Veep Debate Tonight

I cringe.

The media focuses attention in order to maximize viewership and profit, and so the images of all politicians are distorted. My impression of Biden was wrong, a product of the mass marketing of minutiae. His so-called gaffes are real enough, but so what? Do we want leaders, or performers? Likewise I bristle at the giddiness with which some segments criticize Palin. She's a remarkable person. So what if she's no good at bursting through her handlers' cautions and just being herself, and that when she does, the D.C.-centric media marketers can't grasp what they see? She's a Westerner: I understand her better than I do Katie Couric.

Still and all, it will be a strange and ugly show. They've scheduled a car crash for six o'clock tonight and we just can't look away. The run-up to global power presented as circus sideshow. Well, but who knows. Maybe a thousand years from now Americans will best be remembered for introducing the bizarre customs of show business to the process of selecting global leaders. A sort of reminder for humanity not yet born to not to take this shit so damn seriously.

I might miss it anyway. I've a meeting with Taiwan from five to six, no time to get home for it. I may have to sit here and watch it on my computer. How pathetic is that?