Summum Bonum

The New York Times is trying on both these narratives at once about Palin.

Here’s a funny commentary by Mark Steyn on how the media are rising—or sinking –to the McCain campaign’s bait, through the prism of Howard Kurtz’z “mad as hell” column.

Money quotes from Steyn:

“…Roger Kimball calls the last two weeks a ‘de facto auto-immolation by the media.’ Alas, while setting their own pants on fire, Howie & Co. also managed to spill the lighter fluid all over Barack’s coronation robes.”

“When  [Howard Kurtz] claims he’s getting really really mad, I wonder if he realizes he sound like Elmer Fudd warning Bugs Buny, ‘You’re making me vewy, vewy angwy’ right after he’s shot his own butt off.”

And for confirmation, here’s the PRSA (Public Relations society of America) quoting WaPo on the media’s gullibility.

So, hi–I’m sucking my thumb now...what’s up w/ u? –NYT

The Times Online rounds up a recent spate of books on technological attention deficit, and the Chronicle’s Thomas H. Benton does the same--overlapping some of the same books.

The Times’ Bryan Appleyard says, regarding social networking etc.:

“These connections are severed as quickly as they are taken up – with the click of a mouse. Jackson and everyone else I spoke to was alarmed by the potential impact on real-world relationships. Teenagers are being groomed to think others can be picked up on a whim and dropped because of a mood or some slight offence. The fear is that the idea of sticking with another through thick and thin – the very essence of friendship and love – will come to seem absurd, uncool, meaningless.”

Maybe. But I would guess that teens learn more about lack of connectedness and commitment from divorced parents than from their gadgets–and that kids in homes with stable, involved parents use their gadgets less.

As far as Benton goes, he’s certainly right about the attitude of college students today. But the entitlement attitudes were fostered by their parents since before the Internet arrived. Grading standards have eroded because parents no longer see the teachers as joining them to help educate and raise their children, but as potential obstacles to their children’s “success”–defined as getting a high-paying job. I don’t see that gadgets or the Internet are directly to blame here.

Yes, I did see Sarah Palin’s speech.

I thought she did what she needed to do. She knocked Obama out of the headlines for a few days, and she got the social conservatives back for McCain. They probably would have come anyway, but now they’re not holding their nose.

I don’t know what Peggy Noonan’s deal is, but I don’t think a “machine” picked her. This has all the hallmarks of a genuine McCain move. He knew he had to get the social conservatives back, but instead of arguing with Rush Limbaugh, or telling them why they should support him, he did something dramatic and bold. Noonan and Michael Murphy represent exactly the Republican machine types who would have argued against a Palin pick. But we’ll see.