Some reality may lurk deep within those shallow stories

I admit it. I am a harrumpher. I wring my hands and knit my brow when stupid nonsense degrades and dumbs down the culture.

Initially I joined my brethren -- harrumph! -- while reading the pageant of personal stories about the presidential candidates. John Edwards' pricey haircuts? Fred Thompson's "trophy wife"? The dresses Rudy Giuliani wore in two comic sketches a decade ago? Don't we have anything better to talk about?

Apparently not. On July 20, The Washington Post analyzed the hint of cleavage Hillary Clinton showed while speaking to Congress. And July 22, a New York Times article on "campaign chic" discussed John McCain's "so-called gay sweater."

Double harrumph!

But then I got off my high horse. I tried to move past that condemnation and consider why such stories command attention. I came to a paradoxical conclusion: They reflect the changing nature of politics and news while they also serve as an antidote to that dynamic.

Begin with TV, which has transformed American politics since that first Kennedy-Nixon debate in 1960. In addition to placing a premium on visual charisma -- people who watched the debate thought Kennedy won, people who listened to it on radio gave the nod to Nixon -- TV has engendered a sound bite culture.

Monday's CNN/YouTube debate among the Democratic candidates was typical. The aspirants were given minutes to explain where they stand on complex issues. Their well-honed answers, recited dozens of times on the stump and in previous "debates," barely skimmed the surface.

It's true that the candidates have issued detailed policy papers on the war in Iraq, health care reform, global warming, taxes and other pressing issues. The vast majority of Americans, however, never read those papers.

In his new book, "Post-Broadcast Democracy," Markus Prior of Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School estimates that fewer than a fifth of Americans pay close attention to the news. Many of them get their information from show-biz sources, such as Bill O'Reilly and Jon Stewart, who turn news into entertainment.

Is it any wonder, then, that even prestigious news organizations -- including The New York Times and The Washington Post -- are mixing in flashier stories about the candidates' clothing and cleavage with more sober articles detailing policy positions? Confronted with candidates who rarely say anything surprising and a public with little appetite for hard news, they hope these sexy stories will draw in readers. As a result, politicians become celebrities, routinely compared to rock stars and often covered as such.

Harrumphers who blame the media for these personal stories are shooting the messengers. The media are not creating the demand; they are satisfying it. People want to feel a connection with the candidate whose mug they'll have to look at constantly for four to eight years.

Part of this change can be traced to the increasing influence of women since the 1960s. It is no coincidence that the past four decades have seen a focus on personal issues in political life. Indeed, a study published this month in the journal Science found that women like to discuss emotions while men tend to talk about things. Still, a researcher at England's University of Leicester found last month that men are just as interested in gossip as women are.

We might hope that voters would be more serious-minded. But fluffy stories about the presidential candidates actually provide a public service by raising questions of character that candidates fail to address in their policy papers and campaign sound bites. In pithy, evocative images -- haircut, dress, wife, sweater, breast -- they crystallize the concerns of some voters.