So true.

Politicians don’t value the actual impact of speech, only the political impact of it. That’s, of course, why they, if you’ll excuse the term, lie and contradict themselves without any real compulsion — no sense of guilt at all.

It’s not, “Was what I said consistent with reality and my values?” It’s, “Was what I said politically viable, functional? Did it work?”

It’s also why they can say, of an opponent or an opponent’s position, “It’s Armageddon, the end of our country, the sky will fall, our women will be raped and our children will be enslaved!” and then become surprise that someone acts as if what they said was fact. Because they, of course, knew they were making political statements, not the same as actual observations. And political statements don’t count.

Of course, then there’s the question: do they, themselves, believe what they say?

This falls into what my friends at the ad agency might call breathing your own exhaust. Look at black and call it white long enough and it does begin to look a bit whitish to you.

So now the politician can add “sincerity” to his or her defense. You can see it in their eyes, “I didn’t really mean to actually assault someone, I siiiiincerely didn’t.”

To be fair, all of the above applies well beyond the political world. But, in these days right after the passage of healthcare legislation, it seems particularly applicable.

Stop. Breath. Think. Please.

I watch a lot of television, always have.

I remember — I think I was in seventh grade — when we rented a furnished house in Des Moines for a year, and it had a TV. At that point there was one station that originated at Iowa State, in Ames. It was on the air from about 6 am to midnight. Still, I was fascinated.

Like most viewers these days, I seldom just turn on the TV and let it run. I can choose and change channels, and I do. And yes, me too, I’m often online when the TV is on.

But, we’ve been on vacation this week and enjoying, maybe most of all, the wonderful freedom to rise when we want, go when we want and not go when we want — it’s been so refreshingly liberating to be totally free of demands.

One part of that has been switching on the Today Show out of NYC to catch morning news and then just letting it run while we’re rising slowly and hanging out. And it’s just incredible to me how empty it is. “Sound and fury signifying nothing.” The basic rules seem to be: lean forward, smile, don’t breath, don’t stop, keep the energy up so no notices how mindless it all is.

Turn on your TV some morning and look for one human being or one human interchange and you won’t find it. I know that’s not news, but it’s shocking to me how exhausting it is.

When I first got into advertising, I was invited to be on a panel at the local University’s Journalism Department's alumnae meeting. I was asked because I was a recent, mid-life career changer. The other three panel members were local TV personalities. It amazed me the speed at which they responded to questions — no-dead-air had become their normal way of life. They were “on” whether they had anything to say or not. In fact, the content was unimportant, only the “bright” presentation.

Save me, please.

Cant — there’s a great old word.

Although I’m a news junky, I go through periods of absolute, total overload, when I’ve simply had enough, especially of the constant breathlessness of news people and the mindless repetition of political comment.

I’m in one of those periods right now. (I’m not blogging very much.) I still check in with my favorites from time to time, but I’m skimming rather than reading.

Have noticed, you don’t have to read much to get what’s going on?

I was thinking about this yesterday. I was reading David Brooks in the New York Times who, by the way, usually makes an attempt to say something thoughtful. In his column “Getting Obama Right” — I liked his description of the situation — he was talking about “information cocoons,” those media/comment locations where true believers, right or left, can go and live full time in their own reality.

Now, I’m as normal as anyone else; I really enjoy writers who are smart enough to agree with me.

But when skimming, I’ve developed a practice that saves time. It’s sort of a language filter I call rant-dar. Most of the time it takes only a few phrases to notice that all Christians are stupid or Obama is a fascist and then you know you’re in for more ya-da, ya-da, ya-da.

So I scan a sentence or two and when I spot the mindless party line, either right or left, I just quit reading.

It works pretty well. Sometimes it even helps you find some thought — though not always because, in the scramble to fill hours of airtime and the Internet palaver, there’s not a ton of fresh thought out there. It’s pretty much the same mindless cant passed around like overripe fruit.

Cant. Now there’s a great old word. I checked the dictionary. It says: insincere, especially conventional expressions of enthusiasm for high ideals, goodness or piety.

Wow, that captures a lot our political and media landscape.