Spoke with friends in Miami. The "riot' was more a matter of creative television work than a riot. Not, I'll add, a liberal bias to steal the election, but the small group of protestors who were the most boisterous made better TV than the majority who were just picketing.

I miss the connection between the protestors and Limbaugh. My understanding was that the local Republican Party organized the protest and the media did what they do best, found something interesting to show on TV. Limbaugh used that to as another example to "prove" a liberal bias in the Media. Just as he intimated that Jackson was trying to cause a riot. Should I gather that the riot happened and the press covered it up?

Jackson fed the conspiracy theory fans, claiming that a series of events (bad in and of themselves) were part of a deliberate pattern of racial discrimination. Along the same vein as the election statistics thread. Deliberately provocative in the same post hoc ergo propter hoc way Limbaugh is so fond of.

Limbaugh and Jackson (and a lot of others) portray themselves in a sort of "more in sadness than anger" mold and then do their best to keep the pot stirred up. I make a distinction between unconscious and deliberate insincerity and see both Jackson and Limbaugh firmly in the latter camp: manipulative and hypocritical. There are those on both sides who are sincere. The Limbaughs and Jacksons drown them out. Both feel it is their duty to motivate and mobilize the faithful. Or save us from ourselves, perhaps. Both are the first to deny any responsibility for any negative events since they were just "expressing an opinion". They are both demagogues. That one or the other supports a view I may agree with doesn't make them any less dangerous. They manage to make the discussion about them, rather than the issues and makes a more moderate and rational response difficult. The bad money driving out the good, so to speak.

For various reasons, Florida didn't do much to fix a voting system they knew was flawed. The firm picked to validate the voter registration lists had already demonstrated its lack of credibility in other states. Blaming Katherine Harris is silly. The firm was picked by a fairly rigid procurement system. Where blame lies is that when the problems surfaced (and the State was notified) they did nothing. A Republican conspiracy?. Or the State following the letter of the law that it's the job of the local Supervisor of Elections to validate the names on a purge list. Because that's the way the people of Florida have wanted it for years. Local control. If Harris had tried to step in, the howl would have bene heard in London. And the struck down by the Florida courts.

Into these events Jackson read a racial conspiracy because so many blacks were on the list. Ignoring the sad fact that blacks make up a significant portion of felons in this country. Limbaugh saw it as a bunch of felons and (though never said but implied) low income blacks who wanted special treatment, wanted the law not to apply to them. So one demagogue plays off the other and the result is that the problem of people who should have been able to vote couldn't and those who shouldn't have did. No great conspiracy, just an inept system that never assumed an election would be close enough to matter. And solving the problem gets sidetracked into soothing the demagogues.

Regards John.