Again we enter the climax of another election season. And, yet again, I stay entirely apolitical about it. I have to. There's no way I can take sides in it...partially because I have no belief in either of them and partially because, well, I DON'T KNOW EXACTLY WHAT THEY STAND FOR!
Let's think back to 1984...the last election I vividly remember (well, I vaguely remember 1980, but all I remember is Reagan delivering a beating most men couldn't withstand, and Carter withstood nothing). No, 1984 was easy: Reagan stood for Republican American commie-fighting goodness while Mondale stood for evil taxation...and Reagan delivered another solid beating.
1988: Reagan's quiet veep vs. a tank-riding weenie. I think we all foresaw 4 great years of Saturday Night Live with Dana Carvey as Bush...nuff said.
1992: Bush vs. Clinton vs (at times) Perot. Frankly, I was prepared to vote for Perot until he dropped out unexpectedly. Carvey was leaving SNL soon, and by 1992 the comedy was long over.
1996: Clinton vs. well, a major Republican jackhole. Clinton was doing well, it was a solid decision.
2000: I'm still troubled by this one. I feel that we'd be in a different place if Gore (who I voted for) had been declared winner. It'd be nice to imagine no 9/11, but that's no certainty It'd be nice to imagine the economic prosperity would have continued a bit longer. OK...I'll move on before sounding too much like John Lennon.
2004: OK, I'll admit it, I voted for Kerry, and that may have been a mistake. I just knew I didn't want 4 more years of Cliff Barnes in office, but that's what we got anyway. I thinik this is when I felt things were murky: evil or a lesser evil. I thought I chose a lesser evil and I'm not sure that was the case (and we never will)
2008: Murkier now: in many ways a repeat of 1988, but now it was a choice of a continuation of politics we didn't like or the tank-driving weenie. For some reason I chose the guy in the tank (Otis the Drunk from Andy Griffith would have been the better tank guy choice, though).
And now we come to 2012 and I don't know what to think. Today I went to get the mail and we were bombarded with political ads, and they often canceled each other out. Example: we have Shelley Berekely running for dog catcher...that or Senator from Nevada, there's not much difference. One ad shows her in a positive, take-charge stance and the anti-Berkeley ad makes her look like a werewolf with hemmerhoids! It's the bad marketing that clouds what these people are REALLY about.
I mean, I could see myself running for office, say, Galactic Overlord in charge of Velcro distribution. All of the positive ads would have me standing proud, looking straight at the camera with a smile and Burger King Whopper juice dripping down my chin to show my patriotism, and the negative ad would be some shot of me that my daughter Natalie took of me while I was sitting on the crapper, making me out to be an agent of the Dark Side...with hemmerhoids! I could have shown the universe that Velcro is the glue that binds us and the galaxy together, but the shot of me "concentrating" would cloud my whole campaign.
So, tomorrow (or today which is the most likely), when you vote, try to look past all the ads, marketing and other gimmicks that cloud the issues...and get me and Berkeley some Preparation H if you're at the store!
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