Oh, happy day! I mailed my absentee ballot for the February 5th super-duper presidential primary. That will be the same candidate, if nominated by his / her party, for whom I shall vote in the national election next fall.
This happy announcement is to let you know that I shall waste no more time paying any attention whatsoever to political ads, or following the polls, pundits, and overly pushy news anchors and reporters. You know who they are. Those who use slurs, euphemisms, and twisted rhetoric to push the candidate their organizations and / or networks endorse.
"Swift Boaters," and "Move On.Org" take note, I shall pay no attention to you or any 527 political PACs, so don't bother sending that e-mail. If it gets past my "spam eater," I shall click delete. You can forget about making that "push" telephone call, too. I'm told the push calls will register all zeros on my caller ID, so I shall not answer.
What a blessed relief, and I highly recommend it to everyone. Of course, I do not vote for any candidate whose platform promotes his / her religion over the general welfare of everyone, gender over good sense, race and bigotry over tolerance, or the candidate downright irritates me.
If the candidate from whom I voted receives his / her party's nomination, I'm already free of any political angst for the rest of this year!!
I pray that I will be able to sing at the top of my lungs after the national election, "Happy Days Are Here Again."
Showing posts with label primary. Show all posts
Showing posts with label primary. Show all posts
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Saturday, January 05, 2008
All Hail FOX, ABC and Walt Disney!
The Iowa caucuses are over. Obama and Huckabee are the clear winners in Iowa, but to start yelping that everyone else might as well quit now, as some media commentators are doing, is ridiculous.
What a circus of media hype. Where I live, we haven't gotten any political ads on television yet. So, counting only national news and commentary, only six candidates seemed to receive any substantial "face time" on television, receiving less on radio.
About the only ones we saw or heard about were Obama, Clinton, and Edwards on the Democrat's side and Huckabee, Romney, McCain and Thompson on the Republican's. I listed them in order as I perceived it.
Surprise. Surprise. The candidates seemed to have faired better in direct relation to the amount of exposure they received from the national broadcast media, not counting ads. Of course, I'm not in Iowa, but in the middle of the country in an adjoining state, and I'm only guessing.
However, I do hold an M.A. in Communication, and I know that big media in the U.S. can influence outcomes though purposely selecting images and words, and allocating time amount and slot to favor one candidate over another. I hope the researchers at the Annenberg Center for the Study of Journalism & Democracy are studying this, and will publish some statistics about the correlation of the amount of broadcast time, not counting ads, to winning candidates.
Fox News (owned by Rupert Murdock) prevented Dennis Kucinich, from participating in the political debate in Des Moines, Iowa, before the caucuses. Yesterday, ABC (owned by Walt Disney) announced that Democratic presidential candidates Kucinich and Mike Gravel, and Republican Duncan Hunter would not be allowed to participate on its prime-time debates tonight in New Hampshire.
The network purposely set benchmarks to narrow the participants in the debates, so much so that Senators Joe Biden and Chris Dodd immediately bowed out of the race after the Iowa results were announced. Are they gentlemen or quitters?
According to the AP, "Candidates had to meet at least one of three criteria: place first through fourth in Iowa, poll 5 percent or higher in one of the last four major New Hampshire surveys, or poll 5 percent or higher in one of the last four major national surveys."
Tonight, Republicans Mike Huckabee, John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, Mitt Romney and Ron Paul will be allowed by ABC to debate. They start at 7 p.m. EST.
Shortly after their debate, which is scheduled to last 90 minutes, the ABC chosen Democrats Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Bill Richardson will take the stage for 90 minutes. ABC has chosen.
All hail FOX, ABC, and Walt Disney!
The airwaves belong to the American people. Yet, Americans must now pay a "provider" in order to obtain the programming from those airwaves, and a year from now they must have new, expensive digital receivers or they will be deprived of receiving anything. This is crazy stuff.
Even more important, never before has a network arbitrarily set rules to block Americans from making their views known in a national election. That was something unimaginable when I received a Masters in Communication, exactly 200 years after the establishment of the United States of America.
Kucinich has filed a complaint with the FCC. That won't do any good. The FCC is totally in the pockets of the huge media complex, the growth, or power grabs, of which the FCC is facilitating.
Americans want change. Well, Americans will get change, but it may turn out to be the worst kind of change.
Let's face it Americans, we are already you-know-what. This isn't an election, it's a media-driven circus.
What a circus of media hype. Where I live, we haven't gotten any political ads on television yet. So, counting only national news and commentary, only six candidates seemed to receive any substantial "face time" on television, receiving less on radio.
About the only ones we saw or heard about were Obama, Clinton, and Edwards on the Democrat's side and Huckabee, Romney, McCain and Thompson on the Republican's. I listed them in order as I perceived it.
Surprise. Surprise. The candidates seemed to have faired better in direct relation to the amount of exposure they received from the national broadcast media, not counting ads. Of course, I'm not in Iowa, but in the middle of the country in an adjoining state, and I'm only guessing.
However, I do hold an M.A. in Communication, and I know that big media in the U.S. can influence outcomes though purposely selecting images and words, and allocating time amount and slot to favor one candidate over another. I hope the researchers at the Annenberg Center for the Study of Journalism & Democracy are studying this, and will publish some statistics about the correlation of the amount of broadcast time, not counting ads, to winning candidates.
Fox News (owned by Rupert Murdock) prevented Dennis Kucinich, from participating in the political debate in Des Moines, Iowa, before the caucuses. Yesterday, ABC (owned by Walt Disney) announced that Democratic presidential candidates Kucinich and Mike Gravel, and Republican Duncan Hunter would not be allowed to participate on its prime-time debates tonight in New Hampshire.
The network purposely set benchmarks to narrow the participants in the debates, so much so that Senators Joe Biden and Chris Dodd immediately bowed out of the race after the Iowa results were announced. Are they gentlemen or quitters?
According to the AP, "Candidates had to meet at least one of three criteria: place first through fourth in Iowa, poll 5 percent or higher in one of the last four major New Hampshire surveys, or poll 5 percent or higher in one of the last four major national surveys."
Tonight, Republicans Mike Huckabee, John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, Mitt Romney and Ron Paul will be allowed by ABC to debate. They start at 7 p.m. EST.
Shortly after their debate, which is scheduled to last 90 minutes, the ABC chosen Democrats Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Bill Richardson will take the stage for 90 minutes. ABC has chosen.
All hail FOX, ABC, and Walt Disney!
The airwaves belong to the American people. Yet, Americans must now pay a "provider" in order to obtain the programming from those airwaves, and a year from now they must have new, expensive digital receivers or they will be deprived of receiving anything. This is crazy stuff.
Even more important, never before has a network arbitrarily set rules to block Americans from making their views known in a national election. That was something unimaginable when I received a Masters in Communication, exactly 200 years after the establishment of the United States of America.
Kucinich has filed a complaint with the FCC. That won't do any good. The FCC is totally in the pockets of the huge media complex, the growth, or power grabs, of which the FCC is facilitating.
Americans want change. Well, Americans will get change, but it may turn out to be the worst kind of change.
Let's face it Americans, we are already you-know-what. This isn't an election, it's a media-driven circus.
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