Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Things I am over

1. The New Yorker's Obama cover. I have no problem with the cover, but I am over the world's overreaction to it.

2. National and American League All-Star jerseys. These are an utterly blah invention of recent vintage, expressly designed for the sole purpose of selling yet more merchandise to a fatuous public. I was over them the first time I saw them.

The players still wear them in the Home Run Derby, but at least baseball has gone back to letting each player wear his regular team's jersey in the All-Star Game itself. The varied uniforms on the field have long been one of the coolest things about the All-Star Game, as baseball temporarily forgot but has now happily remembered.

And on a related note:

3. Ever-changing sports team jerseys, colors and logos. See above in re "expressly designed for the sole purpose of selling yet more merchandise to a fatuous public." Over them.

It's bad enough that the players change teams and cities so often they also need their last names on their street clothes. At least leave the uniforms the same so they're recognizable to the casual fan. In my day... never mind.

4. The electoral college. I am so over this vestige of our agrarian past. Battleground states? Pshaw. Every voter should have a battleground vote.

Candidates for national office should conduct national campaigns. They should make their case for the presidency directly to the people of all 50 states, not 12.

Every vote should matter and count the same. Whoever gets the most votes should win. Isn't that the definition of an election?

5. "President" Bush. Neither I nor the country or world is close to over the massive hemorrhage of statesmanship that has been the Bush II presidency. Nor am I over the fact that every day this idiot remains in the White House is an affront to all Americans regardless of their political views. But him personally? Over him. Next.

6. The endless election season. If only it were just a season. It's been dragging on for what feels like eleven years. Over it. Can we have the election tomorrow?

We've known the names of both presumptive nominees for a month now. With their radically divergent worldviews, the average thinking adult should have little trouble deciding between them. Anyone still undecided should wake up, open a newspaper and make up their mind.

As my friend Goldie said, "Basically, I'm checking out until election day. Voting for Obama. And then hopefully checking out again." Hard to feel differently at this point.

7. The election process circa 2008. The need to amass a huge war chest two years before the election; the states' leapfrogging each other to ever-earlier caucus and primary dates; Super-Duper Tuesday, whose pernicious effects cannot be absolved by a cute nickname.

Enough already. The system badly needs an overhaul.

8. Bloggers. Angry loudmouths who rant about sports and politics on their websites as if anyone else cares. Over them.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

re 4, 6, 8: the combination of these electoral maladies - an antiquated, irrelevant system warped by modern wealth and scientific rules-skirting - is sort of like the deadly confluence in the civil war of napoleonic battleground tactics and the state-of-the-art rifled musket. the system AND the campaign rules should be overhauled together so that the whole process makes sense. where's the instant runoff?

what's worse is when you consider how many actual voters all this time and money is courting. weed out those who need to see only a D, R, or skin color to make their decision. weed out those who actually did some reading about the issues, and made their decision long ago on that basis. weed out those in states that reliably vote a certain way. who the hell is left? people in about 3 swing states AND are undecided AND influenced primarily by what the major news outlets market as issues (i.e. sound bites, flaps, "-gates," gaffes, etc.) that are not much more than advertisements to feed their own 24-hour marketing cycle. how many people is this?

the electoral college was supposed to prevent tyranny of the majority, but now it's all in the hands of a few mouth-breathers on the ohio-pennsylvania border.