What You Really Want

It's easy to blame the media for all that is wrong with campaign coverage in the 21st century, and I'm not shy about doing that.

But what if the problem is . . . you?

That's right. What if people are actually gorging on the silly and salacious stuff that they tell pollsters they don't want in their media diet?

But how could we know if that was the case? Hmmm. Let me think!

Aha! How about their online searches? The purest expression of their inner id, their secret curiosity, their lust for certain knowledge?

I didn't come up with this idea but was struck by what Slate dug up in examining the online behavior of the masses. And let me just say, they're not looking for details on eligibility for SCHIP:

" Wives matter: People want to get to know Elizabeth Kucinich. When you type 'dennis kucinich' into Google Suggest, you learn that more people are searching for 'dennis kucinich wife' than 'dennis kucinich for president.' What do they want to know about her? According to the suggestion results for her name, people are looking for 'pictures,' 'photos,' 'age,' 'hot,' and 'tongue.' (It's pierced.) The Republican field has a woman of choice, too: Three of the top 10 search queries after 'fred thompson' are wife-related. The query 'joe biden wife,' however, doesn't appear until the candidate's 10th result. Ouch.

" Dirty minds: Among Hillary Clinton's most popular searches is 'hillary clinton cleavage'--no doubt fueled by all the hard-hitting reporting on the subject. Of course, that's innocent compared with Rudy's most popular associations: Search for 'Rudy Giuliani' and three of the top 10 suggested queries are related to cross-dressing. Other results provide a glimpse into America's fantasies: If you type in 'obama,' three of the top 10 results are some variation on 'obama girl.' And why else would 'mitt romney larry craig' be such a popular search?

" God is great: Everyone knows Mitt Romney's religion: As expected, people are searching for 'mitt romney mormon.' But they're also curious--and mistaken, it seems--about Obama's beliefs. Type his name, and you see that 'barack obama muslim' and 'barack obama religion' are the second and fourth most-popular queries, respectively. Enter 'barack hussein' into the search field and up pops 'barack hussein obama a muslim wants to be our president.'

" Soft spots: Some search suggestions point out a candidate's weaknesses. 'John McCain age' is up there, as is 'john edwards house' and 'john edwards suv.' Joe Biden's search slate is pretty clean, save for the seventh suggestion, 'joe biden plagiarism.' It's a sad commentary on Chris Dodd's campaign that one of the most common Dodd queries is 'chris dodd fly,' which takes you to a video of the senator debating with a bug on his head."

Now how did I miss that?

So if the Googlers are peering at Elizabeth Kucinich's tongue and Hillary Clinton's chest, is that the fault of the MSM? Could it be argued that journalists put these subjects into play, thereby triggering the searches? In Hillary's case, maybe--it was The Washington Post's fashion writer who started it--but have news organizations devoted much coverage at all to Kucinich's red-haired wife? That must be viral.