Watching even a few seconds of the television coverage of the RNC has a horrible effect on me; like that woman who had seizures at the sound of Mary Hart's voice; I experience a Tourette's-like response whenever I click over to CNN, usually just in time to catch whichever of Rove's lieutenant's is currently on tap (tonight it was Karen Hughes) to swing at the meatballs Wolf Blitzer and crew endlessly offer up. For the sake of domestic harmony, I have been resisting the temptation to watch-n-shriek.

Interestingly, what causes me bile to boil most frequently is not the stuff of the speeches, but the lie-filled chatter offered up by Hughes and other "high-level advisors" when they are tapped to serve as one half of a network's balancing act. And it's strange that this is now S.O.P. The practice of relying on these sanctioned interpreters of the party lines (quite literally) in the cases of convention coverage is now something you can count on -- and when you think about it, it's one of the more mystifying choices made by the networks.

Considering that what emanates from the stage (true in Boston as now in New York) is now so relentlessly choreographed, it is depressingly baffling to watch the news organizations actively participating in the scripting of the pageant. Why are these individuals and organizations -- who have, one presumes, some desire to be journalists -- so ready to become mere conduits for the embodied press releases of the two parties? Is it because of the cynical calculation that only the partisans are watching, and therefore they will be most pleased by a representative of their team always at hand for the yakfest? Or is it simply that it's the path of least resistance -- why pay reporters and political commentators to find out what's really going on (and or analyze it -- an oft derided practice that I confess to finding interesting) when one can achieve all the "balance" required by trotting out a couple of well-known partisans (who appear, of course, for free) to repeat the contentions we've already heard?

The television media have, throughout this campaign, lived up to stereotype by proving over and over again how little institutional curiosity they have, how little taste for reporting, and how resolute a focus on entertainment they possess. The lexical media (the word "print" would seem to exclude the Web) have been a good bit more willing to challenge the candidates on substance, and to talk about something other than the horserace. But on television, there's simply no sign that the proper questions to ask might not be "How will this play with the voters in swing states?" but "Is there any truth to that statement?" or "Doesn that contradict his earlier statement?" or -- especially or -- "That statement doesn't really mean anything at all, does it, Wolf?"

At any rate, I'll stop complaining for a moment to offer praise for the best read in the lexical media -- William Saletan of Slate. He's a self-described liberal Republican (scroll down to his earliest entry), a hawk whose been sharply critical of Kerry but more critical of Bush, the candidate he supported in 2000. Moreover, it's not his views I respect but the fact that his "Ballot Box" column and blog-ish dispatches from the conventions have taken the task of argument and interrogation of the candidates seriously.

Of course, after reading this Louis Menand piece about various theories of why people vote the way they vote, you may decide that it doesn't matter much anyway.