It is 5PM on election night and I want to see the early results.
I try tuning in to my local PBS channel KCET (at least it used to be PBS). I see some guy with a British accent doing a really bad job of pointing to a map. I’m not in the mood to listen to a British accent right now. This is the election of the President of the Unites States of America. Give me a Latino accent or a black man or a black women or a Midwestern white truck driver. Anything but a British accent. I turn the channel.
Now it’s channel 4 NBC News. Millionaire Brian Williams is talking at me now. He’s so suave.
Out of the gate I’m in a bad mood because the red neck ignorant white folks in Kentucky and Mississippi and a bunch of the red neck states have already voted in mass numbers for Romney. What else is new. Invade a continent, kill the Indians, believe in God, kill 2 million Vietnamese, support the insane “war on drugs” that killed 30,000 Mexicans last year, and now vote for Romey. And I, a liberal, care about these people? Why? I should become a me-first Republican like them and just be an idiot like them. Then I too wouldn’t know enough to care about the dismantling of every program put in place since FDR to help people.
I turn back to PBS. Now I see a black man talking to me from a bar in Ohio. But wait. He also has a British accent. And he’s the only black person in that Ohio bar. What is going on? Ah. I notice the BBC logo in the lower right corner of my screen. The once great United States Public Broadcasting System, which has been dismantled by the anti-government Libertarian Republicans who hate government even when it saves the entire US auto industry, is now airing a BBC program on election night. We are screwed. We can’t have our own public broadcasting system paid for by tax payer dollars? Did we choose that or were we just duped into thinking that’s OK? It is not OK.
I am going to stick to NBC. Brian ain’t that bad after all.
Running commentary:
5:45 PM. Obama 78 – Romney 88 – Obama might take Florida, so things are improving for Obama.
6:10 PM Obama took New Jersey. Ohio and Florida still too close to call.
6:17 PM Obama took Pennsylvania, the state where my Mom was born to a coal miner. Yes!
8:15 PM Good. There is some sanity still. Obama wins.
9:00 PM Over on PBS, they are still showing the BBC.
9:00 AM the next morning:
PBS is showing a children’s show. Without commercials. So there is hope.
Spent hours reading about your brother on your youtube channel, and now here. Got to this page and now see how full of hate, anger and oppressed rage you are. “Good job” spreading the word about mental illness… and your left wing hate-filled rhetoric. Have you sought counseling and meds? I highly suggest it.
Are you saying it is wrong to criticize what the United States did in Vietnam? Hate is an easy word. Healthy disdain would be my choice of terms.
Are you on the right? Do you “hate” government, like so many on the right seem to?
I don’t hate people, Goat, even if my sarcasm makes it sound that way. No, I dislike what people become sometimes. But I try to understand what causes that. As trite as it sounds, I believe the problem is “the system”, not the people. And that only changes very slowly. As people get educated and get rid of their prejudices and as we develop an understanding of what the system actually consists of. Hard problem.