Blubox Conspiracy Report

A close election is guaranteed no matter who wins the democratic nomination.

The reason: the news media can agree on one thing -- the closer the race the higher the ratings.

We believe the media is not contolled by liberals with a liberal agenda, but by editors and producers who want to get promoted. Chanting the mantra of higher ratings, they use all their power (the media's influence on political contests can be debated, but we think it's considerable) to foster a down-to-the-wire contest.

How do they do this? Think of the two candidates sitting on a see-saw. As soon as one politician gets too high, the media will weigh him down with negative coverage while at the same time lifting up the other guy with favorable reporting.

Once upon a time, the media touted Howard Dean as the man. Everywhere, front page stories -- in Time, Newsweek, Rolling Stone -- gave his candidacy a boost. But when that darn see-saw started tilting too fast and Dean rose too far above “the other guys” the media set out with a mission to balance.

The goal was to bring him back to earth; but caught up in the zeal of their mission they landed him six feet under. Recently, the general manager of CNN admitted that they overplayed The Scream (okay, maybe just a tad; they ran it 633 times in four days.) No one said balancing the political scales was a perfect science.

Ever wonder why the media didn’t pick up on the issue of George W. Bush’s questionable service record during the election of 2000?

Al Gore was a heavy favorite. Bush was a Dan Quayle in the making. The election looked like a disaster. (No, not for Republicans. Worse! For the media.)

So the boys at MSNBC and CNN and all the other media outlets gave two-fisted, coke-snortin’ George a free pass. We doubt the liberal media was worried the silver-spooned dunce would actually win the damn thing. (But then Gore ran an absurdly outdated Populist campaign, distanced himself from Bubba in Arkansas, and choked in the debates against Goober.)

The media got the closest race in history; the ratings were amazing; the editor’s broke out that ancient beer from the refrigerator in the lounge.

A highly competitive game brings better ratings – bottom line. Shall we count all those articles about "the upstart Panthers"?

Now that Kerry is running away with the nomination look for the media to go negative in an effort to bring Dean and Edwards back into the….

Hold on. Just got an email telling me to check out the Drudge Report; big story about a sex scandal involving John Kerry.

Damn media. Couldn’t they have atleast waited until we finished writing our blog?