Dirty tricks, the media, and the obvious

The latest GOP dirty trick is a thing of beauty: lots of annoying automated phone calls, which seem to come from the opponent at first, but really slime the opponent if listened till the end.

It's being very well-documented by Josh Marshall, who has also realized the obvious, thanks to the media's apparent lack of interest in this story. (CNN is picking it up, but it might be too late.) As Paul Krugman writes:

The feeding frenzy over John Kerry’s botched joke showed that many people in the news media are still willing to be played like a fiddle.

They will also choose to devote humongous amounts of time to any missing white woman or child, Michael Jackson, serial killers, and troubled celebrities. Darfur? Congo? Honest discussion of the deficit? I guess that does not sell...