In a column entitled, “Despicable Us,” Frank Bruni asks his media colleagues to change the way they cover presidential elections, including giving less emphasis on Iowa and New Hampshire, paying less attention to spouses, and two more:
Don’t buy tickets to circus acts. When someone on the fringes of both the race and serious discourse says something clownish that’s a cry to be noticed, ignore it. This means quitting our addiction to Donald Trump, Sarah Palin and Rudy Giuliani, no matter how good they are for readership, ratings and belly laughs.
We are too often like the parents who attend only to the screeching 3-year-old, plying him with Gummi bears and Goldfish crackers, which simply reward and ratchet up his screams. Meanwhile the virtuous, unexcitable older sibling is ignored, until she wins the Michigan primary and leaves us no choice but a grudging, belated magazine cover.
Resist glorifying certain horses for the sake of having a horse race. Some are obviously bound, in the end, for the political glue factory. Remember Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain in 2012? Enough said.