Like that tangled mess of Christmas lights still framing the neighbors’ house come late January, the moment is long past due to pull the plug on America’s overplayed and largely phony red-state, blue-state melodrama. There were plenty of tall tales told by the big media in 2004, from the Swift Boat boys to CBS-gate, but the idea that “moral values” — whatever the hell that really means — was the overwhelming reason that voters reelected President Bush, may take the grand prize. (Not least because the right-wing wasted no time in wrapping its long-time agenda in the blaring colors of the “values” hysteria.)

There’s a good chance you haven’t heard about it, but a recent nationwide poll of voters published by Gallup last week — and all but ignored by the big media — showed that “values” actually came in a distant fourth

The big media’s "moral values" myth