The Political Woes of a Superficial Society

Do we all realize that we are about to, again, go and vote for the person who hired the best PR firm to manage their campaign? You know, your candidate wasn't standing up on a stage in Iowa with his sleeves rolled up because he was hot or because he felt the look suited his fashion sense. He did it because his image consultant thought the look would go over better with blue collar workers and might boost him a couple of points higher in the polls.

I'm not just talking about our presidential candidates here. It can be said all of them at the federal level, as far as I can tell.

We don't vote for real people, we vote for avatars. What happens when a real person attempts to enter an important race? We're told that they're untrustworthy, dangerous and suspicious. They're outspent in the PR department and they're never given any serious attention. I think candidates like Ross Perot, Ron Paul and Ralph Nader would govern the country in a way that would better appeal to the vast majority of the country but those currently in power tell us not to do what's in our best interest. They assure us that their brand of untrustworthy-ness, dangerous-ness and suspicious-ness is better for us.

The media is partly to blame for this but so are we all. We somehow became a country that wanted to choose our president based on the whom we would most like to have a beer with. Personally, I don't want to know all the fuzzy details about a candidate. I may want to know how their childhood and school life may have affected their world view but I don't care in what region they went to school or what their first grade teacher's name was. That person is there to do a job, and my job--OUR JOB--is to make sure that they do it well. That means we need to look past all the superficial crap and view the issues, the facts and the data honestly and objectively. Somehow I feel that most of the country must be failing at this task.

Some people believe that Obama is a Muslim with no evidence of it and others don't believe that a Mormon is capable or qualified to run the country.

Can't we examine their records with a bit more scrutiny and more lucid analysis? They won't do it in most of the news media. Most of the news organizations are doing fine just the way things are. They make billions off the political ads the ratings spikes amid the hysteria of an impending election. This is a responsibility that we must take on ourselves.

Several years ago I got an e-mail from someone essentially praising the Republican Party for having the more attractive women. Photographed were Michele Bachman, Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin (I think) opposing Hillary Clinton, Janet Reno and Madeline Albright (as best I can recall). A similar youtube video seems to also have been created. Only in the world of politics could any of those women be considered attractive but I found the e-mail amusing because in my experience it has rarely been the case that the more attractive people I've known were the most intelligent or most well-informed.

But MSNBC seems to have gotten the same e-mail. Because, fast-forward to present day and you can turn on the news station and see some remarkably hot women all feisty and snarky and espousing progressive and liberal ideals. I don't know their names but there are a few. From what I have seen, the Republicans have not kept up in the hotness department. But does it really matter? Are we again going to be swayed by the ideals of the person or group of people who produce the most physically attractive television personalities and candidates and hire the best image consultants for them?

Of course attractive people can have good ideas too. I'm not saying they can't. But it is pretty clear that those with handsome physical attributes often get the most attention. You can point to the hideous Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly, etc. but remember, they're rich. And money is a great equalizer in our society.

This is something that we can't fix with legislation or even with education, really. We each have to look past the images that are presented to us and form our opinions with just the facts. But you won't get those from the TV news. It's going to take a bit more effort to dig them up.

We've all heard the saying that we "reap what we sow." Take a look at what we've been sowing and take a look at what we've been reaping. Is it perhaps time to make a change?

~R. Charan Pagan
information systems technologist, musician, writer, filmmaker
Los Angeles, CA 90017
http://www.reclaimingourbirthright.blogspot.com/