Is Political Twitter Ruining All Our Inside Jokes?

“In elections past, the sort of stuff reporters joke about — Joe Biden telling a Virginia rally it could win North Carolina; Mitt Romney admiring clouds — might have ended up in pool reports, seen and appreciated only by other journalists. The Internet gives the campaign press ways to publicize the weird details that otherwise might not make it into print. The behind-the-curtain material that makes The Boys on the Bus and Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72 so readable is now more often than not shared with the world in real time. But in those books, weird details generally served a better understanding of a candidate’s character; on Twitter, they reduce a candidate to his stupidest moments for a quick laugh. And at a certain point (let’s say that point was when Time released photos of Paul Ryan dressed like Poochie, the ‘cool dog’ character from the ‘Simpsons’) the ‘Mystery Science Theater 3000’ routine subsumed the other part of campaign coverage, where you explain the state of the race and the issues involved to normal people.”