is right, I think: the media/press has always been a real mixed bag, no matter what age we were in. Indeed, the discussions of the press put me in mind of Plato's analysis in the dialogue The Sophist, where he has Socrates discussing what he calls the manipulators of images (you could actually translate the Greek as something like "image handlers")and how they distort the logos of reality for their personal benefit, covering over the appearing of the being of truth (thus the care you must take with them: they seem silly at first, but look at how they tame and subdue the great beast of public appetite, and lead the mob around by the nose). And then there is Cicero, with his distinctions between a true and false rhetoric (rhetoric having a positive function, being a witty account of the realities of the situation to persuade one's fellow citizens of the truth). I think the battle is always the same, and we are just shocked to find ourselves fighting it . . . again. Plato has Socrates say in the Republic that

"here, my dear Glaucon, is the highest danger we face in being human; and therefore the utmost care should be taken. Let each one of us leave every other kind of knowledge and seek and follow one thing only, if perhaps he may be able to learn and may find someone who will make him able to discern between good and evil, and so to choose always and everywhere the better life as he has opportunity. He should consider the bearing of all these things which have been mentioned severally and collectively upon moral excellence . . . he will then look at the nature of the soul, and from the consideration of all these qualities he will be able to determine which is the better and which is the worse; and so he will choose, giving the name of evil to the life which will make his soul more unjust, and good to the life which will make his soul more just; all else he will disregard."

Always we are facing this choice.

And bebop-o, I know I've only met you through these forums, but I hope you are ok. Take care, man.

I hope in my heart you are right about Obama. I am one white dude, anyway, who he has given some hope that finally some movement can be made against the terrible history our country has had, beginning with the native americans. I will never forget a course I taught with a colleague on Native American history and thought, and the absolute horror thinking and talking through what my country was founded on engendered in me, as careful as I was to be rational about it: indeed, rationality demanded I experience it as a horror. And then there is the history of slavery on top of it. Have you ever heard the Dave Matthews song: "Blood in the Water." don't drink the water, he sings, there's blood in the water . . . as he looks out at a lake in a national park. How do we make this up, his song wonders? How do I take in this landscape without tasting the horrors? Sometimes I wonder, if there is some kind of karmic justice in this universe, how this country could ever come to balance. And Obama has begun to seem to me a kind of powerful symbol of some kind of balancing. My academic specialty is the philosophy of the imagination: how imagination in a strong sense (like Coleride writes about, and Vico before him)--how our symbolic processes and world-making abilities--are as central to our being as our discursive rationality. So that a president is mainly a symbolic figure does not lessen his role but makes it even more central. And somehow the symbol of Bush I, Clinton I, Bush II, Clinton II, when such an alternative is represented, makes my hair stand on end. My greatest fear is that Chris Dowd with his kabuki theories is right and it is all a show put on by the powerful.

And bebop-o: remember I was a Captain! I stand with the good Colonel in his emphatic entreaties to see the doctor if you need to! Don't keep the Colonel waiting!

"A very special thanks to you, Glenn, for keeping a firm grip on objective reporting. By keeping your preferred candidate to yourself (if you even have one), and by peeling back the layers of the press-onion, for once I feel like I'm examining my own preferences. Thanks for that. It's a profoundly powerful gift."

I would like to second that, Glenn. You continue to help me to think through all this as well.

A very nice photo of Kabuki on your website (I clicked on your name).

You really know how to call up my darkest fears and make me feel extraordinarily depressed.:)I think I will go off and read a good book and not check the primary returns until the morning.

Yes: listening is one of the hardest skills to learn, I think. Being a teacher has given me a lot of practice. It's astonishing what can happen when you really stop and listen and ask real questions based on what you hear.

I have three daughters, 24, 20, and 14.

I have learned to listen, mostly! I think I can tell from your posts that you will be good at that with your daughter. And I have always let them dress however they wish: I made so many embarassing mistakes when I was young, I figure they need their turn too!

Good luck with everything. Teen age years are astonishing.