All your tax are belong to us

One of the largest pools of disdain that I draw upon comes from the A.D.D nature of our society.  I'm not entirely immune to it myself, but we've become a culture that lives in 30 second bursts.  The presidential debates feed this, they are more about 1 liners, zingers, gotchas, and quotables than substance and ideas. We don't have fireside chats, we have tweets.  Politicians on both sides are guilty of this, as well as being victims of this. The brightest minds are often squelched because they can't sum up their ideas in easily digestible catch phrases.

As a Herman Cain fan, I was not surprised when his 9-9-9 plan caught on quickly. Above all merits of the plan, it was easy to remember.  Here Mr. Cain benefits from our soundbyte society.  People can chit chat about it at work the next day like it's an episode of Dancing with the Stars, then go on updating their facebook status.  Herman would soon learn what happens when you earn the spotlight though.  Seemingly baseless allegations allowed sex to be introduced to it, and we all know how much the media loves their sex stories.  Then it became time: Sarah Palin this guy and stat!

Libya.  A country that most Americans could not tell you where it is at on a map. Suddenly 40 years of success and achievement is undermined. A candidate is mocked as senile, out of touch, stupid, etc.  9 seconds folks.  I couldn't ask the majority of people what they had for breakfast and expect an accurate answer in 9 seconds.  Now the media and certain people would have you believe he is an unfit candidate.  I usually hear this from the same people who voted for Barack Obama to reform their healthcare system seemingly forgetting his 60 second shut down when his teleprompter went out and he couldn't think of the correct name for a child's inhaler.  We're not talking a technical and obscure medical term here. We're talking about an inhaler being called a breathalyzer. We have a vice president that is pretty much the biggest gaffe-factory in America.  I don't care about either of those things. I find Joe Biden to be a funny and likable guy, he just parrots for the wrong team. Obama is a generally charismatic guy and would make a wonderful spokesman for Coke or Pepsi, hell the Pepsi logo looks like it was planned for just such an approach.

Change:  With enough of it, you can quench your thirst today!

 So come on America, right or left why do we let any serious decision be influenced by a 30 second soundbyte.  Now if that soundbyte is "Boy, I tell you what...soon as i get into office I'm gonna see about killing all of those minorities." Then sure, I think it's fair to use that to help make a decision.  But can we please stop lying to ourselves that we are soooo much smarter than these candidates? I HATE when I hear someone say "OMG Sarah Palin is soooo stupid" or "OMG Barack Obama is so stupid!"  Whether you like it or not, GWB, Sarah Palin, Barack Obama, and just about every politician out there is smarter than the vast majority of us. They are achievers, they are typically college graduates and tops of their classes. They are typically successful business people, authors, physicians, etc. The stupid ones are the people who watch a 10 second clip on the internet, and make up their mind about someone they know nothing about based on those 10 seconds. Then, the best part, they go mouth off and spread their stupidity with others. Simply put, there is no one in this country that can survive the internet age of journalism if the media decides to focus its Sauron-like gaze upon them. So let's stop leaning on this pitiful crutch (omg you hate handicapped people!) as a reason to not really make smart and informed decisions.  But...you've got American Idol to get back to, the world economy on the brink of the disaster will have to wait. Besides, here's a viral clip of Barnie Frank stuttering like porky pig, he's so dumb.

 The author included, how many of us have zero shot at ever having anything close to a political career due to facebook, twitter, drunken moments, or any other facet of life where we actually lived? I'm 29 years old and have been self employed for almost 3 years, when i was a standard employee working for companies and a brief stint with public employment I'm sure I have 1-2 people that could have, if they wanted, filed some sort of grievance or charge against me. Not that I did anything wrong, but I'm sure according to someone I could have. I know many people who have been victims of grievance processes/harassment charges being frivolously brought up to fight a valid firing, suspension, lack of promotion etc. So why do we suddenly expect a high profile person to survive this huge level of dirt digging, non-stop badgering and strings of interviewers asking every question they can think of with the hopes of tripping them up. You have both sides looking for any slight miscue, while all lying to each other and pretending they want someone with "real" answers.  No you don't America. You want someone that can read a teleprompter, tell you how awesome you are, and do so in quick bursts of media-friendly perfection.

Pepsi is pretty strict about its airtime it allows these silly politicians to steal from the more important messages.