Against the cold, scientific glow of an unlikely, biology-inspired observation, I wonder, is this what we have been reduced to?

A New York Times/CBS News poll conducted from Friday to Tuesday- right in the thick of the latest Jeremiah Wright flap- indicates that only 51% of Democrats believe Obama will win his party’s nomination, down from 69% just a month ago.

As I have watched the second Wright controversy unfurl its stench in the licentious fertility of the mainstream media rainforest, I can’t help but think of a blossoming Amorphophalus titanum- a.k.a. the corpse flower.

“First you need to understand how the flower reproduces. The flower tries to mimic a rotting corpse so that it can attract sweat flies, which lay their eggs in rotting flesh,” says a BBC article.

It “wafts out this fragrance that attracts basically any insect that would be attracted to a rotting animal carcass,” an expert says in another article. The flower is a novelty. When it blooms in captivity, despite the horrid smell, people flock from all over to gawk at the spectacle of a plant that must lure bottom feeders so that it may dupe the pea-brained insects into pollinating its own, soon-to-be dead carcass.

Each media cycle in this presidential primary feels more and more like the very same repugnant reproductive ritual. A firestorm rears its head, wafting its putrid stench into the election media coverage extravaganza, attracting all of the shit-eaters on the false pretense of sustenance. Everything dies, however, only to resurrect itself a few feet away and repeat.

Daniel Henninger of the Wall Street Journal astutely wonders why, in the midst of “Barack Obama’s darkest hour, not one prominent ally came forward to support him.

“Indeed, it is possible that the old and honorable notion of ’standing with’ a candidate like Obama simply didn’t occur to his famous supporters this week. Everyone has become used to watching celebrity stars and athletes take it in the neck on their own. Even someone running for the nation’s presidency looks like just another personal crack-up,” Henninger says with aplomb.

While it’s tempting to say that the media are the flies being attracted to the smell of the rotting corpse the Obama campaign supposedly became when Wright started mean-mugging all over cable news networks, Henninger rightly assigns the role to you and I. The incident itself is simply life unfolding. The media takes hold and emanates the alluring smell of death. We take the bait, pollinate, and perpetuate.

The reality TV boon of this decade has had an undeniable effect on the way we perceive reality. We have been woefully conditioned to believe that scripted conflict between contestants chosen by casting directors occurs as naturally as the Earth’s rotation. Everything is neatly packaged so we can base our entire judgment on what a few people decide are the 30 or 60 best minutes of cutthroat TV, chosen from hours and hours of footage that contain the real depth.

Add to that our national obsession with placing celebrities on impossibly grandiose pedestals only to jostle their foothold and watch them fall as we hold them to the utmost of societal standards.   Standards that we conveniently choose to ignore on a daily basis because somehow, only being in the public eye mandates strict adherence.  Ruthless armchair generals, are we all.

How else could one explain the phenomenon of a man captivating enough to fill the idealism void of a cynical, 21st century, war-entangled, recession-headed America on his own merits only to have that perception shattered by the uneven words of someone else?  Last I checked, Jeremiah Wright was not running for president.  But wow, does that guy make great TV!

Taking Hennington’s argument one step further, we have placidly accepted the media-packaged agenda of the Bush Administration over the past eight years, allowing an extreme ideological shift in public discourse. Meanwhile, the presidential race is reduced to an American Idol facsimile: a few talking heads tell us what to think and how to vote and if one of those innocent little contestants happens to step outside the pre-constructed mold we have been fed, we gawk at the trainwreck before reveling in their public implosion.

Should this cycle be allowed to repeat itself through August, we don’t just squander the momentum the Democratic party had going into Super Tuesday. Far worse, we sink a viable alternative to the same hackneyed programming schedule we have endured for 16 years and in the process, relegate ourselves to the role of flies clamoring for the dead body of a hope we yearn for but lack the wherewithal to realize was never there.