For the last eight years, I have paid $9.83 per month for cable. Upon moving to Waco, Texas, back in 2000, I asked for the most basic cable package available. The customer service rep replied that this would cost me approximately $35 per month. I asked for something even more basic, at which point the official reluctantly volunteered that I could purchase a less-than-basic package for a monthly charge of $8.99.

For less than ten dollars per month, I get all the network affiliates, two PBS stations, two Spanish language stations, the TV Guide Channel, Waco public access, a local weather channel, TBS, and C-SPAN 1 & 2. This has been a great deal.

As a result of our entertainment deprivation, my family loves to travel and stay in hotels and wallow in the luxury of expanded cable. These intermittent excursions always reaffirm my sense that cable TV is of the devil--mostly because of my contempt for Cartoon Network and the Disney Channel.

On a quick trip across the Gulf Coast this summer, however, I experienced the malevolent power of the cable news media. My nine-year-old son, previously a John McCain booster (because of his views on the war), announced, after thirty minutes of watching CNN’s political coverage, that he could no longer support McCain and would switch to Barack Obama.

What explained the change of heart? Just good objective reporting, I guess.

Some Context: my nine-year-old is not a political junkie (like I was at that age), but he is still brighter and more knowledgeable concerning the mechanics of politics and history than most voters. But he was certainly impressionable enough to embrace the palpable political narrative hawked on CNN.

Another example.

After John McCain's classic concession speech, an infuriatingly large number of friends and colleagues observed that this was the McCain they had formerly admired--but had somehow gotten lost in the "Rovian makeover."

A very common statement: "if he had run his campaign like that, I might have supported him."

These Pavlovian responses revealed that none of these so-called educated Americans really bothered to watch the campaign. For most of them, I suspect, the concession was the first John McCain speech they had witnessed in full all season.

In truth, McCain was McCain in 2008. As someone who watched literally hours upon hours of raw footage of all four candidates on the stump (thank you, C-SPAN), I can tell you that the concession was thoroughly in keeping with the campaign. McCain is McCain. McCain was McCain. Love him or hate him, or fall somewhere in between, but the man has not changed one iota during my twenty years of watching him.

Why did so many voters perceive him so differently this season? Most of us understand the answer to that question all too well. McCain faced a stiff headwind in terms of the coverage he received--and he never really broke through all the partisan noise. What I think I heard people saying last week was that they had accepted a mainstream media template buttressed by a few seconds of McCain on the stump or a McCain campaign ad followed by a few minutes of talking head analysis reaffirming the Obama political line:

McCain went negative. McCain went racist. McCain went Karl Rove.

Balderdash. An honest reassessment of this campaign at some point in the future, of course, will reveal a much different story--but, then again, who will care?

Finally, a telling personal observation based on experience:

Confession: I actually cheated in re cable. During the last week of the campaign, I had the opportunity to watch massive amounts of cable news network coverage of the canvass. For the first time in my life I watched a full "Hannity and Colmes." I watched O'Riley. I watched Anderson Cooper. I also watched Keith Olberman, admittedly for only a few minutes at a time--Olberman is an excruciating experience for me.

Honestly, for the most part, I loved it. The sounds and sights. The intoxicating noise. The swirling graphics. The constantly changing television topography. My eyes were the size of saucers. For me, it was as addictive as chocolate candy.

But the weird and scary aspect of the experience comes in the detox. When I finally found my way back to C-SPAN, I was a bit bored. My cable news interlude had shredded my attention span. Ordinarily, I am excited to watch a stump speech from the introductions to the main speaker to the ritual handshaking afterward choreographed to a driving rock and roll beat. But it does not take long to lose the discipline necessary to watch a full campaign speech. It is much easier and quite tempting to get the entertainment news media Cliff's Notes and fake the rest.

This cotton candy system of delivering information is full of momentary exhilaration--but it is contributing to our rapid decline.

Cable TV is the devil--or, at the very least, the seductive song of the Sirens.

Strip down your cable to C-SPAN and save American democracy.