I know, it's a dumb question. In fact, it would be a struggle to think of a more irrelevant and mind-numbing question to ask related to the presidential election.

But it's currently plastered on the front page of the WSJ online.

We're engaged in two wars, the economy may be on the verge of a recession, oil prices are breaking records, the Department of Justice is breaking laws, the healthcare system is broken, there's a global food crisis, and more Americans think the country is on the wrong track than at any other point in history. And with all of these incredibly relevant issues to choose from, the Wall Street Journal decides to dedicate 1,400 words to analyzing whether or not "in a nation in which 66% of the voting-age population is overweight and 32% is obese," Obama's skinniness could be a liability.

Amy Chozick was actually paid to find quotes like, "I won't vote for any beanpole guy," which she pulled from a Yahoo politics message board. This is what passes for journalism today?

To be fair to the Wall Street Journal, few other publications have actually covered the issues in the last few weeks. Somehow we've managed to make Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, and Ludacris the focus of one of the most important elections in years.

Though the blame lies in part with the politicians at the center of this maddening popularity contest, that is expected to a certain degree. It's the media's eagerness to sensationalize and dumb-down that is the most disappointing.

Perhaps it is because I just watched Good Night, and Good Luck last night that I'm feeling particularly cynical and eager for November to arrive, but there's a line that Edward R. Murrow spoke in 1958 that seems particularly prescient today:

Our history will be what we make it. And if there are any historians about fifty or a hundred years from now, and there should be preserved the kinescopes for one week of all three networks, they will there find recorded in black and white, or color, evidence of decadence, escapism and insulation from the realities of the world in which we live.

As he would say, "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves."

UPDATE: Wow. Apparently the author's investigative journalism technique included going to Yahoo Message Boards and starting a thread asking:

Does anyone out there think Barack Obama is too thin to be president? Anyone having a hard time relating to him and his “no excess body fat”? Please let me know. Thanks!

The response that she followed up with and eventually whittled down to the "I won't vote for any beanpole guy," was:

Yes I think He is to skinny to be President.Hillary has a potbelly and chuckybutt I'd of Voted for Her.I won't vote for any beanpole guy.

The messages have apparently been deleted but you can still find a Google cache copy.