I'm going to get your attention, and then I'm going to try to say something substantive. The trouble with most TV news is that they skip step two.

Apparently Sarah Palin's 17-year-old daughter is pregnant and (of course) going to marry her boyfriend. Do Republicans not believe in birth control? You can go to Planned Parenthood and get help, no matter what your parents say. I donate money to that organization for exactly that reason. But that's not what I'm really worried about. This 17-year-old is going to have to deal with the consequences of her choice. Let's just say it's a good thing she's got health coverage!

To be fair, birth control is not 100% effective, but if you are serious about preventing pregnancy, you should have learned in about fifth grade that combining methods such as the pill and condoms greatly reduces your risk. Unless, of course, the Republicans have outlawed teaching sex ed?

What I'm really worried about is the chance that McCain might win this election, and that Obama didn't bounce post-convention. We all know that a popular vote win doesn't equal the White House, and at least Obama is ahead by a couple of points. What I wonder about is, how did we get into this position in the first place?

There's plenty of blame to go around, but what concerns me most is that so many Americans have fallen into the sensationalist trap for so long. Remember that anti-Dukakis ad Bush I ran that made everyone think he'd be a terrible Commander in Chief? Or that Swift Boat shit Rove cooked up for Bush II? Or AHEM, that nasty set-up Dan Rather fell into? This year's campaign appears to have degenerated into whether Obama likes beer (see last night's 60 Minutes interview).

Sharp thinkers will notice I have fallen into this trap at the beginning of this post, because I have the Today show on in the background and they ran a story about it, which is what got me thinking about this. Growing up, I watched Peter Jennings on World News Tonight on ABC, because that's what my mother liked to watch. At some point after I graduated from high school, perhaps because of Jennings' death, she switched to watching NBC, which I cannot stand. No matter who is anchoring it that night, he or she always seems to be yelling at you, no matter how low you turn the volume. And the show's foreign coverage sucks.

I have long since switched to PBS and BBC for any television news (and only had the Today show on this morning for noise and Hurricane Gustav coverage). Jim Lehrer is even better than Jennings in my mind, and he makes it clear how sad and angry he is about the war. He even has a surprisingly fun personality that only comes out in situations like coverage of the DNC. Even though Lehrer's opinion about the war is clear through his actions, the show shies away from editorializing without sacrificing the truth, which all the other media outlets seem to have given up on. (For more on this, I recommend reading Paul Krugman's take on the media in his columns in the New York Times.)

On occasion, like today and last night, I will watch some network or cable news, and I always feel like I'm being treated like a kid. "Hey, Lisa, look over here at this shiny, sparkly news story that is totally meaningless and just sensationalist crap. Oh, hey, here's another one. Don't change the channel! Are you CRAZY??!! You might miss a few seconds of the "Developing Story" we're working so hard on right now!! What would you do then??!! Oh, it's not enough for you to have a "Developing Story"? Okay, then, we'll make it "Breaking News". Still not satisfied? Seriously? Wait, don't go, don't go, we need you ..."

It feels like a vicious cycle. Politicians figured out how to scare people into action (or inaction) long ago, and the media seems to have learned that lesson very well. So Sixty Minutes stoops to some low about whether Obama likes beer, and the Republicans make up a lot of crap about how he's "too popular" and how he's "just like a celebrity". It's just one more example of how insulting modern politics has become to people who actually care about policies. I just wish the media and the campaigns would stop encouraging people to sacrifice what matters most — the future of this country's education, transportation, health care, economy, et cetera! — for what matters the least —the fact that one of the candidates grew up in Hawaii or may or may not like beer!

To be fair to both parties, let's avoid making the fact that Palin's daughter is pregnant into a campaign issue. Knowing the Republicans, they would probably just turn it into a huge deal about how happy Palin is to become a grandmother (at 44) and how people who consider having abortions, even in the case of rape or incest, or when they are completely unable to care for a child, are part of that "axis of evil".

Never mind the fact that nearly two million Americans have to declare bankruptcy every year because of medical bills, or the fact that record numbers of kids attending public schools are poor enough to qualify for free or reduced-cost lunch (does anybody remember the War on Poverty? apparently we stopped fighting that a LONG time ago), or that we cannot compete in the global economy or that transportation and energy are huge problems. (I could go on, but I'm pretty sure you guessed that already.) The big problem is people who may or may not like beer, or whose teenagers are pregnant.