Frogs for Snakes

The New York Times is suggesting that local TV and radio stations will get a huge boost in ad revenue following the Surpreme Court’s striking down federal regulations on campaign spending by corporations.

While you may not be able to quite buy an election, you can come pretty close, and the mosteffective technique you can buy is “attack ads”– aggressively negative advertising of a candidates failings, or shortcomings.

Attack ads breed voter cynicism, reduce voter turnout, and contribute to the kind of political polarization that has rendered California ungovernable and given us the town-hall meeting hatred of 2009.

So a likely by-product of the Supreme Court action (it’s more than a decision, seems to me) that we can add to decreasing relevance of political parties and small donors is increasing polrization and the hatred it spawns. So we’re looking forward to a fun election season.