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Look at these 4 paragraphs from the article:
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Dean’s failure to understand the strength of "nuance" has cost him this campaign. Early on in the race, in fact, while sitting atop a nearly 20-point lead in New Hampshire, he had the nerve to dismiss Kerry as being "too nuanced." That was back when he probably still thought that the candidates and their supporters actually decided their own fate in America. He failed to understand the aerodynamics of politics in our current media climate. The candidate must have nothing on his person that creates drag, or he will not fly.
The candidate, in short, has to be prickless. This has nothing to do with whether or not he has an actual, functioning biological penis. Nothing about Howard Dean suggests that he’s packing a whale under there. It’s more about a compact the candidate must enter into with the political and media establishments. He must show that he can keep it in his pants. He must show that he understands that in the public sphere, there is only one big, swinging dick out there—the media itself. If he refuses to accept this, he inevitably suffers the same fate Howard Dean did: They will cut his balls off, stuff them in his mouth and send him staggering down Main Street for the amusement of the public.
Roundedness is an important concept to understand when one tries to address the nature of censorship in this country. Only in very rare cases is something actually prevented from appearing on tv or in the newspapers. The more important censorship is indirect and centered almost entirely around subtle differences in tone. You can get all kinds of things on television, but on balance, pretty much all content has to be rounded enough at the edges, unthreatening enough to the corporations ruling the airwaves, to serve competently in its only important role: a medium to sell advertising. Since the only real action that takes place on television is the sales pitch, it stands to reason that no other action of competing realness will ever be allowed on air.
That’s what this election is all about. The political establishment does not want any sexual competitors out there. The major party candidates exist as vehicles for furthering the status quo—just as programming exists to sell ads. I’m not sure what Dean’s crime was, since politically he was not all that different from the other candidates. It might have been that he opposed the war. It might have been that he subverted the party structure through his treasonous attempts to raise a war chest by appealing directly to the electorate. Whatever the specific offense was, the general offense was clear: He unzipped his little Vermont fly and wouldn’t zip it back up again.
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