Saturday Morning Irony Blogging

I love irony.  And every once in a while, I encounter double or even triple irony.  Or maybe it's just ideas of reference. 

Right after I posted my last post, which was about the debate, I noticed that someone  had left a comment to the post just before the one I just posted:

Comments: I am not sure if I will watch it or just wait for all the spin doctors to tell me what was supposed to have been said.

# posted by Logtar : 10/8/2004 12:00:50 PM

And right after that, I went to CNet, one of the tech sites I go to when I've had it up to <gesture target="eyebrow"> here </gesture> with politics.  And what do I see, but an article about politics.  On a tech site! 

CLEVELAND--Determined to win the post-debate spin war on Tuesday night, the Bush campaign called on its supporters to flood the news media with quick declarations that Vice President Dick Cheney had come out ahead.

Ken Mehlman, Bush's campaign manager, delivered the request in an e-mail message to supporters early Tuesday morning.

"Immediately after the debate, visit online polls, chat rooms and discussion boards and make your voice heard," he said in the note, sent to the 6 million supporters on the campaign's e-mail list. "People's perceptions are shaped as much by their conversations around the water cooler as by the debates themselves."

The note--which is a mirror image of one sent out by the Democrats just before the first presidential debate last week--also exhorted supporters to follow up by writing letters to their local newspapers and by calling in to radio talk shows.

The instructions underscore the premium that both sides place on the post-debate scorekeeping by the news media, which the campaigns consider crucial to shaping perceptions and creating momentum in the final weeks of the race.

Such e-mail messages are just part of their arsenals for the post-debate spin wars: Top aides and party surrogates are sent to cable news programs; local party leaders are sent to news studios to do the same in swing states; and teams of researchers send dozens of messages to reporters covering the debates accusing the other candidate of flip-flops, misstatements or lies.

Logtar was being ironic, of course, when he stated  "I am not sure if I will watch it or just wait for all the spin doctors..." 

So what actually happened here?  I watch the debate, then sit down to post something about the debate.  While I was doing that, someone else posts on my site, pointing out -- with irony -- how ridiculous the spin machine is.  Then I get sick of politics, try to get away from it, and -- ironically -- run across an article about the political spin machine, saying that the spin machine wants people to do what I just did, on my site, and which someone else, also on my site, just criticized, ironically enough.