The Wrong Focus

I find it infinitely saddening that politics in the US has so much the focus on personalities and associations and not on the probable policies of the candidates or their positions on issues. Bill Maher calls us the United Stupid of America. He is so right.

The perfect example is where the bloggers of both sides are focused on this week:

I went looking for some blogs or news stories from the Right. Why? Well I’ve seen plenty online from the Left and I’ve heard the claim on TV from Republican supporters that the media is all in favour of Obama. So I wondered what the other side was saying and if it isn’t in mainstream media I knew I’d find some of it in the blogsphere.

A little searching, starting from Technorati-Politics, and I found Seton Motley’s post The Huffington Post Is Lying About Us. I was disgusted. This is basically a “he said, she said” claim and counter claim about whether a reporter from left leaning Huffington Post, Seth Colter Walls, properly followed up on some references given to him by the right leaning Matthew Vadum which would have supported Vadum’s claim that Huffington’s claim that the Right’s claim that Obama supported a bad organization (Acorn) was untrue, or something.

Is this the best we can do in politics in the US?

I don’t care much whether Obama worked for a radical organization when he was a young local organizer in Chicago just like I don’t much care if George Bush partied his way through college and got out of the draft by joining a National Guard unit. I don’t much care if Sarah Palin got rid of a troublesome subordinate by firing him or that he now claims it was because he wouldn’t fire her ex-brother in law. What I care about is how these candidates are going to pursue the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, who has the best policy on the Mid-East, on Health Care, on the economy, on taxes, education. Where is the debate on these topics?

The bloggers and commentators and supporters of both sides have just got to get their eyeballs off of their navels and look up at the bigger issues. Right now everyone has the wrong focus. I mean, get f*@king real! Who f*@king cares?

Next time someone says to me (and I wish they would) “What about so and so, isn’t it a shame how the media is covering that up?” I’m just going to go off on them and say “So f@*king what? How about health care, what really are the pro’s and cons of that, how do we fix our education system so we can compete in a global economy, how do we get the US out of debt, how do we deal with an unstable nuclear power in Pakistan, how do we get a fair peace settlement in the Mid East, how do we solve any of these things? Let’s have that debate and get out of the gutter please.”

Fred Roswold