- Grand Experiment, Day 5 -

More varied headlines in this morning's paper. The Wall Street meltdown continues to lead and there is a picture of the aftermath of Ike (but no story). The campaign is treated only with three very small stories inside. The longest of the three deals with McCain's call to fire the head of the SEC. It did not give a good impression of McCain since he seemed to be singling out Cox (the SEC chair) as a scapegoat. At least that's how it came across to me. Lord knows how We, the People respond to it. The two other articles were very short: two paragraphs on Todd Palin refusing to testify and suggesting that Troopergate will be inconclusive until after the election (duh) and another two paragraphs on Biden saying it is the patriotic duty of the rich to pay more taxes. Overall, I couldn't help but come away uneasy about the coverage today.

The op-ed page was full of campaign politics today. One essay argued that Obama's Spanish language campaign is very deceitful, another that the Obama campaign has been sexist in its treatment of Palin (including recycling the whole "Obama called Palin a pig" thing). No doubt this was "balance" for having run a somewhat positive assessment of Obama yesterday. (So you counter positive Obama with negative Obama rather than positive McCain? Whatever.) And a third column decried the number of false rumors circulating on the internet about both candidates. Overall, my general impression was that everyone is lying, and you can't really trust what anyone says about anything. If this is indeed the impression We, the People are getting, then we're going to see an awful lot more lying, because the costs of doing so are negligible.