The Justice

One cannot look through political opinion pages these days without finding some complaints about the early nature of the presidential primary season.

Yes, having half the country vote before the second week in February is a bit drastic, and sure, the race among states to make their primaries even earlier disenfranchised Democrats in Michigan and Florida, but the primaries have brought some much needed drama to television.

For the last 10 weeks, we've seen writers and actors protesting the big studios as the networks rolled out their final episodes of hit series.

Just around the end of the year, the networks seemed to have run out new episodes for their fall series. The NBC hit Heroes aired its second season finale in December after airing 11 episodes. Grey's Anatomy ended new episodes soon after the new year began.

And while late-night television shows have returned without writers and the perpetually perplexing ABC hit Lost returns this week, the primaries have provided the entertainment necessary to sustain TV audiences.

Americans need something more engrossing than anther season of The Biggest Loser, and presidential politics has delivered.

With the Jan. 3 Iowa caucus and the media's proclamation of the death of the Hillary Clinton campaign, the drama is finally back.

The next week, New Hampshire proved the pundits wrong, and this weekend's Nevada race further disproved the media's premature predictions.

Not content to declare candidates dead only to have voters resurrect them, the news media have continued to create drama among them. Last week, the media declared a "race war" between Democratic frontrunners Clinton and Barack Obama because of remarks Clinton made crediting the Civil Rights Act to President Lyndon Johnson as opposed to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr; Clinton's statement, while factually true, as Johnson did actually sign the act in 1965, was attacked by the media as a racial comment against Obama.

Aside from the media making mountains out of molehills on every comment made by the candidates, the media has even reported on Internet rumors about religion and race. Pundits like Chris Matthews make comments like these all the time; indeed, in every election cycle, the media overanalyzes every move, haircut and outfit of the candidates.

But this year, this is one of the only forms of entertainment on television. Lucky for us, the viewing public, the striking writers couldn't write anything as ridiculous as this race and the media's reporting of it. And that's actually a good thing.

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