Yesterday, whilst my computer was out of commission, I decided to revisit an old past time of mine: television. And… nothing was on. I guess that why I stopped watching in the first place.
I decided to watch the New Hampshire debates, which were titled "1 Night, 2 Parties". I couldn't help but lawl every time I saw the title. I mean… honestly. Who thought that would be a good idea? I'm also glad to see I wasn't the only one who got it.
I tuned in about half an hour or so into the Republican debate but stopped watching about five minutes into the Democrat debate. I just couldn't stand it anymore. Politics, not as exciting as hoped.
Ron Paul. He's everywhere on Digg, and even moreso on Reddit. He is their saviour, the one they are all counting on to pull America out of these dark ages. And honestly? I didn't see what the big deal was. He didn't say anything for quite awhile, I noticed, and while staying out of arguments is probably a good idea, staying quiet is just not something totally expected of politicians. I did notice, however, that he was the first to answer the question about gas prices, while the others just sat there, waiting for someone else to do it.
I get the feeling that there's some resentment towards Mike Huckabee among the Diggers and Redditors. The largely non/un-religious population of the site doesn't take kindly to his holy ways. But I don't recall him ever saying anything about God, religion, whatever. I actually think Rudy Guliani was the only one I noticed who said something about that during the time I was watching, and I don't think I was offended by it.
Actually, Huckabee made one or two points I thought were quite good. I think one was about "not taxing innovation", which I thought made sense. Now, I don't work, I don't pay taxes, I don't understand that kind of stuff. But the principle makes sense. Right now it's "if you work, you pay us money" so people think "okay, then I shouldn't work".
I think it was just that part of me that doesn't like doing the "right", "expected" thing again, so I wound up subconsciously deciding I would like Huckabee better than Paul, just to be different.
But overall, there wasn't any particular candidate that I thought "yes. This guy person can do it" about. Speaking of that, at one point they showed a crowd shot where there were a ton of people with little Hillary signs and a few with big Ron Paul signs. But I noticed that the voices chanted "Hil-la-ry! Hil-la-ry!" were rather high-pitched. And gasp, were they all girls? And in a clip they showed of Hillary shaking babies and kissing hands and whatnot, it appeared to be all girls around her, supporting her. Which is exactly what I figured it would be, and which exactly sucks.
Women are going to vote for her because she's a woman. Black people are going to vote for Obama because he's black. Whoa whoa there, not all people make their decision based on these facts, you say. And it's true, but I'm sure some people do. And some people will vote against them purely based on their differences. It's just the facts.
Disregarding all the reasons why it would never happen, I would love to be the president, prime minister, etc etc. But then I think, no — because no one would see me for what I do, they would see me as being a woman, and that's all.
But then I think, well, if no woman becomes president, then even in 500 years if we have the first female POTUS, it'll still be "she's a woman". Time won't change anything. We need a few women to go first and be the women, and then some time in the distant distant future, we can have some women who can be just plain old people. You know?
January 9, 2008 at 1:07 PM
I was thinking about that subject the other day, how minorities in any format are almost considered gimmicks. People tend not to really consider minorities seriously, or at least tend to refer to them based just off that.
For instance, at my work a coworker told me (I was in the staff room) that an "black guy" needed some help at the photo lab. Seconds later when I got there, it made me think: why refer to him as being black. It's a fact, yes, but would if he were white would you have said there's a white guy outside to see me? No.
It happened again but with an "Asian guy". However, how the hell did the coworker know this man every step foot in Asia? What if he lived in Norway all his life… and so did his parents… and his parent's parents. Aside from the physicalities (the distinctive eyes) no one knew anything about this man.
We are a strange folk.