Saturday, August 2, 2008

Like Josef Stalin or Kennedy...

At the beginning of every month, I pick up a copy of Bay Area Parent magazine from my local library to check out the upcoming family-friendly events in our area. In addition to event listings, the magazine features articles on various parenting topics.

One of the articles in the August issue is entitled "Early Returns: How to Get Tomorrow's Voters Interested in Politics Today". Most of the article is perfectly fine. However, it devotes about half a page to profiling two different families supporting Sen. Obama and only about a fifth of a page to one family supporting Sen. McCain. As if that wasn't bad enough, the magazine's cover photo shows twins with shirts bearing the campaign logos of the two candidates. The girl wearing Obama's logo is front and center while her sister wearing McCain's logo is nearly out of the picture. Inside another photo of the twins is shown; again Obama's logo is on prominent display and McCain's is almost completely hidden.

I am getting so completely disgusted with the way that the mainstream media is absolutely fawning over Sen. Obama. He seems like a decent guy personally and he's certainly a very charismatic speaker. But the way the media treats him you'd think he was the Messiah or something. It reminds me of that old Living Colour song "The Cult of Personality":

I sell the things you need to be
I'm the smiling face on your t.v.
I'm the cult of personality
I exploit you still you love me

The question is whether the American public will be foolish enough to buy the media hype like the children following the Pied Piper's song...

1 comment:

Henry Cate said...

"The question is whether the American public will be foolish enough to buy the media hype like the children following the Pied Piper's song..."

I'm afraid the vast majority of people in America really don't think about the issues or investigte candidates. And most people don't seem to be able to use logic and understand that actions always have consequences.