Afraid to look, Afraid not to..

I have been a news junkie most of my adult life, following along in a sort of bemused horror. I often wonder how things got to be headlines. Such as….

Lisa Marie Presley gives birth to twin girls (from CNN) or Brad Pitt Snaps Angelina Jolie Breastfeeding for …. (from Fox) Do I care? It wasn’t on CNN when I had babies. Women have babies and breastfeed them everyday. There are so many other things going on in the world, is this really news worthy?

I mean really? World markets are crashing, there’s a hurricane off the west coast of Mexico, US missiles have hit a town in Pakistan, THE ELECTION. But, hey Lisa Marie had twins, and shock of shocks, Angelina is breastfeeding.

I’m guessing Sarah Palin is not breastfeeding. Of course she might be, maybe that’s why she’s been sequestered from the press – she’s wearing a nursing bra. I mean, she was chosen to be VP for anatomical reasons, right? If her anatomy is leaking it might not go over well…

The election, yes, this is what is at the root of my clicking fears. Not the ridiculous nature of news stories (there have always been absurd news stories as headlines). But the US election has filled me with a new sort of horror. I am afraid to look at the news, but more afraid not to. So I make the circuit…NPR, CNN, ABC, Fox (one has to have balance), BBC News, The Guardian, The Washington Post, not to mention several political blogs, and my stomach churns. I find myself wondering about the long term effects of Ambien as I sneak in my insomnia to read headlines. I watched the debates and shuttered.

I was silent after the first presidential debate; I just tried to absorb it. The Biden/Palin debated I have already ranted about here. The second presidential debate made me angry. Too angry to vocalize. Yes, I’m voting for THAT ONE. I have been wallowing in anger ever since. But still I look. That one is a terrorist, no wait he just knows a man, was on a charitable board with a man associated with American terrorists during the Vietnam War. Said domestic terrorist is now a college professor – OH! I GET IT! He is now in the ranks of those over-educated people who want to ruin the country.

But people are buying into it. McCain is behind in the polls and his followers are an angry mob. He lit a match in the arid air and started a brush fire. Now people are openly shouting, “Kill him!” when they hear Obama’s name at rallies. And it took two days for the McCain/Palin campaign to respond – and they toned down the rhetoric on the one hand, “you don’t have to be afraid of Obama,” whilst on the other hand had a minister say “it would be insulting to God” if Obama won. McCain did assure one crowd that Obama was a decent man…after one supporter asserted that she was afraid because he was an Arab.

What? You are either decent or an Arab? Yes, he is a decent man – and ethnicity should not enter into it. Many people have suggested that McCain tried to diffuse the situation with his decent man comment – I don’t think so — a diffusing comment would have been… He’s an American, like you and me. Or, his ethnicity isn’t an issue, shouldn’t be an issue, we’re all Americans. But he did not choose the high road.

The Obama/Biden campaign has been mostly silent on the issue. But John Lewis did speak. And his comments were, in my opinion, on point:

“What I am seeing reminds me too much of another destructive period in American history. Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin are sowing the seeds of hatred and division, and there is no need for this hostility in our political discourse,” Lewis said in a statement.
“George Wallace never threw a bomb. He never fired a gun, but he created the climate and the conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans who were simply trying to exercise their constitutional rights. Because of this atmosphere of hate, four little girls were killed on Sunday morning when a church was bombed in Birmingham, Alabama,” wrote the Democrat. (CNN)

The Republican candidate was outraged. I guess the truth hurts. John McCain and Sarah Palin (who, the Alaskan legislative branch just decided abused her power) have stoked this fire…

I have lived in a nation filled with fear for too long. The current administration plays on the fears of the populace, often on the fears of the ignorant and at this point it is frighteningly obvious that John McCain and Sarah Palin intend to continue that tradition.

Twenty-three days and counting. George Bush has 100 days left in office. VOTE FOR CHANGE!!!!

Tags: Politics