Wednesday blog -
I hate to do something so completely predictable as a post-election blog or darken what I think was actually an extremely important night that caused me to wake with an unusually quirky sense of hope by complaining...but here we are.
Yes, I voted. Yes, it felt great.
Not in the usual doing-my-civic-duty way, but the much better feeling of actually liking one of the choices I was being presented with enough to feel like this process actually includes me for once instead of being something I have to try and make the best of.
Election day makes me want to go out and vote and then go home to hide.
All the crazies get ALL their crazy out that day in one last fervent push and I want none of it. I hate being told who to vote for (what a great way to celebrate one of our greatest freedoms, by telling someone else what to do with theirs) a little more than I hate being asked by strangers who I did vote for.
I like to tell myself that it actually ends on election night but seeing postings from people I know saying things like Obama being elected was 'the death of American values' reminds me that's not the case. And it reminds me why I don't discuss politics with crazy people that just repeat things they hear on the TV.
I found myself in front of the Tivo with only a couple glimpses at the early returns stoking the nagging feeling of anxious hope (and more than a little 'C'mon Democrats, don't fuck this up now! There's still time! If any party could still find a way, it would be you clowns!!) that I haven't felt in many many years and the wife and I managed to check in on the Comedy Central coverage just in time to hear John Stewart announce that already, at 11pm Eastern Time, Barack Obama was the next president of the United States.....and I couldn't be completely sure it wasn't a joke.
I am happy at the outcome. I was really happy with McCain's speech even though it made me miss the McCain that I thought was running - the one that has apparently been hidden away in a secret bunker since the beginning of the campaign and was only let out to be told he lost it. Poor guy.
Barack's speech was well done, well delivered, touching, human and yet still big enough to fit the historic occasion.
Here comes my big complaint.
Between the race being called and the speech every news outlet went to ridiculously obvious lengths to trot out any black reporter, pundit or correspondent they could find to get choked up on camera to milk so 'look how poignantly we covered how black people feel about this election' angle until it bled.
Not only is it crass, it's crass for no reason whatsoever.
you don't NEED to add any drama to what is already an incredibly dramatic and important event - it's already something Aaron Sorkin wishes he could've penned!
But that was really my only big problem all along this whole process: the media
You're already deciding who will hold the highest office in the country and arguably the world (as John Stewart put it, "If you do well at this job there's a chance they could carve your head into a mountain!") YOU DON'T NEED TO SEX IT UP!! They've been hooked up to this gravy train of newer and more expensive ways to display bar graphs and mindlessly repeat campaign rhetoric and manufacture headlines (like reporting anytime Obama and Hillary brushed up against one another at a press junket salad bar as if one of them had actually gone John Hinkley on the other and opened fire with an Uzi........man, Hinkley needed an Uzi......anyway.) for way too long.
Like I said at the top, I hate to cloud the issue with my gripes and I am genuinely excited for something new and positive in our government. And an end to the ads. But mostly for what comes next.
Good job, America.
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