Buzz Off

Before a single vote is cast, the media like to tell us who the presidential party nominees will be. They focus on the top two or three in each party and then pretty much ignore the rest, or treat them as curiosities by granting them an occassional Sunday morning interview while saving the real discussion and debate for other candidates. So this means that Hilary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards are the only candidates the media really take seriously. On the Republican side, the "they're going to win" buzz has been limited basically to either Rudolph Giuliani or Mitt Romney as the nominees-elect. It's kind of annoying.

I can't imagine that Harry "I didn't go to college" Truman would ever excite much buzz among the media.

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In its most recent issue, Entertainment Weekly devotes two pages to the Oscar contenders this year, before many of these films are even released and before any widespread viewing of these supposedly Oscar-worthy performances. How do they arrive at these conclusions? I can only surmise that they do it based on publicist hype and cocktail party buzz. Silly. Maybe this is why less-well-known actors who deliver sterling performances in smaller movies (and who have "lesser" publicists) often fail to gain recognition or nomination?

How is this for an idea: Let's save the media Oscar buzz for after people actually see the films and the performances.