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| Sexier (and scheme-ier) than you think he is? |
by Andy Nowicki
Partisan politics are invariably poisonous. Indeed, boosterism breeds an ever-expansive propensity to a pernicious myopia. The more passionate one becomes in advocating for a particular candidate, the less that advocate is able to see, or care about, the truth; instead, such a one reflexively comes to believe, and just as reflexively to argue for, whichever “version” of the truth is most conducive to the likely success of one’s own candidate, and/or most presumably detrimental to the prospects of that candidate’s rivals.
But more is occluded than the fundamental ability, or willingness, to tease out fact, and conscientiously distinguish it from falsity. Another casualty of partisan punditry—whether carried out by the highest-paid, forever-flacking news television flunky or the merest envelope-licking volunteer—is a consequent inattention to subtlety. An enthusiastically compulsive partisan simply reacts to an event, rather than actually chewing it over; as a result, he frequently misses both the short-term truth of the matter and the long-term takeaway.
A case-in-point of this phenomenon is the reaction of partisans of various stripes to a recent National Enquirer piece, alleging that Presidential aspirant Ted Cruz is a serial adulterer.
