Finally, someone has put into words the way I have been feeling about the way the media covers the presidential race.

Trivializing something as important as selecting the leader of "the free world" is a complete abdication of the media's responsibility.

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U.S. Media Trivializes Campaign 2008 -- In These Times

Every four years, during U.S. presidential elections, the same thing happens, except it’s always a little bit different.
Some clever political operative injects “oppo” into the campaign – some little “scandal” that supposedly speaks to the “character” of a candidate – and the press corps obsesses on this marginal issue nearly to the exclusion of all substantive matters.

-snip-

Especially, during the six-week lull before the key Pennsylvania primary, the American people got a steady dose of this “oppo,” especially the guilt by association that sought to define Obama by the comments of his former pastor Jeremiah Wright and by his tenuous connection to Vietnam War-era radical Bill Ayers.

There also was the furor over the fact that Obama often didn’t wear an American flag lapel pin (though Hillary Clinton and John McCain didn’t either).

One might have thought the obsession with Wright and with the lesser themes of Ayers and the flag pin would have soon disappeared as just little blips on the campaign’s radar, but that would have required the exercise of some judgment and self-control by prominent national journalists.