One of the many annoying things about the Iowa caucus coverage is that what’s really a faintly absurd and kind of trivial process gets magnified into this huge and all-consuming Event that bumps other, much more important, stories down the queue. Kevin Drum highlights what might be the perfect illustration:
On CNN, Bill Bennett just celebrated the Iowa caucuses because there’s been “no violence, no killing.” That’s way better than Kenya! Anderson Cooper agrees, telling us that Iowans have invited strangers into their very own homes and…..haven’t killed them, I guess.
The recent heartbreaking mess in Kenya thus becomes a kind of a footnote to breathless reporting about an event in which about ten percent of the population of a state with one percent of the total US population turned out to express a preference for a presidential candidate in a somewhat arcane process that nobody really understands. It’s a brief nod to acknowledge the existence of the rest of the world, before getting back to the serious business of political trivia. And, after the break, Britney Spears does something reprehensible, and Jake Young gets paid.
I realize I’m flirting with concern-troll-ism, here, because I don’t actually know anything about Kenya, or have any brilliant suggestions for what we can do to help. And, given our recent track record, I suppose that the best policy is probably to do everything we can to distract the Bush administration from what’s going on in Kenya, because they can undoubtedly find a way to make the situation much, much worse. Quick, somebody get Britney to flash a boob on national tv!
Still, I can’t help thinking that in a sane world, there are better places to focus the time, energy, and attention of lots of really smart people than Iowa.