Caterwauling

Watched Lewis Black’s new show “The Root of all Evil.” It was Oprah vs. the Catholic Church, and you could text your votes. I voted for (against?) Oprah, mostly for her Obama endorsement. 😉 (Just kidding — I’m actually still ticked at her for giving us Dr. Phil!)

I’ve been wanting to blog about today’s Geraldine Ferraro comment, but I can’t really claim to know what her intent was, so anything I can say is speculation. But Michael Steele made an interesting point today in support of her, that if she can’t express her opinion, well, it’s the backlash that’s suggesting racism is still alive and, unfortunately, well in this country.

She made a stupid comment. No arguments there. I was going “WTF?” when I heard it. I thought I heard on CNN that she said she herself wouldn’t have been picked to run with Mondale if she were male, but I could be making that up.

In any event, in my heart of hearts, I wonder whether we’re all turning this election into (hopefully) a better outcome of the last one — four long years ago, the whole “vote for anybody but Bush” theme was rampant. Few voters were in favor of John Kerry (although I was); more were anti-Bush than pro-Kerry.

And in this election, are we voting against the Bush legacy more than we are supporting any one Democratic candidate? Just in general discussions with folks, I get the feeling that some are voting based on one’s longer career of public service and others are voting the other way because of that same person’s career (i.e., is “anyone but Clinton” the post-modern “anyone but Bush”?).

Don’t take this as bashing the other guy — I’ve been supporting my candidate faithfully (donations and all) but not wasting my energy on coming up with reasons to dislike the competition. I’ve tried hard to NOT pay attention to the politics of the campaign and try to focus on what my candidate stands for. The things I feel passionate about, and the things I am personally struggling with, are why I voted the way I did — not what one did or didn’t say at a particular juncture on the campaign trail.

Many of my friends — smart, educated people whose judgment I trust — are in favor of Obama. But when I ask some of them what swayed them, the thing I’ve heard most frequently is that they are skeptical of having another Clinton era — I keep hearing words like crooks and liars and scandal and other words that don’t go much beyond four letters. 😉

Which, I get. I really do. I just have yet to hear someone have the first thing out of their mouth be, “This is why Obama would totally rock socks. …” Because, hey, if he gets the nomination, I will likely vote for him … although I must admit that the best argument I can come up with right now is, “Because he’s not McCain.” (However this all ends up, though, I’ll be studying the finalists closely before voting. Even if my candidate gets the nomination.)

Someone made a joke to me awhile back that has never left my mind because I didn’t have a comeback. I was saying that I was bummed that Hillary didn’t win some primary or another and the response was that she would have a good job as the janitor of Obama’s Cabinet.

And I thought to myself, wow, if I had said a similar comment about Obama, that would have been taken in such a way to suggest something incorrect about me.

And in that, Michael Steele may have a point — if we’re afraid of being offensive through simple discourse, then we really haven’t made much progress, have we?

Which is why I will stick to arguing about who should be the the next “American Idol” and leave the political correctness arguments to the rest of this capital city. Anyone else voting for a Carly Smithson/David Cook finale ticket? 🙂

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 12th, 2008 at 11:01 PM and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.