To hell with New Years resolutions. Like greeting cards, at one point they might have served a useful purpose but now are mostly just another obnoxious collar for our necks. Wanna lose weight in the new year? Go on a diet. We’ve got a product for that. Exercise more. Here’s a gym you can join, complete with a contract that will last a lot longer than your resolution.
That notwithstanding, I’d like to see some changes made. No better place to start than with myself, and no better time to start than 2008.
Indeed, this election year seems like an especially appropriate time to change some bad habits. The brutal truth is that technology has rendered news coverage of the election almost completely worthless. On the one hand, the pressure to go on the air or to press with election news even when there’s nothing newsworthy to report has produced a vast plague of polls and punditry. So each time the latest poll numbers come out, the page gets turned. Each time words like “electability” or “demographic” or even “I think” pop out of someone’s mouth, the channel gets changed. Democracy dies a little every time we choose a leader based solely – or even primarily – on what other people think of him. Or potentially in this case, her.
On the other hand, primary sources are now much more accessible than they used to be. With fairly minimal research, one can find exactly what candidates say in speeches and propose in position papers. The only thing that keeps sound-bite politics from becoming completely moot is our unwillingness to give up on it. And that’s what makes it such a good resolution.
And the diet. And joining a gym. And giving up ending articles with “whatever.”
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