Ah the County Fair! The sights are a stimulating combination of colors and depths with people everywhere. The white noise of music coming from several sources melts together with the screams of children on the rides, as they swing high to low and back.
The smells blend creating an amalgam with funnel cakes, fries, grilled meat, and the sweetest barnyard composition. There is another thing that overwhelms the senses. Granted it only comes on some years. But it does come! It comes like a storm and by the time of the county fair is at its nadir. Ah Politics! Among the rows of tents with local businesses and the products you can only find at your fair such as costume jewelry and the newest Redskins swag, you’ll find a booth for The Democratic and Republican Parties with people and messages spilling over into the walkways. Candidates have prepared the last of his or her best talking points to try and sell you, the citizen, as to why you should vote for them.
You can get a good sense of public sentiment just by looking at which stickers and balloons families are walking around with, if you pay attention. I wanted to get a sense of where the electorate was on the presidential race and what issues were most important to them. So I watched, I listened; while speaking to individuals bearing the swag from either campaign, I covertly framed questions to elicit important answers to questions. What issue is most important to you this election? Which candidate will do a better job with domestic and foreign policy leadership?
Observing fairgoers as they interacted with each other and went to the booths of their respective political party to load up on the most cutting edge “Obama is the Devil”, and “Republicans will destroy the Country,” stickers, proved to be disheartening in the extreme. While observing so many provided the intangible benefit for a journalist of gaining accurate public sentiment, it strikes me just how powerful mass media is. Two major themes stood out to me. Firstly, perception is reality and that’s all there is to it. Pope John Paul himself could easily be made a monster if FOX or MSN got a hold of him and ran him through the spin machine, which in the age of modern technology includes a “complete fabrication” cycle.
I heard more of the petty criticism about President Obama appearing on the popular woman’s show, The View, than I did about serious governance. Apparently people thought he should have managed his schedule differently that day. That criticism poses an interesting prospect considering that none of us could begin to imagine the structure of a presidential schedule for four years much less one year or one day. In general, after interviewing about twenty people, I heard nothing about substantial policy initiatives, differences, accomplishments, or failures. We are basing our selection of President of the United States solely on the spun up garbage provided by mass media and the political opponents. This is an unfortunate turn of events that I can’t say is a new development. It has always been this way in American politics even though the spinning seems to be getting worse.
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