The end is near
Published 6:54 am Monday, November 3, 2008
By Staff
In a couple of days there will be a void in our lives to fill from the first wide-open presidential election in 50 years that has been going on so long our increasingly obsessive behavior toward it has begun to seem normal.
The long slog to the White House is like an epic novel with breakneck plot twists along the way.
Part of us wants to read ahead like it's the last "Harry Potter" to learn how this story ends. It's a tale we've been turning pages on for we can no longer remember how long.
Why, just last New Year's Day, 11 months ago, conventional wisdom foresaw our protagonists as Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani.
He did reappear in a subsequent chapter at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, leading delegates in the "Drill, baby, drill!" chant.
But the New York City mayor of 9/11 was ultimately one of many minor characters who came and went as this saga unfolded – along with John Edwards, Fox host Mike Huckabee, Joe the Plumber, Jeremiah Wright, Tony Rezko and Bill Ayers.
We used to lament the 24-hour news cycle, which now seems as quaint and slow-footed as buggy whips.
Our souped-up politics spread virally to multiple platforms, from blogs and YouTube to comedy shows such as "Saturday Night Live," "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report," with the mainstream media galloping along in their dust, trying to stay relevant.
MSNBC ranter Keith Olbermann is satirized by Ben Affleck.
Rachel Maddow gets her own show.
New media darlings are obsessive geeks such as CNN's John King tracking trends on his touchscreen "magic wall," NBC's Chuck Todd and Nate Silver, who used to analyze baseball statistics.
So Time columnist Joel Stein writes not of the Bradley effect and racial prejudice but "the Urkel effect, which holds that voters leaning toward Obama will walk into the voting booth and suddenly think, I cannot take four years of listening to that giant-eared nerd. Because people are starting to realize that Obama is not all that cool. He's earnest like C-3PO, emotionless like Spock (and) overly practical like Encyclopedia Brown."
The campaigns seem to create punchy ad spots with the sole intent of getting them played for free on the news.
The media beast constantly needs fresh meat, not reflection, so everything – anything – will become someone's 15 minutes of fame eventually.
Like McCain campaign worker Ashley Todd, 20, who claimed she was mugged by a 6-foot-inch black man demanding money.
When her accoster spots the John McCain sticker on her car, in an apparent effort to force her to support Barack Obama, he carves a "B" on her cheek.
A too-neat "B" that was backwards, as if carved using a mirror. Turned out she fabricated the story.
One minute we didn't know who the governor of Alaska was, but at the speed of a snowmobile we felt like we knew too much about the mother of five, a pitbull in lipstick, moose-shooting beauty queen and former sportscaster with a journalism degree and pregnant teen daughter.
McCain complied with the media's lust for reality-show drama, shocking everyone with a surprise pick for vice president, then suspending his campaign on the eve of a debate during the bailout.
Surreal moments piled one atop another with the finish line in sight.Obama, who committed to limit spending to $84 million available under federal matching funds, then reneged, could afford $4 million for a campaign-closing infomercial Oct. 29, prodding voters to "choose hope over fear and unity over division. America, the time for change has come."
The movie-quality videotape gave way to a live appearance before thousands in Sunrise, Fla.
The 30-minute ad, with its subtle rustic approximation of the Oval Office, aired on CBS, NBC and Fox, but not CNN, where Campbell Brown promises "no bias, no bull."
CNN hires comic D.L. Hughley to spice up late-night news.
McCain, meanwhile, appears on SNL Nov. 1 with Tina Fey as roguish Sarah Palin, who intends to remain a national political figure even if her ticket loses. "I'm not doin' this for naught," she tells ABC News. Fey the faux holds aloft a 2012 sign.
The anxiety is palpable, Internet messages traveling just beneath the radar incredibly nasty, effigies sprouting in trees.
Obama's likeness is found hanging from a tree with a noose knotted around his neck Oct. 29 at the University of Kentucky.
Palin's mannequin hung in a Halloween yard display that sent Secret Service agents to West Hollywood, Calif.
It's time for this election to be over, but even something as simple as, "The end is near," seems to conceal many meanings.