Alright – so Barack Obama won just like everyone thought that he would. No surprise there. Also, the Democrats took the large majorities that everyone thought they would in both the House and the Senate. No surprises there, either. Congratulations to Barack Obama for winning the election – it was a long contest that, thank God, is now over.
Speaking of the long contest, here are some of my thoughts about the election now that it is over.
The Campaign was Too Long!
America is exhausted. I know that Obama ran as a reformer and a healer, but the best thing that could ever happen to this country is the election being over! Campaigns and candidates have become too partisan. Americans need to reject politicians who begin their Presidential campaigns YEARS in advance of the election. We can’t take this amount of bullshit for this amount of time. The election of 2008 will go down in the history books for a variety of reasons, but as long as I continue to teach American government, I will teach students about the negative effects of an 18 to 24 month Presidential campaign.
Fix the F*&$^% Voting System Already
How in God’s name can we have a two year Presidential campaign AND be eight years out from the 2000 debacle and NOT have a better voting system yet? How is it that college campuses can manage to run their entire operations via secure databases, yet we can’t run local elections on similar systems? Some colleges use an online voting system that absolutely cannot be cracked for stupid elections like Homecoming King and Queen. And we can’t figure out a local, regional, and/or national system for harnessing the power of the internet in our voting? Give me a break.
Sarah Palin Destroyed by the Media
Once again – as long as I continue to teach American government to college students, I will be sure to talk about how vile the media coverage was of Senator Hillary Clinton and Governor Sarah Palin. The bias in the media when covering these two women is that worst type of bias – the type where neither the media nor the public even recognize it on its face. For example, how can you ask a female candidate how she’ll be able to raise her children if she’s elected? What type of bullshit is that?! Not one reporter asked that question to Barack Obama, John McCain, or Joe Biden. And the whole flap about Sarah Palin’s $150,000 wardrobe (which wasn’t really hers) was just about as biased and outlandish as you can get.
What is the best part about the media’s bias against women? For me, it’s the fact that Palin will likely run for the Republican Presidential nomination at some point in the near future and (depending on who she runs against) she’s likely to win it. And you know what happens next? Well, let’s just say that I think a Palin Presidential ticket has a better chance to succeed than a McCain Presidential ticket ever had – and you see how many votes McCain got this time around. Same story for Hillary, too. Take THAT biased media!
More on the Media – In the Tank for Obama
The right wing has been beating up the New York Times and MSNBC (among others) for being what they call “in the tank” for the Obama campaign. Guess what? The right wing is correct on this issue. The way that biased commentators like Chris Matthews and Keith Olberman swooned over Obama during a time when they were supposed to be unbiased newscasters (Democratic National Convention coverage) was horrible. Yes, Barack Obama won the election, but did you know that there were newspapers and magazines that called the election in his favor as early as November 1st? America’s print and broadcast media are dead. Thank God for the internet.
The New York Times commented on the vast ideological differences between the FOX News Channel and MSNBC on Sunday. And to that biased paper’s credit, they included the following paragraph:
But within that universe, the study found, the share of positive reports on Mr. McCain at Fox News was above the average of the news media at large, and the share of negative reports about Mr. Obama was higher, too. (The study found that the mix of positive and negative was roughly equal for them on Fox.)
That paragraph deserves more than the quick drive-by that author gives it. In fact this is a study by the Pew Research Center and – to further prove how the New York Times is biased and FOX News reports the facts – I’m going to use a blurb from a FOX News online article to help explain Pew’s results:
The independent Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism looked at coverage in the six weeks following the conventions through the final debate and found on FOX News 40 percent of stories on John McCain were negative, while 40 percent of stories on Obama were also negative.
In contrast, on MSNBC the study found that 73 percent of stories on McCain were negative while Obama received just 14 percent negative coverage on that channel.
Why didn’t the New York Times article cite those numbers specifically? I give them credit for briefly mentioning the results, but when FOX News gives an equal percentage of time to negative stories for each candidate, can you really trust the New York Times when they call this, “the share of positive reports on Mr. McCain at Fox News was above the average?” Above the average? So in the New York Times’ mind if you’re not consistently bashing McCain and the Republicans, you’re “above the average?”
Once again – America’s print and broadcast media are dead.
Those are some preliminary post-election thoughts. Let me know if you have any ideas!
