Howard Dean and ankle biting media politics

One of the big issues of the day is Howard Dean. Hey, he gets more press than the President, which may at least be in part that he's actually doing something.

Mr. Dean is now the Democratic Party Chairman, a job most often held by a bureacrat whose job it is to raise money. Most people in similar positions take to that part of the job description and largely forget that there are bigger issues to confront, a larger stage than the line at the bank. Howard Dean comes along. He has latched onto his position and the two right ankles of the Republican Party like a bulldog on meth. Bravo!

I don't agree with everything he says. But, in a world where the perversely right get all but a free ride on an entire news network, someone needs to balance the "fair and balanced" world of spinmanship. I recall last Fall, during the Presidential Debates:

Bush said "Liberty is from God". Kerry added "All things are from God". Whereupon right wing poster girl (and let's face it, if she wasn't cute she'd get no play in the media) Ann Coulter leapt upon that line and announced with her free contribtuion to Republican coffers that this statement of Kerry's "Proves he's an atheist." And not a single one of the Murdoch paid "journalists" in the room or on the mike with her challenged that fatuous statement. That's when, in my estimation, they lost face with any American looking for a sane discourse.

I think Howard Dean goes overboard a lot, he loves to...he's one of those guys who'll talk about your sister just to get a rise out of you, because he knows that in the pendulum of reality, trying to put things exactly where they should be is futile when the other guy keeps tugging on his rope, from either side. You have to take it as far as they do, pull as hard as they do, behave as freakishly as they do. Sane men seek the center road only when there are only sane men in the room. It's Dirty Harry politics, where you can be tarred, feathered and burned at the stake on suspicion of something because it makes good filler between car commercials.

Then you can achieve balance through competing. This will leave Mr, Dean with a rep as an attack dog. I think he's fine with that. It is actually kinda/sorta heroic to see him sacrifice his future political career to play counter weight.

I look forward to the work he's going to do in the future to get people to talk about the things we have, for too long, ignored out a cowardly sense of propriety, leaving the battlefield to the rude boys (and girls) of the right, who have no problem name calling, flag waving and sodomizing the Constitution in the name of their own particular brand of media terrorism.

Go for it, Howie!