to me how much we enjoy trashing our politicians. And I’m not saying denouncing them for bad policies, or railing against their choices, or even criticizing their thought processes. I mean trashing. I mean saying things about them that, while true, don’t have any real bearing on how they lead.
The most recent bit of this I was subjected to was this morning, hearing the radio talk show hosts talking about Sarah Palin being on “Dancing with the Stars” last night. Apparently the fact that she used the word awesome and amazing a couple of times in a interview were grounds to insult her intelligence. Heck even I chuckled a little bit, because as anyone who knows me can tell you, I also have a habit of using the word awesome quite a bit, and it occurred to me that yeah it does sound a little dumb.
But it’s not like Mrs. Palin is the only politician we do that to. She’s just the most popular right now. Pretty much anyone in the lime light gets the treatment, from George Bush’s inability to verbalize to Obama’s appearance. We just enjoy trashing our politicians, and in a lot of respects I think it’s healthy. To be fair each side enjoys trashing the other side’s people better, and also to be fair each side typically gets up in arms about the other side’s jabs, but that doesn’t mean we don’t both enjoy the game, and it also doesn’t mean that the game is necessarily a bad thing. It helps keep everyone on their toes at least.
No, the only problem I see is when people who don’t care about either side in particular start taking this stuff seriously. Like when the moderates start questioning policy decisions made by politicians based on the way they talk or how big their ears are. But think about it, how many snap decisions do you make about someone based solely on superficial evidence of their character? Now think in terms of a moderate: people who aren’t strongly opinionated enough to care about the government or how it is running. Now think about how they make their choices at the ballot box. Scared yet?
I always urge people to vote on here, but that’s usually because I assume that the people who read this thing are educated and passionate enough to have an opinion about how our government should be run, and will vote based on information about a candidate’s ability to lead and not on what particular trash talk exists about them. However, if you happen to be one of those people who choose a candidate because of their hair style or their choice of words in an impromptu interview then please, stay the hell away from the polls until you decide to grow up and actually participate in the system.
To everyone else, please keep making fun of politicians in silly ways, because as much as I like saying the word awesome, I also like a good chuckle now and then.
Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert should make fun of politicians.
CNN headline shows should not.
Exactly. It’s just unfortunate that so much of their audience don’t get information from anywhere else.