Saturday, March 06, 2004

Sweet Nothings for the Weekend

Off the top of my head there are five things I could be doing instead of typing this and waiting for my Real Player updates to download. But it's overcast outside and I don't have to meet friends for dinner until six, so HEEWIIIYYAAMM!!!

I've made it known that I'll be voting for Barack Obama in two weeks, but still I find it appalling that the media waited until Balir Hull had a sizeable lead in various polls to make his divorce from Brenda Sexton a campaign issue. As Ramsin pointed out over at The Howtown, Mark Brown admitted in his Tuesday Sun-Times column that the media knew of the details of the Hull/Sexton divorce but "sat on it" until the right moment. That right moment was a ten-point lead over Obama and Dan Hynes with Hull readying for the kill (bad pun.)

According to Brown's logic a man like Blair Hull, who put forth some serious time and effort to mold himself as a credible candidate for Senate, should have known that his rocky divorce from Sexton would become a campaign issue. Hull was aware of that: his campaign platform portrays him as a devoted single father. I, for one, don't think it's too much to ask to let sealed records stay sealed. Both Hull and Sexton were initially willing to underplay the importance of the records to his campaign's credibility.

It harkens back to the "where there's smoke there's fire" approach to reporting these days. Someone on the Culture Dump message boards the other day accused me and others critical of the Bush administration of "throwing shit against a wall in the hope that something sticks." In Blair Hull's case, its those since unsealed divorce records that might just cost him a shot at the Senate, when there are more credible reasons to not vote for him. It's a shame, really. Those records are the one small turd that hasn't fallen off the wall.

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