{"id":1071,"date":"2012-11-06T18:33:35","date_gmt":"2012-11-07T01:33:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/oceanpark.com\/blog\/?p=1071"},"modified":"2025-09-15T20:08:53","modified_gmt":"2025-09-15T20:08:53","slug":"election-night-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oceanpark.com\/blog\/2012\/11\/election-night-2012\/","title":{"rendered":"Election Night 2012"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It is 5PM on election night and I want to see the early results.<\/p>\n<p>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&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p>Now it&#8217;s channel 4 NBC News.  Millionaire Brian Williams is talking at me now.  He&#8217;s so suave.<\/p>\n<p>Out of the gate I&#8217;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 &#8220;war on drugs&#8221; that killed 30,000 Mexicans last year, and now vote for Romey.  And I, a liberal, <i>care<\/i> about these people?  Why?  I should become a me-first Republican like them and just be an idiot like them.  Then I too wouldn&#8217;t know enough to care about the dismantling of every program put in place since FDR to help people.<\/p>\n<p>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&#8217;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&#8217;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&#8217;s OK?  It is not OK.<\/p>\n<p>I am going to stick to NBC.  Brian ain&#8217;t that bad after all.<\/p>\n<p>Running commentary:<\/p>\n<p>5:45 PM.  Obama 78 &#8211; Romney 88 &#8211; Obama might take Florida, so things are improving for Obama.<\/p>\n<p>6:10 PM Obama took New Jersey.  Ohio and Florida still too close to call.<\/p>\n<p>6:17 PM Obama took Pennsylvania, the state where my Mom was born to a coal miner.  Yes!<\/p>\n<p>8:15 PM  Good.  There is some sanity still.  Obama wins.<\/p>\n<p>9:00 PM Over on PBS, they are still showing the BBC.<\/p>\n<p>9:00 AM the next morning:<\/p>\n<p>PBS is showing a children&#8217;s show.  Without commercials.  So there is hope.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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&#8217;m not in the mood to &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/oceanpark.com\/blog\/2012\/11\/election-night-2012\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Election Night 2012<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-vent"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oceanpark.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oceanpark.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oceanpark.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oceanpark.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oceanpark.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1071"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/oceanpark.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1071\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2069,"href":"https:\/\/oceanpark.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1071\/revisions\/2069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oceanpark.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oceanpark.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oceanpark.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}