McCain Made His Own Hi-Def Bed

As I reported here previously, HDTV can be a cruel mistress, making many of her subjects wish they could stop at the "warts" part of "warts and all." Of the 3 remaining candidates, the one who stands to be hit hardest by the harshly meticulous rendering, John McCain, seems to have only himself to blame. From Slate:

As Senate commerce committee chairman in 1998, and later as the committee's highest-ranking Republican in 2002, McCain excoriated broadcasters for transitioning too slowly to the digital spectrum...In 2007, McCain complained that a congressionally mandated deadline of Feb. 17, 2009, to abandon (analog) was "too late,"...If it weren't for McCain's ceaseless agitating on the issue, HDTV probably wouldn't have anywhere near its present estimated penetration of roughly 11 percent of all U.S.households.

Huh huh, he said "penetration."

There's a really funny bit toward the end of the story that I'll get to later. First, let me reiterate that just because something is a political reality doesn't make it right. Everyone knows about the Nixon-Kennedy debate in 1960, and the role television has played in politics ever since, but that doesn't mean the press needs to amplify that.

Having said that, I do see an apt metaphor at work here, one as obvious as the nose on...WHOAH! Scared me!



Although it would take a simpleton to vote against McCain simply because he looks kindly and wise through a gauzy, glow-lit, soft-focus blurcam, but an undead, sunken-eyed, jowl-bedecked ghoul in Hi-Def, it also doesn't take a genius to see the analogy here.

On the substance, the American newsmedia have been shooting McCain's policies and politicking with the Joan Collins lens for quite awhile. As the Democrats engaged in the electoral equivalent of a cockfight at a trainwreck, McCain has been sitting around, posing for portraits.

Now (or soon-to-be-now) that the Democrats have picked their nominee, we'll see if McCain's image as a straight-talkin' centrist comes under sharper scrutiny. Hillary Clinton has already fired up the HD rig, firing off keen observations of McCain, from her campaign, on a daily basis.

I'm doing what I can to give people a clearer picture of McCain's policies, which are anything but centrist (coming soon: McCain's healthcare plan), but John seems to have no bigger opponent than himself.

The question is, will the press carry the new signal, or continue to draw McCain on an Etch-a-Sketch?

In case I haven't made it clear, I could give a damn who looks good in Hi-Def. I would vote for Medusa if she had the right platform and a decent ground game. Hence, I want to close with a passage from the Slate piece that I found really funny, but mores upon application to McCain's politics:

McCain-more precisely, McCain's political ambition-may play the unfortunate role of Dr. Frankenstein, whose lifeless body at the end of Mary Shelly's novel is wept over by the demon he created. Across the land, LCD and plasma screens will wail in unison, "I have devoted my creator, the select specimen of all that is worthy of love and admiration among men, to misery; I have pursued him even to that irremidiable ruin." But doesn't Obama look fabulous?