Howard Dean: A Man Adrift   Ý
Copyright 2004 by William Meisheid (2-02-04)

Howard Dean wants to be president of the United States. However, his recent reaction to the flap over Janet Jackson's "exposure" at the Super Bowl half-time show shows his moral failure and demonstrates as well as anything his unsuitability to the office he seeks.

According to Reuters, on Monday Dean "dismissed as 'silly' a government inquiry into whether indecency rules were broken during the broadcast of the Super Bowl halftime show when pop diva Janet Jackson's bodice was ripped to expose her right breast. 'I find that to be a bit of a flap about nothing,' the former Vermont governor said. 'I'm probably affected in some ways by the fact that I'm a doctor, so it's not exactly an unusual phenomenon for me.'" In a classic "missing the point of it all" Dean cannot relate to the fundamental difference in context and argues that "However, considering what's on television these days, I think the FCC is being pretty silly about investigating this."

A man who would be president but cannot see the difference between controlled debauchery, such as that on everyday display on MTV within the limits of its cable channel and the same debauchery in the middle of dinner time on the public broadcast of the world's preeminent sports event is seriously lacking in plain common sense as well as moral understanding and propriety.

Candidate Dean has crossed a number of lines during his campaign and it has caused him to fall in the polls and lose in Iowa and New Hampshire, but this may be the final line that destroys his candidacy. By taking the position that Americans could inadvertently turn on "far worse things" while "cruising through cable at regular viewing hours," and admitting that "I don't find it terribly shocking relative to some of the things you can find on standard cable television," he has openly demonstrated his inability to understand what anyone with basic common sense could see, that this is fundamentally different.