Saturday, January 21, 2006

News flash - By more than 2-1 Newspapers prefer blowjob scandals to Constitution scandals


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Great article. My only disagreement here is that people tired very quickly of the blowjob scandal. They just wanted it out of sight, out of mind.

Constitutional subversion, on the other hand, has the potential to sustain the attention on people who normally are not political (law professors, etc). It may not have the passion, but it definitely stirs core values. People who critizize the NSA are standing up for core principles, whereas blogjob condemners are simply attacking an individual's action.

BTW, I find absolutely amazing at this week's presidential push to defend the NSA surveillance. I don't know how far or fast this will cause the political pendulum to swing, but blowjob scandals just don't do lasting damage. And I suspect that a continued defense will only call more attention to it.

Speaking of which, I read a great essay in an old New York Review of Books by Larry McMurtry where he advised Clinton to announce in a national press conference, "We fooled around but didn't fuck." To McMurtry, using swear words was far less injurious to Clinton's presidency than trying to parse what constituted sexual intercourse.

Of course, that's precisely the sort of advice a novelist would give.