ridiculous muckraking

the latest character assassination attempt is that "bush mighta used drugz! oh no!" uh, you think i care whether bush snorted coke, clinton inhaled, or kerry got serious enough wounds to "deserve" purple hearts? nope. sorry. and it appears, neither does she:

So while everyone - that includes both campaigns and most of their supporters - are flinging so much Vietnam-flavored feces at each other, I'm sitting here truly shocked that his election is about a thirty year old war. I had to stop reading blogs this weekend because it was all Swift Boat/Cambodia all the time. The major papers were no better, the chat at an online game I play was inundated with Swift Boat cat fights, I'm sick of the negative ads from the Bush campaign (Kerry is mentioned four times - all with graphics or pictures - on the front page of the GWB website, a tactic that irritates me). So when I overheard two women in the bagel store going back and forth about shrapnel wounds (You can really judge a person by this, you know. Oh, I know, but he does have the Purple Heart. No, he has three. Yea, but what about what the veterans are saying? Well, he's not Bush, he's got that going for him. Yea, he does.), I had it.

I walked out of the bagel store in full zombie mode and lumbered towards my car sporting a catatonic stare. I wanted brains. BRAINS! Really juicy, meaty brains that were fused with nutrients like the war on terror, taxes, Iraq, health care, education, homeland security. I drove home in a daze.

My brain is just going to refuse to acknowledge that this presidential election is about something so far removed from the American psyche that the most relevant voters have no frame of reference for it. While most bloggers are cheering that this issue is finally making it to big media, I'm cringing. Neither side will benefit from bringing the Christmas in Cambodia story mainstream. Neither side will benefit from behaving like monkeys in a zoo in regards to the Swift Boat vets.

i put kitty kelley in the same boat as the "swift boat vets" - the slow boat going up shit creek without a paddle. this can't help the kerry campaign at all. and i can see it now... the response: "breaking news! ruh-roh! kerry might have smoked weed in 'nam! he's unfit for president!" or "kerry might have stolen a cupcake from a school cafeteria when he was ten!" i think the mudsligning can only get worse...

addendum: perhaps we have no choice - it appears that the bush camp is notorious for low-ball smear campaigns that end up working - although it makes me sick kerry supporters (note: i didn't say "kerry campaign") would have to sink to these lows, would it actually be a check on the bushies if they did engage in muckraking in this election? and will this eventually lead to mutual deterrence? discuss.