If It's Tuesday...

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Another Tuesday, another primary....

Today it's West Virginia, where the vote for Clinton is expected to dwarf that for Obama. Lots of chatter around the edges about Hillary's base, those "hard working Americans." Christy over at firedoglake, herself a native West Virginian, gives a context and texture to the WV primary that the soundbite media doesn't pause to do between their Very Important Punditry and their commercials boosted by the enduring pace of the Democratic primary season.

Enough talk of Obama paying off Hillary's campaign debts. The media should. They were the ones who whipped up and sustained this horserace to the benefit of their own bottom line. Heck, $20 mil would be chump change for Rupert and GE and the Mouse. [We won't include CBS since they may well have their own upstart woman to settle up with sooner rather than later.]

On-the-ground reporting and context has been in short supply in many quarters this campaign season. So much more fun to bloviate amongst yourselves, VIPs. So much easier for getting back to the cocktail wienie Washington salons if you only need to gather in DeeCee teevee studios rather than actually go out and, ewwww, mingle with the locals.

So, although the subject matter is a troubling one—the brushes with racism that Obama's campaign field staff and volunteers have had to deal with from time to time—the Washington Post has done both due diligence and contextual reporting that we should see more of, instead of the cliched crowd shots and rope lines and.... crowd shots and rope lines....

In this year of change, we're seeing the best and worst of what America can be. And as we shift gears from the primary season to the general election, the contrasts between what the Democratic Party and the Republican Party offer the country and all of us could not be more stark.

My first political experience was similar to those I read about in the Post article...suspending college in order to work for Eugene McCarthy's campaign. First working stop: Indiana. And first memory [besides getting lost driving the Chicago interstate system] was the news of the assassination of Martin Luther King.

It's been a long time for the ugly stew of racism to keep on simmering in some hearts, fed by predatory fearmongering preachers of hate and their opportunistic political brethren. Long past time we put the fire out and build a stronger America together.