A recent news report on CNN — followed immediately by a television commercial — put our current state of affairs in bas-relief.  The news report headlined Eva Longoria and Clint Eastwood.  Reporters captured Longoria, the beautifully young and erudite Hispanic or Latina actor most famous for her role in Desperate Housewives, attending a fundraising event for President Obama.  In stark and almost desperate contrast, observers recapped the aging Eastwood endorsing Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican nominee.  After the news anchor took the viewers to break, up popped a commercial for Cisco touting a computerized robotic arm that fixes broken computer production lines at a factory with not a human worker in sight.  The producers of the commercial dispensed with all body parts – not even a face.  Only a voice accompanied the ad.  Intended to be innocuous, the voice instead must cause viewers to conclude unsettlingly that American manufacturers will need fewer and fewer workers in the future.

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