I’ve been seeing a lot of speculation about the apparent massive reversal in support from Howard Dean to John Kerry. This one (via Aprendiz de todo) is interesting, as is this one (via Weblogsky). While the first may seem a little overly paranoid and prone to conspiracy theory, I think there’s something there.
The first speaks to the consolidation of corporate media, which is something the Bush administration has encouraged over the last four years and I think it’s becoming increasingly troublesome. The second points out that, while the Dean campaign made very good use of the Internet, they forgot that a large portion of the population doesn’t really use it much. I’m guilty of this as well. Those of us that use the Internet on a daily basis for news and social interaction forget that there’s an awful lot of other people out there that don’t. It’s the convergence of the two issues that’s really scary. It’s exactly the people who don’t use the Internet and rely on information spooned out by the corporate media outlets who might be responsible for the shift in democratic front-runners. As with anything, in order to get the whole story, one always has to get information from multiple sources. The time and effort needed to do so generally means that most people won’t do it. This gives greater weight to the coverage of major media outlets which are more and more intertwined with huge corporations whose interests may conflict with those of you or I.
While on the topic of conspiracy theories, this new book only fuels my inner conspiracy theorist. I need to get a copy, hopefully at our brand new library whose grand opening we attended on Saturday (also covered by Chip).
I personally haven’t decided who I’d vote for yet and since the Texas primaries are so late in the season, I won’t really have a say anyway (just like last time when I wanted to vote for Bill Bradley and didn’t get the chance). I can’t say that I was all that keen on Kerry, though. It’s sounds really shallow and vapid, but the current front-running democratic candidates are similar enough in policy and ideology that I almost have to go on personality to differentiate and I don’t get any connection at all with Kerry. I’ve been trying to narrow down between Clark, Edwards and Dean for the past few weeks and still have yet to come up with a winner (as futile as it may be). In the end, like everyone else, I just want to see GW sent back to Crawford where he belongs.