NP: John Cage, 4'33

I think the Letterman backlash fits in nicely with this idea I brought up a week or two ago that McCain may have misjudged or misplayed the impact of mass culture on his candidacy, particularly in the context of their ongoing war with the news media.

If you take away the mainstream media, and you take away mass culture, all you've really got left is the partisan media on your side. It's almost the Rove "play to the base" strategy on steroids in that regard.

I do wonder if McCain has painted himself into a vacuum, where he thinks that's all he needs. The corollary to that is that the GOP seems to have completely bought into all their stereotypes and caricatures of Barack Obama and his campaign, to the point where they can't cope with any real-world refutation of those caricatures. Going back to Rove, it may be the "they have their math, I have the math" delusion of the 2006 midterms writ large.

UPDATE: Aaron Barnhart weighs in on the subject from Kansas City. I think this is the same guy who used to run the Late Show News e-mail newsletter way back before the World Wide Web.