The GOP network propaganda teams, esp. NBC and FOX are already starting their pre-election campaigns to undermine any Democratic challenge to the Reich. They are no longer focusing just on national contenders - they are trying to cut off grass roots opposition at the local level by using their affiliates to go after state and local politicians they view as threatening, while shamelessly puffing up those they feel are Bush-friendly. Here are some recent examples from my state (Maryland).

Baltimore's charismatic mayor Martin O'Malley is, without any doubt, seen as a major threat to the GOP. He is young, hip, outspoken - the sort of guy the Democrats have been lacking and with which the rightwing anally retentives cannot compete.. So local network affliates, especially NBC and FOX, have made sure that every single problem or negative story relating to O'Malley (as if any mayor has no problems!) gets plenty of coverage, while positive coverage is all but ZIP. In three years, there have been damn few if any profiles of O'Malley and his family presented. Why? Because it would fire the public's imagination - a passionate idealist, musician, and father of young children, with a beautiful, idealistic wife who also happens to be a public defender. Despite the media's efforts, O'Malley continues to enjoy a 70% approval rating (and that is the network figures - so you know that the actual figure is higher).

So last night, NBC local decided to try a new approach: divide and conquer. They dragged out Kwesi Mfume and tried to create a story about how the charsimatic black NAACP figure might be interested in challenging O'Malley in the coming election. Even though Mfume made it plain he liked his present job just fine, this non-story was still given more air time than any feature on O'Malley ever is. The motive: try to turn the mayoral race into a black-white issue, even though Baltimoreans, black and white, have proven they are above that. What's ironic here is that Mfume never gets adequate coverage locally for his own considerable contributions to both state and national political issues and human rights. But now, because the networks see an opportunity to pit him against "the white boy," divide and conquer, they are covering him - while still failing to mention any of his contributions.

Elijah Cummings is one of the strongest, most consistent, and principled Congressfolk in the entire U.S. It was Cummings and the other members of the Black Caucus who spoke up, loud and clear on the eve of the Iraq invasion, questioning and repudiating the war. Yet did the local networks even bother to cover this historic moment? Nope, unless it was in a five-second mention too fast to notice. Cummings never gets the coverage he deserves by the local networks. He's far too admirable a liberal figure and thus viewed as "dangerous" by the rightwing corporazis.

On the other side of the coin - the rightwing side - we have Bush buddy Bob Ehrlich being lauded and covered by the networks and papers, who try to make it a positive newsworthy event everytime the scowling prison-warden-faced new governor (courtesy a corrupt election) so much as farts. Case in point: the same day that the O'Malley-Mfume story ran, NBC local lavished twice as much time on the inane story about Ehrlich turning back on the pretentious, Versaille-style fountain at the governor's mansion. With the economy crumbling, Baltimore without sufficient funds to pay for required Homeland Security, with crime up all over the state, and the spectre of a summer continuation of last year's drought looming, turning on a damn fountain was an event that deserved 5 minutes of news time and the entire front page of the State news in the Washington Post? Puleeze! The whole point, of course, was to slam the DEMOCRAT Paris Glendenning the former mayor who had the water-guzzling fountain shut off as a show of respect to the people of Maryland (who were not allowed to even water their vegetable gardens during the drought). This rotten-centered marshmallow of a story was as inaccurate as it was pointless. To allow the accusation that Glendenning turned the fountain off to spite aging crank William Donald Shaeffer to be a central part of the story would only seem comprehensible if this was "Entertainment Tonight," not NBC "news."

If there is a valid story here, it is that Ehrlich has shown his stripes where environmental issues and his respect for "common Marylanders" (those without Versaille-style fountains and Versaille style priviledges) are concerned: The state is supposed to still be in a water conservation mode until it becomes clear what the summer may bring. To make it seem as if Glendenning's shutting down the fountain was a bad thing because it offended some old rightwinger (who calls himself a Democrat - just like Georgia's Zell Miller calls himself a Democrat) rather than acknowledging that it was the right thing to do at the time in the name of conservation says it all. But the story does prove one thing: rightwing Bushies like Ehrlich are getting pretty darn desperate for any kind of "good press." In place of real achievements they must stage bogus "events."