to get out to the polls, but I think this is wishful thinking--Facebook works because young people want to hang out, not because they are political engaged. You can get them out for a demonstration because its an opportunity to hook up, but voting is a solitary and orderly business, like picking your clothes off the floor, folding them and placing them neatly in drawers or on hangers in the closet. I don't know when I started folding my clothes, but it was somewhere closer to thirty than it was to twenty, which incidentally is when I started voting.
Meanwhile, the discipline of actually reporting stories with a modicum of accuracy keeps getting set aside.
An insurgent raid that penetrated an American outpost in eastern Afghanistan, killing nine soldiers, has deepened doubts about the U.S. military's effort to contain Islamic militants and keep locals on its side.Moving in darkness before dawn Sunday, some 200 fighters surrounded the newly built base in a remote area near the Pakistan border without being spotted by the troops inside, said Gen. Mohammad Qasim Jangalbagh, the provincial police chief.
The troops are irritated at this misrepresentation--first of all, it wasn't a base at all.
What the Taliban attacked was a temporary parking area for vehicles used to conduct patrols of the area. These are set up regularly, and have been used for years. These are secure areas, but basically a parking lot surrounded by barbed wire and several sandbagged observation posts. This one was set a few days before the attack, and was due to be taken down soon, as the patrol activity moved to another area.
So to get this straight, 200 Taliban make a frontal assault on a parking lot, lose more than half their number before fleeing and this is a bad sign for the coalition?
Sounds like a wonderful recruitment story--join the Taliban, attack parking lots and die.
Posted by Mick Stockinger on July 22, 2008 6:38 AM
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