Red sky at morning, Lieberman take warning

I've been following the Lieberman/Lamont contest because the anti-incumbency angle, among other features of the business, resonates beyond the Connecticut borders.

But I have to say, this is just silly:

Does the new Joe Lieberman ad depict a sunrise or a sunset? On Tuesday Lieberman launched an ad depicting the sun low in the sky over an orange-tinted ocean as a female narrator says softly: "Joe Lieberman thought you might enjoy a break from Ned Lamont's negative attacks." Yesterday the Lamont campaign asked: "Is the sunset in Joe's new ad a fitting metaphor for the end of his Senate career?" But Lieberman aide Dan Gerstein fired back that the ad depicted a "sunrise." So which is it?

The fact that Lamont supporters (or Lieberman detractors--there's not a 100% overlap in the two groups) spent time actually tracking that image down suggests that the collaborative fact-checking capacity of the blogworld, however healthy overall, nevertheless has its practical upper limits. Clearly, there's at least something to the rumors that there are bloggers out there with way too much unstructured free time.

But the fact that Team Lieberman is now in the position of having to insist that they really do so know in which direction the sun rises is a very bad sign. In fact, that's the differential (as they'd say on House, MD) for a campaign that has seriously lost its focus on the big picture.

Is a picture of the sun near the horizon a sunrise or a sunset? (If you really feel the need to judge this for yourself, you can see the ad here.) The story reminds me of the incident of the stolen box of raisins on "Seinfeld:" Even if the Lieberman camp did pass a Santa Barbara sunset off as a Connecticut sunrise--does it really matter enough to lie about it?

It also brings to mind a track from David Frye's classic "I Am the President" album (although the joke itself probably goes back at least to vaudeville):

["Toastmaster General" George Jessel has been brought to the White House to prep President Nixon before he meets Prime Minister Golda Meir:]

JESSEL: Mr. President, the Hebrew word for "hello" is "shalom."

NIXON: And the word for "goodbye"?

JESSEL: The Hebrew word for goodbye is "shalom."

NIXON: Well, how do you know if you said "hello" or "goodbye"?

JESSEL: If she leaves after you say it, you said "goodbye."

In Lieberman's case, the smart move would simply have been to laugh it off (as the Adorable One does in this recent example). How hard would it have been to say: "Guys, guys, let's all get a grip here--it's just stock footage we used to make a point in an ad. It's not the freakin' Zapruder film. You guys do know that George Washington didn't actually chop down a cherry tree, don't you?"

But for whatever reason, the Lieberman campaign hasn't been the poster child for smart moves this electoral season. Opening "Sunrise, Sunset" out of town is just the latest example. Let's move on.