This Blog, or Why We Suck As Humans

Jud and I decided we need to pay some attention to this blog, which will probably mean keeping some things for this blog and taking it away from our other blogs.

It's like having a band and a solo career (Phil Collins comes to mind). What do you share? What do you offer to the other band members and what do you keep for your own albums?

Now onto the post:

Living in Iowa, you're constantly surrounded by all the shit going on with politics. You'd think I'd be trying to go see Chris Dodd every other weekend, but for some reason, it's just not that interesting.

I think that the media's hype over who's running for President is just that: the media's hype. Nothing is going on for the press these days. Even the Virginia Tech tragedy, the savior of the American press, has died down, with nearly no articles focussing on Cho Seung-Hui. Our attention spans are so damn short in this country that the press is constantly forced to move onto new things.

By comparison, Bill Clinton did not announce his intention to run for President until the Fall of 1991, nearly a year later than some people running this time around.

But why the announcements? Some of it is tied to money, certainly. It takes a lot of money to run for President now, and the earlier you start, the earlier you're building up your "war chest". Candidates are coming and going already based on whether or not they have the money to run for the office. Tom Vilsack, former Iowa governor, and a person I believe would have been a bad candidate due to his positions, dropped out due to money. I'm sure if you had more money despite polling poorly, he would have stayed in the race.

However, it's hard to compete with the big guns. Hillary Clinton in 2000, while running for her New York Senate seat, took more money from lobbies than her counterparts, placing her third behind the two guys running for President in 2000, Gore and Bush.

Back to the press point: Why am I not interested in all this political stuff literally swirling around my head? Part of it is that I am unable to go due to my job.

Part of it is that maybe it's too damn early.

And many people suggest the press is a reflection of American society. If people weren't reading about Paris Hilton, the press would stop reporting her. However, I believe this to be a myth perpatrated by those in the press (excluding our own Mr. Stacer, of course).

What I believe is really going on is the corporations that own media outlets are more in control than we would like to believe. Whether this started with Fox News, CNN, or whomever else, corporate ownership of our forth estate is turning them into centers for propoganda.

I think this is something Jon Stewart has touched on quite a bit: real media should be covering real news and not spending their time on the Hilton sisters, the Phil Spector trial, or any of a dozen other things.

These corporations are spoonfeeding us what they want us to read, and not the other way around. I believe it to be a distraction technique to keep us focussing on things that don't matter to anyone. I have heard more news this past week on Hilton's bitching about not going to jail than I have about Alberto Gonzales and his attempts to always be in the right.

Some news outlets are better than others. I believe Keith Olbermann is doing a fantastic job keeping his eye (and the eyes of his viewers) on the proverbial ball. The only shame is that no one really watches his show. People still prefer that loud mouth "Orally" to Olbermann.

I have no ending to this rant, so I take a small bow...