Do you ever get the feeling that the events surrounding you at present are marked with importance? That among all the days and weeks and months through which you survive, the actions surrounding a portion of your life are significant in the same way as your first kiss was significant? The way a graduation, a marriage, a birth or a death is significant?
I feel that way every time I have a conversation with an undecided voter about the upcoming presidential election. I'm not exaggerating for comedic effect. This is serious.
I force myself to remain calm and appear open-minded and rational, in order to communicate in the most effective manner, but I know that this person may very well change their mind about their vote at the end of my conversation. It's so important, so very important, that I get it right, that I figure out exactly their issue and how to couch my conversation or debate to persuade them that my guy is right on their issue for them.
Because it's important, so very important, that my guy wins. Lipstick and pantsuits, teenage pregnancies and a special needs infant, Alaska from my front porch and barracudas and hockey moms and hurricanes. These are the topics that keep new viewers tuning into the mainstream media for the presidential version of the Real World.
I am surprised many times a week, but I have come to the dismal conclusion that the American electorate is so fucking stupid I am embarrassed for them in the way that I'm embarrassed for the young co-ed on Leno who can't remember how many states there are in the country or what color red and yellow make when mixed together. I don't excuse his stupidity, but his stupidity is so obvious, so clearly dangerous, that I pity him and want to take him home and tutor him to make him a better citizen.
I want to tutor the American electorate, because they've handed me eight years of the most dismal display of a President ever to grace space inside the oval office that should be held as a sacred center of the enduring spirit of a freedom-seeking, oppression-fleeing fledgling country, for which my ancestors fought. I'm embarrassed for our American electorate, and I want to tutor it, one undecided voter at a time.
If I had a million dollars, I would cut an ad and run it in the middle of The Girls Next Door, Project Runway, The Rachel Zoe Project, Top Chef, Iron Chef America, Dr. Phil, The View, The Regis and Kelly Show, and any other vapid, content-devoid nonsense that is currently pulling in the Nielson ratings. I'd speak slowly and use small words and make easy analogies with oreos equalling billions of dollars and discuss how if we took just a few oreos away from the pentagon and gave them to education, education would be GREAT! and the pentagon would still have a shit-ton of oreos on which to gorge and become bloated. I would perhaps ask that nut Dennis Kucinich for some help on the research.
Instead, I'll let myself experience many small, memorable moments each day, knowing that I am part of something so much bigger than my first kiss - something that will change things for all of us, Democrat, Republican, Independent, Libertarian, Constitutionalist, Socialist, or Anarchist. All of us freedom-seeking, oppression-fleeing Americans.
Class dismissed. Vote Obama.
