Seeking Women's Votes, Jimmy Page Changes His Style

If the first full week of 2004 is any indication, the USA is in for a truly pathetic year of political journalism and commentary, likely to the benefit of Dubya, for whom the less substantive the scrutiny, the better. Because this week has been bookended by two egregious examples from a newspaper of which one expects better, the New York Times. Tuesday produced the spectacle of so-called "smart conservative" David Brooks using his prime space on the NYT's opinion page to claim that if you criticise Dubya's foreign policy, you're anti-Semitic. The incomparable Daily Howler deconstructs here.

And today comes a flashback to the infantile coverage of the Bush-Gore contest -- in which serious issues of fiscal and foreign policy could have been debated, but the press corps only wanted to talk about what Al Gore was wearing. This time, it's Wesley Clark who is getting the sartorial scrutiny. It turns out, we are told, he is wearing more Argyle sweaters in an effort to chase the women's vote. Who knew that the sweater had this connotation? Was Jimmy Page thinking about a run for office when he wore one in the fabulous 1970 Royal Albert Hall Led Zeppelin concert? According to the political scribes, the only answer is Yes.

UPDATE: The ridicule pours in on today's NYT piece. Atrios and TAPped. Also, it's Jimmy Page's 60th birthday today. Time for another viewing of the Zep DVD in celebration. And we recommend today's Daily Howler on the preposterous David Brooks column. We also mis-spelled anti-Semitic in an earlier version of this post; between that and using the term "neocon" a few days ago, we have clearly revealed ourselves to be rabid anti-Semites. So goes the state of political rhetoric in Dubya's America.