I've been staying away from the television for oh, a few months now. Instead, I've been watching my Revenge and The Vampire Diaries online the day after, (Hey, no judging. We all have our guilty pleasures.) as well as completely addicted to Alias on Netflix. (Side note, does anyone else think Sydney Bristow is the WORST spy ever? Just me?)
Want to know why? Although I'm pretty sure most of you are smart enough to know the reason.
CAMPAIGN ADS. Campaign ads are a thing straight from hell, sent by the devil to torture the majority of Americans who despise political drama.
I watched the morning news with my roommate this morning from about 7:30-9:30am. In that span of time there were only three commercials that weren't campaign ads. Three. That's it. So that means a lot of hostility and wanting to hulk out on my part, because we all know how many commercials one can see in two hours of television.
Also? Out of two hours worth of campaign ads, only one was positive. Only one said, "These are the things that I stand for, so I'm asking for your support," and did not engage in smear tactics.
That's the worst thing about campaign ads. 99% of them only talk about how bad the other guy is, about all the horrible things they did, instead of presenting what the candidate whose ad it is has to offer voters.
Is this all politics is? Is this all voting is? Listing candidates list of wrongdoings and then voting for whose list is the shortest? Because this is not what I signed up for. We are better than this. Our country is better than this.
These kinds of smear campaigns are what prissy little high school girls do to each other to wreck each others lives. And last I checked, no one who is running for public office is a prissy little high school girl. Unless I overlooked someone, in which case, feel free to correct me.
So please. If you're running for public office, do your country a favor and grow the hell up. Adults do not do this to each other. Adults do not engage in disrespectful behavior such as walking all over debate moderators. They do not take the coward's way out in campaigning and smear the other guy instead of stand up for something for once in your rich, educated, privileged life.
I'm sick of politics. I'm sick of campaign ads. And I'm sick of people treating each other like garbage.
A-frickin'-men!
ReplyDeleteGIRL. I was in Seattle last week and so we would watch some news to catch the weather and HOLY CAMPAIGN ADS. Every commercial break. And they were for govenor and district attorney and I don't know, head milk man. WHATEVER. And they were especially annoying because it wasn't my city, you know, so I really, really, really didn't care.
ReplyDeletePenny and I started playing a game where every time one was on we'd just yell, "I HATE YOU [insert person's name here]! I'M NOT VOTING FOR YOU." We did it for everyone without discrimination.
It helped a little.
I don't know, I think quite a few of them are, in fact, prissy little high school girls.
ReplyDeleteAnd DVRs are a wonderful thing. I don't see any commercials really. Of course, I live in Chicago, so we don't get a ton of political ads anyway. No point.
Amy