And perhaps the networks could have questioned the wisdom of airing the ads, in their entirety, in the first place. Here’s another instance, after all, in which the existence of a provocative image—in this case, two entire ads’ worth of them—fuels a news item’s Storyhood (see “Wright, Jeremiah” and, more recently, “Pointer, Three-“). The ads are easy air-fillers, convenient for news producers and reporters alike. And they’re particularly convenient, of course, for campaigns.

Indeed, when political strategists discuss their campaigns’ reliance on “free media,” they’re not talking about the First Amendment. “Political campaigns have for years sought to broadcast their ads free by making them intriguing enough to draw wide coverage from news outlets,” The New York Times’s Jim Rutenberg pointed out yesterday. “And Mr. McCain’s campaign,” he continued,,

has proved particularly adept at getting such free air time in recent weeks, as news stations endlessly repeat the advertisements, which feature provocative visuals that can fill time during a relative lull in the campaign season.

Rutenberg pegged that observation to his discussion of McCain’s now-infamous Landstuhl ad, which—erroneously, as we now know—accuses Obama of canceling his visit to wounded troops when he learned he couldn’t bring cameras along with him. But the analysis applies just as well, if not even better, to—dare we dub it?—“Toxic”-Gate. When news organizations devote air time to inane, substance-free campaign ads, they’re not only playing directly into the campaigns’ hands; they’re also, to some extent, taking the election out of the voters’. For my money, Keith Olbermann, discussing the Cause “Celeb” on last night’s Countdown, had it right. The title he gave the segment? “Ad nauseam.”

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