Undecided?

If you are one of the undecided voters, here's what David Sedaris has to say.

I look at these people and can’t quite believe that they exist. Are they professional actors? I wonder. Or are they simply laymen who want a lot of attention?

To put them in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. “Can I interest you in the chicken?” she asks. “Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?”

To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked.

I mean, really, what’s to be confused about?


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I have generally stayed away from the insanity of the election. What turns me off is stories like Sarah Palin spending $150,000 on her new wardrobe being given so much attention. The Democrats scream, "She calls herself a hockey-mom and then goes shopping at Neiman Marcus with a big fat check from the RNC." Yeah! So? Is this even really relevant?
One would expect that the someone who is running to be #2 to the most powerful job in the world, should at least be well-dressed, hockey-mom or not. As far as the ethics of the RNC paying for it goes, everybody is spending so much money on the boob-tube that this expense is peanuts compared to that. It's advertising by other means, no?

A few weeks ago, was Obama's association with a 'terrorist'. Then there are nonsensical totems such as 'Joe the Plumber' standing for Middle America. The strategists really know how to work words. Sadly, the media gladly laps up this stuff. Instead of stating that this is bogus distraction, they dwell on it more because it is a bogus distraction. They love angels-dancing-on-the-head-of-a-needle kind of stories.
Everyone claims to be taking the high road, and the chief among them are the media.

The coverage on CNN, a relatively less-biased channel, has not been about policy as much, as talking about winning and losing in the manner of discussing a sports team. Where is the talk of policy? the real investigations into the implication of Obama's or McCain's policies?

3 comments:

Raghu said...

I think the 24-hour news media's focus on these issues is just market-response (similar to McCain picking Palin for VP). People prefer watching such news items, hence it sells. It also explains why NPR, CSPAN and PBS don't have as big an audience as CNN, NBC, Fox etc. Its hard to watch hard news. This is not very different from people tuning in to "Kaun Banega Crorepati ?" instead of say "Mastermind".

hirak said...

To paraphrase Aaron Eckhardt's character in the movie Thank You for Smoking -
Everybody needs to pay the rent, mortgage.

Pessimistically speaking, isn't that what democracy really is? People don't get the best government, but the government they deserve.

Wavefunction said...

I am just waiting for the election to get over so that I can finally stop spending time on politics.