Monday, April 14, 2008

Mudslingers

Unfortunately, they're a part of politics.

The "they" I am referring to are the cheap and low politicians who find it easier to fire personal attacks at each other rather than focus on critical issues that affect their constituents. Sadly, however, the mudslinging has now gone beyond its conventional cheapskate boundaries and has started to overtake those few who once stood as a living rejection to "business as usual" in Washington. I willingly admit that I mentally cringe each time I see Barack Obama's name in the news for anything but great judgement, leadership or vision. More and more often, it seems, I'm seeing his name next to classic journalistic verb phrases like: "fires back," or "lashes out," or "slings mud."

Of course, he's not alone. Back when the race for the White House was nearly 20 people strong, the candidates couldn't bathe fast enough to keep themselves mud-free. And of course, as they dipped themselves back down into the soapy water, they'd huck a few mudballs themselves. Remember how ugly the Republican race was between Romney and, well...everyone? Mitt was the target of a number of blows. But, let's not feel sorry for the guy. It is an irrefutable fact that he was the first one to run a negative ad campaign in the days and weeks preceding the Iowa caucuses.

The bottom line is this: we don't want to hear about it. To hell with your petty debacles over who did drugs in high school, or who believes in the Book of Mormon. Is this solving the immigration crisis? The inevitable recession? How about the Iraq disaster? No? Well then shut up and get to work and forget about the pointless banter that is only swelling the already growing disconnect between the American people and their elected officials.

1 comment:

mike sweeney said...

Part of the problem is the structure of the news media and the news cycle that they must constantly feed. The media are good at covering the news of the day -- the drip, drip, drip of water torture associated with contrived conflict in politics. The media aren't good at making news out of ongoing issues that have no daily "news peg" to hang them on. Oh, what I would give for a journalist who felt it was worth investing time and effort into explaining the immigration issue fairly, in detail, and in an interesting manner designed to get people actually reading, watching, thinking and talking -- intelligently.