From The Underground

I kind of live under a rock. I'm either at work or school from 8 a.m.
until 11 p.m. every day, with homework occupying my remaining hours of
consciousness. I hardly ever watch television or listen to the radio
because I usually have something more relevant that needs doing. I
guess I could be listening to NPR in the car, but ever since I put
subwoofers in my trunk it just feels like such a tragedy to listen to
talk radio. So in terms of election media coverage, I might as well
be in a cave or buried under the Himalayas.

That's not to say that I'm completely oblivious. My housemates last
year always had the latest issue of Newsweek in our bathroom, so I
would get eight or 10 minutes of news exposure every so often. I also
get snippets here and there from the Internet or somebody sending me a
link to the Obama Girl video, but nothing I've seen so far has been
enough for me to form an opinion about any of the candidates. The
impression that my limited exposure has given me, however, is that of
a very different race from the past few I've been alive for.

In years past it seems that candidates were usually barely
distinguishable gray-to-white haired old guys that argued over lofty
concepts including but not limited to health care, foreign policy, and
other relatively impenetrable subjects—basically stuff that has the
same relationship with my life and understanding as molecular biology.
But in this election I haven't heard anybody singled out for a
particular policy (again, this may just be my ignorance speaking).
Mostly I see the potential candidates as opposing personalities.
There's Barak, Hillary and John Edwards for the Democrats, and I
couldn't have told you who was running for the Republicans until I
looked it up just now.

What I see in the media coverage of this race is a physical rather
than political separation of potential candidates—as far as Democrats
go, I only see a difference in how they look, not in what they think.
All I hear is that "Hillary has a health care plan," or "Barak has a
health care plan," not, "Here is the difference between the two." As
far as I'm concerned right now, this race is all about whether the
United States will keep a white male in office or elect the first
woman or first African American. It's a race of personalities over
policy. But, again again again, as I've said, I have about as much
credibility on the subject as the vagrant who lives under the bridge
has about differential equations. But this is the impression that I
get from the media that I've been exposed to. And I doubt that I'm
the only one in this boat.