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Politics? In THIS journal?
Feb. 24th, 2008 12:31 pmOh for fuck's sake Ralph.
You know I say that and then vaguely feel bad because part of the problem with politics in this country is not enough choices, so certainly viable third-party candidates are something that I can get behind. It's just that at this stage of the game Ralph, to me, comes across not so much as "Welcome voice of someone who hasn't bought into the obviously broken status quo" so much as "Political version of that person who sneers at everything that everyone does, up to and including the method by which we exchange oxygen for carbon dioxide, for the sheer reason that everyone does it and therefore by not doing it they are Hipper Than Thou, kinda like Christian on Project Runway only without the awesome wrestling diva persona. Unless Ralph has something he's not telling us."
Which is totally unfair as I don't think Ralph actually does hold himself up as being Hipper Than Thou, just that he comes off that way. For instance the way that he's announcing that he's running now, in the middle of shit-tons of news about Barak vs. Hillary, and how with the two of them we're finally seeing hints of a primary process that vaguely resembles the sort of thing it's supposed to be, and people are getting excited about politics and interested, and we get this announcement like a needle-scratch across the record. Like it comes off as not so much an announcement as an attempt to jump into the middle of things and try to claim credit for the excitement or at least a claim like, for this presidential race, he had anything to do with it.
And I realize that he's run before but, yanno, so has McCain. Not that John got his party's nomination like Nadar did but grabbing that nominatoin is just a leeetle harder in John's party. And John Edwards had the VP nomination last time and still had to start at the beginning and debate five billion times just like everyone else. So to me Ralph's announcement doesn't come off as "Yay, third party!" in terms of all the benefits for us as it is the benefits for him. Ergo the eye roll. Though it's possibly a knee-jerk Ralph eyeroll in and of itself. Like if Ross Perot decided to run again my knee-jerk reaction would be "Cool!" Not so much because I was a fan of Ross, but because my automatic association with him is of a third party candidate who made things interesting. Or if it was some random third-party person I'd never heard of before I'd say "Cool!" since, hey, random third-party person I've never heard of before. Who knows what they're bringing to the table? Could be interesting.
Anyway, those are my rambling thoughts. In other news, while I am not Hillary's biggest fan, I will admit to a tip of the hat for how her campaign is figuring out how to keep her name out there in spite of the fact that her campaign budget at this point is down to, I believe, a can of spam and a nickel. Mind you the whole OMG BARAK IS A LYING LIAR WHO LIES thing doesn't come off as "Astute political attack" so much as "Annoying whine to the teacher about how somebody forgot to shaaaaaare" but still: got her in the news. Made use of a good hot-button soundbite by trying to equate Barack with Karl Rove. Got her to bring up the debate concept again since those are yet another of the few ways she can get publicity in the race. Heck, I'm even amused at how she used his campaign materials as a way to make up for her lacking ones.
So my hat is geniunely off to whoever in her campaign came up with that. It's way better than, for instance, when John Kerry replied to the Swift Boat thing with... nothing, really. Which still boggles my mind. Sheesh.
Now to go dig my car out of the snow.
You know I say that and then vaguely feel bad because part of the problem with politics in this country is not enough choices, so certainly viable third-party candidates are something that I can get behind. It's just that at this stage of the game Ralph, to me, comes across not so much as "Welcome voice of someone who hasn't bought into the obviously broken status quo" so much as "Political version of that person who sneers at everything that everyone does, up to and including the method by which we exchange oxygen for carbon dioxide, for the sheer reason that everyone does it and therefore by not doing it they are Hipper Than Thou, kinda like Christian on Project Runway only without the awesome wrestling diva persona. Unless Ralph has something he's not telling us."
Which is totally unfair as I don't think Ralph actually does hold himself up as being Hipper Than Thou, just that he comes off that way. For instance the way that he's announcing that he's running now, in the middle of shit-tons of news about Barak vs. Hillary, and how with the two of them we're finally seeing hints of a primary process that vaguely resembles the sort of thing it's supposed to be, and people are getting excited about politics and interested, and we get this announcement like a needle-scratch across the record. Like it comes off as not so much an announcement as an attempt to jump into the middle of things and try to claim credit for the excitement or at least a claim like, for this presidential race, he had anything to do with it.
And I realize that he's run before but, yanno, so has McCain. Not that John got his party's nomination like Nadar did but grabbing that nominatoin is just a leeetle harder in John's party. And John Edwards had the VP nomination last time and still had to start at the beginning and debate five billion times just like everyone else. So to me Ralph's announcement doesn't come off as "Yay, third party!" in terms of all the benefits for us as it is the benefits for him. Ergo the eye roll. Though it's possibly a knee-jerk Ralph eyeroll in and of itself. Like if Ross Perot decided to run again my knee-jerk reaction would be "Cool!" Not so much because I was a fan of Ross, but because my automatic association with him is of a third party candidate who made things interesting. Or if it was some random third-party person I'd never heard of before I'd say "Cool!" since, hey, random third-party person I've never heard of before. Who knows what they're bringing to the table? Could be interesting.
Anyway, those are my rambling thoughts. In other news, while I am not Hillary's biggest fan, I will admit to a tip of the hat for how her campaign is figuring out how to keep her name out there in spite of the fact that her campaign budget at this point is down to, I believe, a can of spam and a nickel. Mind you the whole OMG BARAK IS A LYING LIAR WHO LIES thing doesn't come off as "Astute political attack" so much as "Annoying whine to the teacher about how somebody forgot to shaaaaaare" but still: got her in the news. Made use of a good hot-button soundbite by trying to equate Barack with Karl Rove. Got her to bring up the debate concept again since those are yet another of the few ways she can get publicity in the race. Heck, I'm even amused at how she used his campaign materials as a way to make up for her lacking ones.
So my hat is geniunely off to whoever in her campaign came up with that. It's way better than, for instance, when John Kerry replied to the Swift Boat thing with... nothing, really. Which still boggles my mind. Sheesh.
Now to go dig my car out of the snow.
