I'd say that roughly speaking there are 4 kinds of people in this country when it comes to politics and current events (of course these are broad brush categories). There are the people who really don't pay any attention at all, and whose only real knowledge comes from passive absorption of random things that they happen to hear. There are the people who get all of their information from Limbaugh and the rest of the conservative media. There are the people who imagine that they're paying attention, and think that by listening to NPR and reading gullible idiots like Joe Klein they're "very informed." And then there are the readers of this blog who know what's really going on (joke).
It's the third category of people I worry most about how to reach. They're the ones who absorb and regurgitate Maureen Dowd's latest bon mot, or the latest bit of Washington "conventional wisdom," and think they're really on top of things. They aren't necessarily stupid people, they just haven't come to terms with the fact that the mainstream media is something to be treated with great skepticism.
