Monday, December 19, 2005

In 2002, the Republicans broke the law in New Hampshire in an attempt to influence the election.  Now, at the end of 2005, the case has come to trial and the criminal has been found guilty.

Betsy Devine is upset and I don’t blame her.  She has a view of a story with national and international implications.  It’s a piece of a larger picture of right-wing scorn for law and decency, another example of crude rationalization of ends (dubious) justifying means (criminal).  "They" perfected this concept by the end of the Vietnam war.  Protests and civil unrest became local news.  The pattern that emerged across the country was obscured by the failure to report it.  The question was, were "they" going to feed a growing national and international movement that was counter to "their" interests?

"Man bites dog" in New England is still the stuff of breathless national coverage, always will be.  Stories about dead wives in California also seem to merit wide coverage.  But "Republicans convicted of election fraud" will always be local news.  If it was spread wider, the people would be informed about the bigger picture.  Voting scandals in Florida remain the exception and they remain debatable.  Shouldn’t those dummies have been able to figure out who they were voting for?  Isn’t a hanging chad obscure at best and ultimately ridiculous?

What’s bugging Betsy?

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