With the advent of cable television and a steady proliferation of channels  competition intensifies to fill time slots and garner higher ratings.

The tragedy of the heavy swing toward the high tech television era is that the kind of comprehensive analysis needed of issues becomes lost in a world of half minute sound bites.  The tragedy is all the graver when major federal, state, and local elections are decided on this pattern.

The arrival of Scott Brown on the Massachusetts scene, taking advantage of a political opponent devoid of new era campaign skills, harkens back to an image of a telegenic candidate whose political career reeked ultimate economic disaster from which America has never recovered.

Scott Brown is a telegenic candidate and so was Ronald Reagan.  The movie and television actor was 55 when he was elected governor of California in 1966.  Scott Brown was elected to the U.S. Senate from Massachusetts at the age of 50.