Politics

If You Don’t Vote You Can Still Complain

Politics / By

The next person who says, “If you don’t vote, you’ve got no right to complain,” gets an F- The semi-mythical D- is for an otherwise inoffensive, slack-jawed, glazed-eye, mouth breathing drooler whose bluebook chicken scratch scrawling is comically witless; that is, the student who did not do the reading or attend class, and has no clue about how to how to fake it. But the semi-mythical F- is for someone who inspires my wrath. And the next person who dares suggest that I or any other American has no right to critique the system and/or its participants because we did not participate in an election will feel my wrath. Today is Election Day, and of course there are many wonderful reasons to vote. If you have made up your mind about what you want, then you should absolutely vote. If you’re given to drawing the curtain and waiting for inspiration to strike, then you should get down there and vote. Even if you don’t give a damn about any of it but simply want to participate, as is your right, then go ahead and vote. If you’re just looking for a way to kill an hour, think it might make for good people watching, and give you a chance to play with the new touch screens, then fine!  Get your vote on! Jeez, if you’re only voting to impress the person you just started dating, who for some reason seems to care about this stuff, and you’re merely gonna pull random levers while you play games on your phone, then go for it.  I ain’t standing in your way.  Vote! But just as there are many reasons, some more admirable than other, as to why someone would and should vote, there are also many reasons of varying merit as to why someone would not vote and maybe shouldn’t. But not a single one of them nullifies their constitutional right to speak their mind.

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Tweedle Left and Tweedle Right

Politics / By

considered to be objectionable and hostile.  In a priceless bit of hypocrisy, he accused Gross of being “in attack mode.”  I mean really, this is like Lex Luthor bitching at Superman for being an egomaniac: yeah, sure, I guess, but how can you, of all people, possibly say this with a straight face?  But of course O’Reilly found Gross to be, in his words, chock “full of typical NPR liberal bias.” Just like O’Reilly’s filled to the gills with typical Fox News conservative bias.  Duh.

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Christine O’Donnell and Jimmy McMillan Walk Into A Bar

History, Politics / By

of her flying around town on a witch’s broomstick, or imagining her desperately trying to stave off the perils of masturbation. I mean the recently departed Robert Byrd’s saliva stained grandstanding aside, I really do want all of our senators to have a reasonable familiarity with the Constitution. I don’t think that’s raising the bar of expectation too high. And then there is the new folk hero, born of last night’s NY gubernatorial debate: Jimmy McMillan of The Rent Is Too Damn High Party. The major candidates in that race are the son of former Governor Mario Cuomo (will Americans ever stop voting for famous families, be they Roosevelts, Kennedys, Bushes or Clintons?) and O’Donnell’s fellow Tea Partier, Carl Paladino, who, and I’m not kidding here, left the stage early so he could take a wiz.

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The End of a Tether

Culture, Politics / By

In this article, author Malcolm Gladwell makes the point that online social networking facilitate them, Gladwell might be splitting hairs.   Of course the protesters at Greensboro did not have computers or cell phones to help generate national interest.  But their efforts certainly benefited from coverage in newspapers, radio, television, and of course word of mouth from good `ole rotary telephones.  People may not have been able to tweet, but they could certainly pick up the phone and dial, as annoyingly laborious as that might seem to people today.  In other words, social movements and communications technology are not the same thing, and though they might overlap and at times serve each other’s purpose, it’s important not to confuse them. At the end of the day Facebook, Twitter, blogs both micro and macro, IM’s and text

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