From WNYC in New York, this is NPR's On the Media.

I'm Brooke Gladstone.

And I'm Bob Garfield.

For our question of the day, late-night punchline, has Howard Dean become a joke?

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A question at MSNBC.com.

You can vote online and you can see the results.

If there's any lesson we take away from Iowa, it's that the media love a winner and love to hate a loser.

And according to National Journal Media Critic Bill Powers, the theatrical coverage of the rise and

fall of candidates follows the same predictable stages as celebrity tales of triumph over adversity.

He calls it the Hollywood Washington paradigm and says it was at work

during the caucus coverage. This is the classic downfall of the star. This happens with Hollywood

stars, too, where they're risen up to this sort of level of perfection. And then something happens.

In the case of Hollywood stars, it would be often in their personal lives or it would be a flop, a movie flop. In the case of Hollywood stars, it would be often in their personal lives or

it would be a flop, a movie flop. In the case of these politicians, it's, of course, a result at the polls.

So this happened obviously with Dean. We had this long run-up of adulatory coverage. And of course,

you know, there were people asking questions along the way, too, and exceptions. But the general

tenor of it was,

this is the man, you know, this guy's on fire. And the perfect result, once that reaches a certain level, is at the last minute for there to be a kind of a plot reversal, as there isn't any good

screenplay. And there's this incredible drama, and we even had that wonderful added bonus of the

strange Dean Howl,

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