n a t b s

I’m sick of the way pollsters and news people talk about the electorate. They’re always talking about “the white vote” or “the black vote” or “the female vote” or “the whatever vote.” To me, it seems somewhat absurd and insulting. They look at how poor white people voted in Texas, for example, and then they look at how poor white people voted in PA and they say “politician A is losing the white vote.” My point? Maybe two people in two different states have different opinions even if they’re the same race! No, that couldn’t be it, because they’re poor and white, so they must all think the same. And also, their poorness and their whiteness are the only personal traits that inform their choices apparently.

It’s ridiculous, and it’s prejudiced. The news media, and politicians, view us purely based on whatever superficial group we’re apart of. I thought we were supposed to be judging people based on the content of their character, not on their demographic group. I’m not a statistician, or a sociologist, so I’ll ask: is there any evidence of a correlation between voting choices of demographic groups in one region and demographic groups in another? Sure you could say “Obama has been getting 90% of the black vote so there’s your proof right there.” But that’s too easy, and I think a little skewed. I can see how the first viable black candidate in a country founded on racism and slavery is very appealing to African Americans, and so this is a unique circumstance.

It just seems to me that referring to all white (or whatever) people as “the white vote”
is troublesome and probably misleading. There are so many factors that determine peoples’ decisions that to call it the white vote, as if someone’s whiteness was the only quality that mattered, seems morally and practically wrong to me. Perhaps it explains why these pundits can’t predict anything.

Doesn’t this method also have the problem of overlapping groups? If you’re talking about the white vote, and the educated vote, and the poor vote, and the urban vote, etc, there’s going to be a lot of people who fall into several of those categories. So maybe when Obama does something to appeal to “the white vote” that same action might alienate him from “the urban vote” but what if there’s a white urban person?! Did he gain that person’s vote or lose it? Gah! It’s so confusing! Though I guess they need fodder for their endless chatter, right? Poor news people, they have so much time to fill, we can’t expect them to also be accurate and not-racist.

When they talk about “the anything vote” it just rubs me the wrong way. And it also seems like it’s probably the wrong way to analyze the situation. And it also defines people based solely on their race, sex, or class. I thought we were supposed to be passed that in this country.

BTW: I’m a young educated white male who lives in an urban area. The young, male, educated, and urban parts of me want to vote for Obama, but the white part of me wants to vote for McCain. No part of me wants to vote for Hillary (not even the part that used to intern for her). In the end Obama got my vote. After all, 4/5 of me wanted to vote for him.

What was with that debate last night? I thought CNN was bad, but wow ABC takes the cake for most terrible news network (Fox isn’t a news network). Or at least worst debate moderation ever. Right off the bat they asked Obama about the bitter remark. After beating that one into the ground for ten minutes, they brought up Rev. Wright. Aren’t we past that one already? But ABC had a new take on it: “do you think Reverend Wright loves America as much as you do?”[nyt] What, the fuck, is that? That’s not really an answerable question. How does George Stephanopoilous even pretend he’s a journalist? Other “important” issues ABC raised:

• Why doesn’t Obama wear a flag pin?
• Is he friends with William Ayers of the Weather Underground?
• Why they want to raise taxes when clearly that hurts everything

They were really adamant that raising the capital gains tax is clearly bad for the country. I didn’t think the news was supposed to take that kind of partisan position. And what do a bunch of out of work factory workers in PA care about the capital gains tax anyway?

In the second half there were more policy questions, but I found they were often given in an antagonistic tone. Overall I’d say it was 60/40 worthless-gossip questions to real policy questions. Terrible ratio, more than half that debate was worthless and stupid. The candidates should stick to holding their own rallies and q&a sessions. Or what if prominent Democrats moderated the Democratic debate? They would probably be less dickish to their colleagues. I’d like to close this with something Obama said in the debate:

What the American people want are not distractions. They want to figure out, how are we actually going to deliver on health care; how are we going to deliver better jobs for people; how are we going to improve their incomes; how are we going to send them to college?[nyt]

I’ve hated CNN for a while. Wolf Blitzer especially pisses me off. So last night I found another example of them being retarded. The violence in Iraq was a pretty big story yesterday. The type of thing that was the main headline in a lot of places. And this was CNN’s front page:

Obviously “Barista Donates kidney to ailing customer” is more important than “U.S. staff warned as Iraq violence spreads.” It seems like they had this barista story on retainer just waiting for a news day when the needed a distraction. It’s not exactly the type of story that “breaks.” It’s the type of story that’s meant for a slow news day, not a day with a really obvious piece of major news.

What’s with the mainstream media hardly reporting on Iraq? It’s total bullshit. They’re not doing their jobs. They weren’t doing their jobs five years ago either, and that’s how we got into this mess. And because they’re not doing their jobs now, 48% of Americans think this debacle is going well. That’s just about the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.

The fucking media is seriously screwing us. I don’t get why people take these “news networks” seriously. They’re so childish and stupid and corrupt. Has anyone ever seen Network? It’s a movie made in the 70′s that was very prescient. You see, back then the news divisions of TV networks typically didn’t make money. The networks thought of it as a public service, and the reporters thought of themselves as journalists. And this movie was about a fictional future where the news media started trying to make a profit and thus descended in to a bunch of blowhards yelling at each other all day. So yeah, pretty good prediction.

Wow, you’ve got to see these clips. Fox and Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade got so mad at the obsessing over the “typical white person” remark that he walked off the set. And then later Chris Wallace stood up for Obama and scolded he fellow Foxians. Is this evidence that Obama is starting to be successful at changing this country’s moronic discourse?

If Obama can make some of the people on Fox, dare I say it, think reasonably like that, then he can do anything.