Just how much air time can be devoted to subjects that don't actually matter? Take for instance the Republican and Democratic candidate selection process. I'm flabbergasted at the amount of time the press spends talking about who's going to win - Obama or Hilary? Or is it Edwards? - in the various individual states.
Don't misunderstand me, it does matter who ends up winning, and ending up becoming their party's presidential nominee. What doesn't matter are all these shows trying to guess who will win. For example, for the Democratic process, professional oddsmakers put Obama at something like 33%, Hilary at 32%, and Edwards at 27%. Now, perhaps I'm a bit simple, but to me that just means "Flip a three-sided coin".
In most cases, the battle is so freaking close there simply is NO WAY to pick a winner in advance. No matter how authorative the "expert" queried, the fact of the matter is that they are just guessing. And if you examine the experts' track records after the fact, they're usually as wrong as often as they are right. Which is what you would expect from someone who is guessing.
And that's what doesn't matter. The guesses. Yet you can't turn on a television without being flooded with hundreds upon hundreds of hours of television programmind devoted to trying to guess who's going to win the primary. And this is nothing compared to what we'll get once the Presidential race begins to heat up.
Bread and circuses.
