With that headline, the Washington Post commences a serious mischaracterization of a study centered on Daily Show viewers. The study’s authors, Jody Baumgartner and Jonathan Morris of East Carolina University, sought to define “The Daily Show Effect” on its audience.

The WP says:
“Two political scientists found that young people who watch Stewart’s faux news program, “The Daily Show,” develop cynical views about politics and politicians that could lead them to just say no to voting.”

The researchers themselves found that:
Daily Show viewers, primarily young adults in their late teens and early 20s, tend to trust their own knowledge of politics. And that, …whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing, we don’t know. But that, As “Daily Show” viewers grow more confident in political knowledge…they could become more active voters…”Participation breeds more participation and informed participation” he said. “So that by itself would be a net positive.”

So amongst the conclusions of the researchers was the possibility that the Daily Show may produce a greater likelihood of voting. The Post doesn’t cite that possibility anywhere in its article, while featuring the notion that the program could suppress voting.

I would submit that any program that leads viewers “to be cynical about individual candidates, the electoral process and the media…[and]…to trust their own knowledge of politics,” is performing an essential public service. It proves that the program is producing an enlightened skepticism that is firmly rooted in reality – contrary to the ramblings of the folks at the Washington Post.

With the publication of American Conservatism: An Encyclopedia, we now have a pretty good idea on whom to blame the nation’s problems.

The 997 page book casts itself as:

“…the first comprehensive reference volume to cover what is surely the most influential political and intellectual movement of the last half century. More than fifteen years in the making-and more than half a million words in length-this informative and entertaining encyclopedia contains substantive entries of up to two thousand words on those persons, events, organizations, and concepts of major importance to postwar American conservatism.”

Unfortunately, it is not as comprehensive as it’s publisher claims. Some of the most notorious pounders of conservative pap were egregiously omitted. Nowhere in this massive tome will you find the conservative stylings of Ann Coulter, Tom DeLay, Grover Norquist, Bill O’Reilly or Karl Rove. At the same time that they disassociate with these rightist stalwarts, they embrace the likes of John Birch, Joseph McCarthy, and George Wallace. They honor James Dobson but spurn Billy Graham. They include Charles Colson but not G. Gordon Liddy or Ollie North. And Jeanne Kirkpatrick makes the cut but not Henry Kissinger.

It’s hard to tell what their standards for inclusion are, but maybe that’s the point. When preparing a compendium of individuals with such uniformly low standards for the welfare of society and Constitutional rule, at some point you just have to throw your hands up and decide that it’s done. There are plenty of candidates for future volumes.

The Drum Major Institute, a non-partisan, progressive think tank, has launched a Google AdWords campaign that takes advantage of the search engine’s ad results to educate voters.

Here’s how it works: Do a search for your congressman and check the list of “Sponsored Links” to the right. You’ll find your congressman with a letter grade representing his/her DMI score.

Here’s a few examples:

• Berman Earns An “A”
• Herseth Earns A “C”
• Feingold Earns An “A”
• Santorum Earns An “F”

The DMI gets points for originality. This campaign alerts net users to DMI’s congressional scoring whenever anyone does a search for a member and provides a link to more details of the member’s scorecard. This makes it easy to learn about the voting record of your representative whether you were looking for it or not.

Will this campaign produce a more informed electorate? Probably not. But it does inspire one to imagine other ways to exploit new media for the public good.

After a decade of Republicans soaking up corporate largesse in the form of donations, vacations and other assorted perks and bribes, Democrats are starting to catch the eye of these deep-pocketed givers. The Wall Street Journal’s story notes that traditional Republican backers like the insurance, pharmaceuticals and tobacco industries, are flipping their allegiances in order to sustain their sway over Congress.

“The reality is beginning to set in here,” says Greg Casey, the head of the Business-Industry Political Action Committee (BIPAC), an organization of businesses dedicated to electing pro-industry candidates. Even if Republicans maintain control of Congress after the November election, their majorities in both chambers are expected to shrink. “What you couldn’t get done in 2006 will be much more difficult in 2007,” Mr. Casey says.

Considering how little has been done in 2006, it’s easy to understand why the business community is worried. Their fear has propelled them to take drastic measures – Concede that Democrats exist. In the 2004-2005 election cycle, the BIPAC gave 3.5% of its campaign contributions to Democrats. So far in 2006, that’s up to 24%.

Donations to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee this year have exceeded those to the Republican Committee for the first time in more than a decade. Since corporations are the largest slice of the campaign finance pie, this demonstrates a clear shift in party loyalty.

The industries that provide these funds claim that there is no partisan motivation to their generosity and that speculation about future legislative majorities is unfounded. Their explanations for the charitable flip-flop range from an interest to donate to those who will listen, to “coincidence.”

Somehow, coincidence doesn’t seem to tell the whole story. The Journal also cites a shift in hiring at K Street firms. The Tom DeLay era featured some of the most aggressive arm-twisting DC has ever seen in order to assure that lobbyists hire only Republicans. But recently, The Federalist Group, who had never hired a Democrat in its eight year existence, added four of them to its staff, including a former aide to Ted Kennedy.

On the one hand, this news appears to shed a positive light on the prospects of congressional leadership after November’s elections. After all, in our free market system, the flow of dollars is a pretty accurate predictor of events. And the corporations of America are the high rollers in this game. If they are betting on blue, there is a fairly good chance that blue is going to prevail. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that the corporations that have besotted the Republican party, and to no small degree led to their decline through scandal and corruption, are now wining and dining Democrats. All that the corporations and lobbyists care about is that they have an ever-available stable of fresh whores that they can use up and discard when they’re no longer pretty. Will the Dems just become the next flurry of drunken sluts seduced by money and the power it brings?

To cynics like myself, that question doesn’t really need to be asked. But, what the hell, let’s ask it anyway. Maybe by staking out a preemptive position we can forestall what we all sadly believe is inevitable anyway.

Update (8/17/06): A new WaPo article is confirming the shift in hiring on K Street: “In what lobbyists are calling a harbinger of possible upheaval on Capitol Hill, many who make a living influencing government have gone from mostly shunning Democrats to aggressively recruiting them as lobbyists over the past six months or so.”

The Wall Street Journal recently interviewed Jim Buckmaster, CEO of Craigslist. Not surprisingly, the Journal’s Brian Carney projected a befuddled confusion as to why this electronic phenomemon doesn’t properly exploit it’s revenue potential. Wall Street’s mouthpiece can’t understand why a profitable organization that more than satisfies its customers doesn’t wring out every spare nickel it can spot. The Journal, it seems, cannot be introduced to a Golden Goose without reaching for a hatchet.

Buckmaster does a great job of spurring Carney to wonder if he is a communist. As the head of one of the first entrepreneurial successes of the Internet era, Buckmaster would have been justified to laugh uproariously in Carney’s face.

But, instead, Buckmaster defended the Craigslist model, pointing out its longevity in a field sown with failure. He went on to address some broader issues that touch on the future of conventional publishers:

“In Mr. Buckmaster’s view, newspapers would be better off being a little more Craigslist-like: Go private, eschew Wall Street’s demands for continually “goosing profitability” and give your readers what they want.”

Damn Commie! Catering to customer’s wants and needs? Who does he think he is? The real brilliance in that clip is the idea that newspapers have much to gain by divorcing themselves from their corporate parents so that they can focus on producing superior journalism rather than short-term quarterly earnings results. Superior journalism would, in the end, give them what they really want – more readers, advertisers, and profits.

We all know how these megaliths are consumed with greed. The question now is, are they greedy enough to do what is truly in their best interest?