Saturation circus

When considering all of the media circuses that have paraded around our nation's front pages and news stations recently, there is certainly no shortage of stories so sensationalized that they approach the point of stimulating a gag reflex. The general public has been over-saturated with more than its fair share of ongoing sensational coverage: the Monica Lewinski scandal, the 2000 election, which quickly became the Florida recount, and then led into the "hanging chad" fiasco, a full year of Sept. 11, the continual beating of the dead horse that is the war on terror, Hurricane Katrina -- the list is nearly endless. \nThough it may be hard for one singular event to live up to worst-above-all-others-status, I fear we are on the doorstep of a mass media extravaganza already so shamelessly sensationalized that it may deserve the honor of being abhorred above the rest. Yup, like everyone else in the nation, I already can't stop talking about the 2008 election. \nWhere do I see potential for this to surpass any previously sensationalized campaigns and debacles? Everywhere!\nDon't get me wrong. This in no way reflects my feelings about the individual presidential hopefuls. Barack Obama, John McCain and Hillary Rodham Clinton aren't just some of my favorite people in the Senate; they're tied with Russ Feingold for being my favorite people in the world! But let's get this straight: If anyone should be shoving Hillary Clinton down other people's throats, it should be me. It's almost nauseating, even to the biggest supporter, when C-SPAN seems to be continually rerunning her wonderful-the-first-time-around Iowa speech, not to mention the agony of reading another in the endless line of The New Republic Online's front page stories that are almost as unflattering to the senator as the large pictures of her gracing various publications. \nWhen you can't even escape the Democratic contenders in the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal, who can you turn to? Like every other media outlet they added to the `08 craze in January with the featured editorial "The Democratic Field: It's Hillary versus everybody else."\nThough I value reading about Obama's emerging rock star status, and stories like the New York Times's "McCain Calls New Advisers 'Good People,'" I hardly feel like sifting through dozens of identical stories to read, no offense Senators, the real news. There is enough coverage surrounding the well known few. Factor in the rest of the playing field: Bill Richardson, John Edwards, Tom Vilsack, Sam Brownback, Chris Dodd and Joseph Biden, and this seems to be leading to an overload epidemic!\nWith almost two years between now and elections, I question whether all publicity is good publicity for those who have already announced their candidacies, or if the annoyance of sifting through the overabundance of coverage and vote-for-me-tactics in search of actual news will have an increasingly negative effect on their campaigns. With our country currently facing turmoil, and our media outlets more than content to focus their attention ahead to `08; I question where Americans will draw the line. Where does a campaign become a circus?