It's Tim Russert. The moment he said to Dennis Kucinich at a "debate" among Democratic presidential candidates, "This is a serious question," you knew it wouldn't be. A responsible journalist might have asked, "Why do think that Dick Cheney should be impeached rather than George Bush?" But Russert wanted to further marginalize Kucinich--to ridicule him in a flying saucer kind of way--and, like a trial lawyer who already knows what a defendant's answer will be--his "serious question" was "Did you see a UFO?"
Kucinich tried to explain that the U in UFO means "unidentified" flying object. He joked, "I'm moving my campaign office to Roswell, New Mexico and Exeter, New Hampshire." He pointed out that Jimmy Carter had seen a UFO, and that "More people--" Russert interrupted him with a statistic: 14% of Americans have seen UFOs. Kucinich asked him to repeat that number, as if to thank him for inadvertently providing him with the UFO sighters vote. Russert repeated the number and, with the smug satisfaction of having generated a guaranteed sound bite, he said, "I want to ask Senator Obama..."
There was a predictable trickle-down effect. Even Bill Maher mocked Kucinich, though Maher's real target should've been Russert. A few days later, I met a woman who asked me who my ideal candidate is. "Dennis Kucinich," I said. She responded, "Isn't he the one who said he saw some Martians?" Of course, there's a video of that encounter in the secret government's implied-blackmail lock-box, along with the video of a threesome--Charles Schumer, Dianne Feinstein and a billy goat--and the video of Rudy Guliani performing an abortion on Pat Robertson's mistress.
Ironically, Russert's co-moderator, Brian Williams--in his capacity as a host on Saturday Night Live--referred to the mainstream media's proactive assumption that Hillary Clinton will win in the primaries and then in the general election. Fundraising is the name of that particular political game, because the candidates with the most money will buy the most TV commercials and print ads. Tim Russert has given a claymation face to that open conspiracy. And, in the process, that old saying and song, "There's no business like show business," has landed in the outdated metaphors graveyard. There is indeed a business like show business. It's the news.