Obama to test the post-jobs-speech atmosphere in Richmond

So, now it seems Richmond will become a postscript for the made-for-TV brouhaha to do with Pres. Barack Obama’s speech about jobs, now scheduled to be delivered on Thursday at 7 p.m. According to the Washington Post, the president will then be coming to Richmond on Friday (with the details about where and when to follow).

We know this because of a “White House official speaking on condition of anonymity” planted the story and the Post accepted it. No comment is being offered at this time about the use of anonymous sources.

Furthermore, at this writing we’re still having to guess what Rep. Eric Cantor will have to say about Obama’s speech or his visit to Richmond. But it's a given Cantor will find not a whit of good in whatever the president has to say on Thursday or Friday.

The above mentioned brouhaha has been about the scheduling of the speech, which will be delivered before a joint session of Congress. In happier times the tedious sort of wrangling over when a president ought to speak to Congress would have been played out behind closed doors. Normally, neither side would have seen any good in exposing the back-and-forth of such negotiations to public scrutiny.

Well, either we don’t live in normal times, or there’s an ugly new normal. Because it seems that in 2011 the most important aspect of anything that happens in DeeCee is how it can be packaged to put the other side in a bad light. Forget about solving problems, the postmodern mission is to tar the enemy.

As far as the tale of the timing of Obama’s jobs address has gone, the stridently partisan are all aglow about having made their opposites look petty, once again. Apparently, even when it stains both parties, perhaps equally, that‘s OK. As long as derision is being heaped on the enemy, self-inflicted collateral damage can be shrugged off by the professional campaign experts.

So, the unholy alliance between the hired-gun PR flacks of both parties and the mainstream media has force-fed another story down our throats. Once again these propagandists and their accomplices have justified their existence.

Then it's on to the next popularity polls. On to the tortured spin about what those poll numbers mean. On to Richmond.