Catch-up Time

Over the next few days, I plan to post on articles and topics that I wanted to call out from the rest of the year, but for one thing or another--lack of time, usually--just never got around to. Some of them were topics I wanted to expand on and the entries just never left the ground (really, the notebook). Most of them will be from the recent months and weeks, as they are fresher in my memory. Here goes:

New York Magazine is just fantastic. They always have really interesting articles featuring really interesting trivia, often about New York. Case in point: One out of every apartment in Manhattan is occupied by only one person; the number is one in three when you add in all the other boroughs. Jennifer Senior's December 1st cover story on loneliness doesn't offer much new insights other than those statistics, but reinforces a lot of existing theories on the nature of community (note: I did a lot of research in college on this topic, especially dealing with community vis a vis the internet, so it wasn't new to me). What I especially loved was that the article reaffirmed a lot of my anecdotal evidence regarding single life:

[Eric] Klineberg, the NYU professor who is writing about living alone, points out that single people are partly responsible for the vibrancy of New York’s public life: “We know form marketing surveys that single people go out more than couples,” he notes. “They’re more likely to go to restaurants, to bars, and to clubs. A lot of people who live alone say it’s very hard to enter their apartments and stare at the walls when there’s so much going on outside.”

Conversely, married people—women especially—have smaller friendship-based social networks than they did as single people, according to [sociologist] Claude Fischer.

The article goes on to say that that the reason why many single people feel lonely is when they are surrounded by other couples--and that family neighborhoods in particular are the places that have the highest rates of social isolation, especially among the elderly. Asynchronous environments breed loneliness; that's why it's better for one's livelihood if they aren't exclusively around others who are in a different stage of life.

Weak ties (acquaintences and people you are one or two degrees separated), the internet, and of course, New York City (and cities in general) get quite the boost here. But that's fine; the overarching idea is that people--connection--are what matters, and that getting out of the house and interacting with others will boost your mood. The internet bridges the public and the private, and often facilitates this.

I look forward to David Carr's column every week, and he rarely disappoints. While he has written many that I could talk about endlessly, his recent entry on how the media essentially created Black Friday opened my eyes to the symbiotic relationship between advertising and the media--something I all too often overlook.

I orginally had not planned to read the Times Magazine's cover story on John McCain the week before the election, citing time constraints and not much interest, but it turned out to be way better than their Obama cover the previous week. "The Making (and Remaking) of John McCain" ended up showing how important public relations and message-managing is--and how the McCain camp's infighting and lack of direction killed their campaign. The death knell is spelled out:

The campaign was in the throes of an identity crisis by June 24, when a number of senior strategists gathered at 9:30 a.m. in a conference room of McCain’s campaign headquarters in Arlington. As one participant said later, the meeting was convened “because we still couldn’t answer the question, ‘Why elect John McCain?’ ” Considering that the election was less than five months away, this was not a good sign.

If the people running John McCain's campaign cannot answer that question, then he is doomed.

Speaking of that long-ago election, remember that Wall Street Journal story on Obama's thinness? Apparently the reporter took some of her quotes from a Yahoo message board. Ouch. Certainly not the only time this year that a reporter got into trouble for going to dubious online outlets for sources.

I wrote a lot about the Journal's coverage of the election, especially how voters decide on a candidate. I had wanted to add another entry to that list, on their September 4th article, "The Biology of Ideology". It's the old nature vs. nurture argument: are even voting patterns predetermined? That's one heck of a scary idea. I was very skeptical of this idea and hated the article back when I first read it. I took a more pragmatic approach, of convince us why you're worthy. Tom Friedman summed it up five days later:

If you as a politician connect with voters on a gut level, they will follow you anywhere and not fret about the details. If you don’t connect with them on a gut level, you can’t show them enough details.

I wondered why it was ok for newspapers to openly assume Obama was going to win the presidency, as many non-opinion pieces used "when", instead of "if", in referring to anything after the election. Guys, that's why people say the media is in the tank for the dude. Lay off. Turned out Clark Hoyt at the Times agreed with me.

I felt though--and vaguely remember coming across something along these lines--that people tend to vote in step with the environment they find themselves in. In my social life, my friends and I (generally) read the same media, or at least the same types, have similar opinions, and come from similar backgrounds, so of course we tend to vote similarly. This is true all over; I wondered how hard it would be to separate from the pack.

Quote of the Day

“What Valerie developed is the art of telling people to go to hell and making them look forward to the trip,” said Mr. Jordan, who advised his wife’s cousin throughout the campaign.

Watch Now

Even I think they're adorable:


Watch CBS Videos Online


Please don't miss Andy Rooney's segment at the end on the death of newspapers. It's why I've always vastly preferred print journalism to any of the schlock of TV news.

We could have elected a pin-up model...

My favorite fact on this list: He applied to appear in a black pin-up calendar while at Harvard but was rejected by the all-female committee.

Ha!

Rejoice!

Obama was very good for the media.

Many newspapers sold out yesterday. My parents emailed me late in the afternoon asking if I could get a copy of the Times, since my dad was unable to find any in Manhattan. It never even occurred to me that this would happen, though it seems so obvious.

Though I knew it was a long shot, I drove around my neighborhood for an hour, stopping in several convenience stores, delis, drugstores, even a Shop-Rite and a Starbucks. A few Daily Newses and Records, but picked clean. I was told that by early morning everything was gone. Felled by fatigue and hunger, I returned home with the Record

and the Daily News
in hand.

I get chided for keeping so many newspapers and magazines, but they really are great (and cheap) mementos. Most of the keepsakes from my trip to Europe this summer were publications in other languages. Why buy an overpriced shot glass that was made in China anyway when you can get an authentic piece of the moment? I looked at all the magazines strewn on my floor before I went to bed Tuesday night, knowing Obama won, and I knew they were history now--all the speculation, all the wonder, it was answered affirmatively. They were no longer current.

Here's the Times' simple cover:

(The Newseum's site has images of practically every newspaper in the world.)

Endorsements

I expected the New York Times to endorse Obama, but I didn't expect them (or other newspapers) to do it so soon. I figured it would come the Sunday before election day.

Actually, I'm more interested in the breakdown of the news that the New York City Council voted to approve the change in term limits, essentially creating a third term for Bloomberg. The Post and the Daily News both published their support of the extension in term limits today; the Times did so two days ago.

USA Today has a small list of newspapers and their endorsements (of course being as bland and middle-of-the-road as possible), as do several other outlets. I assumed that a majority would endorse Obama; anyone paying attention at all would realize this.

Such a great idea

I'm usually not a fan of Sarah Silverman, except when it comes to her online videos:
She even won an Emmy for her last one, "I'm Fucking Matt Damon".

That's a real organization she's shilling for. I love the line "and they both have a lot of friends who are dying".

I really think when Obama wins one of the reasons will be not only how he harnessed technology but how his supporters did, too. Without all these viral videos--starting from "I Got a Crush On Obama"--he just wouldn't have had the same impact. I think the numbers will bear this out.

Don't Mess with the Media

I’ve read a lot about Sarah Palin. I find her interesting. I don’t hate her with the force of a thousand suns like a lot of my friends do, but I do believe she is completely over her head and is in no way ready for the national stage, and I think she’d be disastrous if given the opportunity to exercise her values legislatively.

Her beliefs are polarizing, to say the least. She has a way of creating enemies, and governs in a very personal manner. I think part of her charm is that she is cute and pretty, and leads what many consider to be an incredible life. I think many women wish they could pull off something like that; they ignore the warning signs, they ignore the pregnancy, her spurious background. She’s approachable, and that feeling wins out.

Luckily, her utter unpreparedness for a national campaign is finally becoming clear, and it’s become increasingly apparent that John McCain has made a terrible mistake by selecting her as his running mate, exacerbating the decision by following it up with the genius idea of shielding her from the press.

The media likes access; the media likes answers. They do not like rebuffs, refusals, or rejections. The media’s job is to get stories out to the public, and when people make their jobs difficult, they are not happy. The media can be your friend, and they are big on relationships—they can make or break you, so treat them well. Sarah Palin was a public figure before she became a vice-presidential candidate; she’s had experience interacting with the media, just on a smaller scale. For god’s sake, her degree is in journalism!

There’s a difference between demurring for privacy’s sake and outright refusing to answer questions because you have no answers. The only reason not to let the press talk to her was because they were hiding something—which is so completely obvious that it’s totally backfiring on the campaign.

But I just want to point out an interesting example of how media partnerships work, why it’s so important to cultivate positive relationships with them. From Vanity Fair, via Andrew Sullivan:

Obama, on the other hand, was snubbing Murdoch. Every time he reached out (Murdoch executives tried to get the Kennedys to help smooth the way to an introduction), nothing. The Fox stain was on Murdoch.

It wasn’t until early in the summer that Obama relented and a secret courtesy meeting was arranged. The meeting began with Murdoch sitting down, knee to knee with Obama, at the Waldorf-Astoria. The younger man was deferential—and interested in his story. Obama pursued: What was Murdoch’s relationship with his father? How had he gotten from Adelaide to the top of the world?

Murdoch, for his part, had a simple thought to share with Obama. He had known possibly as many heads of state as anyone living today—had met every American president from Harry Truman on—and this is what he understood: nobody got much time to make an impression. Leadership was about what you did in the first six months.

Then, after he said his piece, Murdoch switched places and let his special guest, Roger Ailes, sit knee to knee with Obama.

Obama lit into Ailes. He said that he didn’t want to waste his time talking to Ailes if Fox was just going to continue to abuse him and his wife, that Fox had relentlessly portrayed him as suspicious, foreign, fearsome—just short of a terrorist.

Ailes, unruffled, said it might not have been this way if Obama had more willingly come on the air instead of so often giving Fox the back of his hand.

A tentative truce, which may or may not have vast historical significance, was at that moment agreed upon.

Being Healthy is Now a Liability

The Wall Street Journal gave us another gem today:

[I]n a nation in which 66% of the voting-age population is overweight and 32% is obese, could Sen. Obama's skinniness be a liability?

So because Obama likes to work out and eat healthy, and God forbid, does not care for ice cream, it’s another sign that he’s “elitist” and “out of touch” with Americans, since we’re all fat and eat disgusting fried junk. We can’t relate to someone who buys arugla at Whole Foods, who doesn’t eat “typical” All-American fare like Cheese Whiz, who’s too much of a celebrity and superhuman since he doesn’t have to struggle with what to eat and constantly worry about his weight.

What an insult to the millions of Americans who not only have brains, but actually do care about eating healthy, who exercise, and to all the thin people out there. Those kind of preoccupations are obviously only for the wealthy and the famous. Gyms must be a coastal thing, since according to the article, it’s all the Midwesterners and Southerners (and female Clinton supporters) who have problems with Obama’s food and exercise preferences. And if you exercise too much, not only is it big news but the implication is you are vain.

The article touches on his recent Access Hollywood interview, other presidential “gaffes” with food, and how President Clinton’s oft-discussed McDonald’s habit helped him win voters back in 1992, especially in Southern states like Georgia and Tennessee, since they have a large number of overweight people.

Although Obama, “stays away from junk food and instead snacks on MET-Rx chocolate roasted-peanut protein bars and drinks Black Forest Berry Honest Tea, a healthy organic brew,” at times he has to pretend that he really, really isn’t that guy:

Lately, Sen. Obama is more careful. On a campaign stop in Lebanon, Mo., on Wednesday, Sen. Obama visited with voters at Bell's Diner and promptly announced, "Well, I've had lunch today but I'm thinking maybe there is some pie."

He settled on fried chicken and told the crowd he's become a junk-food lover. "The healthy people, we'll give them the breasts," he told the waitress. "I'll eat the wings."

Even though his smoking habit has gotten attention—although even that is considered a liability, since the percentage of Americans who smoke has decreased rapidly—apparently it’s not enough:

Some voters say that even this adds to Sen. Obama's somewhat superhuman persona.

"I mean, really, who quits smoking and doesn't gain any weight?" says 30-year-old Stella Metsovas, an Obama supporter in Laguna Beach, Calif.

Everything, especially in politics, is a lose-lose situation. If Obama was overweight and ate junk food, coverage would be about his health and all the millions of voters who would be turned off by his laziness and disrespect for his body, and Republicans would question how fit he is for the job, physically and mentally. With all the constant coverage on how unhealthy and fat Americans already are, there’s no need to criticize the candidate for taking care of himself and liking what he likes. Mike Huckabee won a lot of support for being vocal about his weight loss struggles, and became an inspiration to many. That’s the kind of initiative voters look for in presidents—and what many see in Obama.

Come On

Again with the candidates and their eating habits, this time courtesy of the Wall Street Journal:

Political commentators are busy analyzing and psychoanalyzing the presidential candidates' words for hints about the real Barack Obama and John McCain. We gastronomers have a better way of penetrating the campaign spin. We take the time-honored approach of that proto-food-blogger Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755-1826), who said: "Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are."

At the very least, we believe that a candidate's taste in food is a more reliable indicator of character than the carefully strained statements issued in the current atmosphere of gotcha and gotcha back. So we have worked our sources and come up with the names of the candidates' favorite restaurants in their home states. We have tried them out and assessed what an appetite for their particular offerings might mean about two men with a 50-50 chance at spending the next four years ordering meals from the White House chef.

Can we move off this subject now? Why on earth would I pick a candidate based on--or even be interested in--their taste in restaurants?

I already know that John McCain likes to grill and that his campaign lifted a cookie recipe from the Food Network's website, and that Barack Obama is a fussy eater. Now both of them are pizza fans. Wow! That's so unusual. The only good thing about this article is that I now know some good restaurants in Chicago and Arizona.

Embarrassing Obama?

Why is Barack Obama constantly being embarrassed by his wife?

Maria Menounos (who is moving up in the world, doing segments for Today and the Nightly News) recently did a four-part segment featuring the entire Obama family on Access Hollywood, and Barack rarely spoke, letting his daughter Malia and wife Michelle spill all his dirty secrets, like how he doesn’t like most sweets (except pie).

Most of this stuff is benign, but it was delivered with a hint of hostility, a tone I’ve detected in Michelle’s previous comments about her husband’s personal habits. Her daughter has picked up on this, too.

I don’t understand this impulse at all. I don’t find it endearing or cute. I know people razz on their friends and family members all the time, but usually there’s an undercurrent of affection in the teasing. But with Michelle Obama, I just don’t see it, even though I’m sure she means well. It’s supposed to open up the candidate, showing us who he really is, foibles and all. That’s why candidates and their families do silly puff interviews like the Access Hollywood one in the first place, although Barack has been regretting it of late. I usually don’t mind personal habits—to a degree. Nothing embarrassing, nothing I’m cringing at. It also has to be delivered in a way that makes all parties ok with it, and my problem seems to be that because Barack himself doesn’t seem to be ok with this teasing, I’m not either. He doesn’t look mildly embarrassed, a little sheepish, just coldly nodding his head, letting the facts stand there.

It’s also what Michelle Obama says that irks me. Her comment that he is “snore-y and stink-ey” struck me as low, even if she’s talking about him first thing in the morning. There’s a difference in saying that a spouse is clumsy or forgetful at times; attacking him for personal hygiene habits is too TMI for my taste.

I understand that Michelle Obama is just trying to flesh out her husband and not deify him, to offset this kind of cult rock star figure image that has glommed on to him. As she stated in the Glamour article, as an explanation to her earlier comments:

I think [most] people saw the humor of that. People understood that this is how we all live in our marriages. And Barack is very much human. So let’s not deify him, because what we do is we deify, and then we’re ready to chop it down. People have notions of what a wife’s role should be in this process, and it’s been a traditional one of blind adoration. My model is a little different—I think most real marriages are.

But in the Access Hollywood interviews, his family spends a good portion of time ragging on him; he barely gets a word in. He only eats mint gum. He doesn’t like sweets. He hates to shop. He wears old clothes. Wowee. He might be a little staid, but so are a lot of guys, so are a lot of political guys. Maybe it’s their way of just saying that he fits right in, despite all the ugly rumors proving he’s too much of an outsider. But it doesn’t come off that way; from Michelle it sounds like a litany of complaints. I’m not interested.

I’m not saying first ladies or potential first ladies and campaign spouses have to hold their tongues. Especially nowadays with their own high-powered careers, there is no need for them to be completely demurring and just fawn and smile sweetly when discussing their husbands, but there’s something to be said for discretion. Cindy McCain has acknowledged that her husband was away for her three miscarriages and her addiction to painkillers—something that would kill many other marriages. Like the Obamas, they decided to spend a good portion of their time living in separate places, each working where their career took them and the women largely raising the children. But while Cindy McCain has mentioned these hard times in both her marriage and in her life, she has not denigrated her husband.

Now, because I’m not voting for either Michelle Obama or Cindy McCain, this shouldn’t matter. It should have no bearing on my feelings for either candidate.

But stuff like this seeps through. Cindy McCain says she always knew that John would put the country ahead of her—so should that make us feel confident that he would make a good president because he cares about the country’s needs more than his wife’s? Should I wonder why Obama married a woman who would insult him in public? Is this a good thing, because he knows criticism and can handle it, shrugging it off like he does now? Or is this harmful, because he is immune to criticism? How does this affect—or not—his running of the country?

Recently, Slate’s XX blog has been discussing Ellen Tien’s apparently scathing account of her husband, how she thinks about divorce every day. I didn’t even read the article (written by the woman who does the Sunday Style’s Pulse), but I was appalled. What is the point of trashing your spouse (or significant other), who you are still currently with, in a public forum (print, online, video)? The only logical conclusion would be that you want out, and you want to hurt that person very, very badly.

Which is exactly what Christie Brinkley did in her exceedingly humiliating spectacle of a divorce. She exposed Peter Cook to humiliate him (and her), to get what she wanted, children and propriety be dammed. Exposing such nasty truths only serves as revenge. Michelle Obama, who has said that she won’t let Obama run again if he loses, and Cindy McCain, who is known to dislike the whole running for president thing, aren’t as brokenhearted and humiliated as Christie Brinkley is (we hope), but I don’t think they are saying these things purely out of spite. They are just telling the truth. But the truth doesn’t have to sound like they hate their husbands.

News Analysis: 60 Minutes, Hillary Clinton, US Weekly and Gender Stereotypes

Although these 60 Minutes interviews aired a month ago, and much has changed, I feel the criticisms and observations I’ve recorded still stand. I’ve updated and edited various versions of this since that time, more because of time restraints than anything else. The segments are solid pieces, very well-written, but look at the stark differences in terms of style of questioning, arrangement of questions, what they discussed.

60 Minutes aired the Obama interview first, then after the commercial break came Hillary. Notice the differences, in approach, in style:

Obama’s video:

(Transcript)

Now watch Hillary:

(Transcript)

They’re both excellent interviews, no doubt. There's no coincidence that Katie Couric is the one interviewing Hillary, and the 60 Minutes newsman Steve Kroft has Barack. Katie Couric--with all the criticism of her Evening News broadcast, her soft Today Show background--is going to be asking "the tough questions" of the female presidential candidate. It's a perfect meld: Katie gets to be serious, yet show off her gentleness, how at ease she can be, and Hillary can indulge them.

Both interviewers ask good questions, often touching on similar topics, and both candidates do shill out a bit their lines. But notice: while Kroft ends the interview with the “How do you do it?” question, Couric begins her interview that way. While both interviewers aren’t antagonistic, and are usually very friendly, Couric affects camaraderie right away: She brings up her troubles, the fact that she could very well lose the nomination, starting the interview off negatively, though with a pressing question. Yet Hillary answers positively, that she believes in what she’s doing, telling herself, essentially, that she can do it. It’s all very touchy-feeling women’s magazine-y. Katie interrupts her: “You never think, oh I’m so tired, I’m so exhausted, I’m spending so much money, wouldn’t it be easier to hang it all up?”

It’s such a bonding moment, yet it’s a question I’m sure many are wondering. “Katie, you can’t think like that, you have to believe you’re going to win, otherwise leave the field and let someone who has the confidence and the optimism and the determination that a leader has to have get on the field and stay,” Hillary responds with iron-strong conviction. However, as much as it is easy to mock Hillary Clinton's women's magazine-self-help strong-woman mantra of "I believe I can", she's got a point. There's no way--and this goes for anyone undertaking such a massive effort--that you can do something so huge, so completely taxing on every possible facet of your life, without believing in what you are doing. It’s impossible. You have to believe that you can effect change, that you can succeed. That will (and her money) must be strong. Yet that line, especially in this context, does come across as a little pandering, self-serving, haughty, even. To some people it sounds patronizing. Would it come across that way if Barack Obama said it, if a male candidate said it? Probably not; it wouldn’t have that ring of cynicism that plagues her.

Watch their faces during this interaction. Katie Couric really wants to know how Hillary does it, and Hillary, true to her gender and her persona, gives details, techniques: hot peppers, water, no diet soda, washing her hands to stay healthy. Details are what women want to know. We marvel at those who somehow have it all, get it all done, and Hillary fits perfectly into that. It’s why her “crying moment” before New Hampshire worked for many women voters.

Katie also asks if Hillary likes Barack Obama. Hillary’s whole spiel–she helped campaign for him, there’s a picture of him in her office, yada yada yada–is inconsequential. What’s the point? Is Katie trying to get Hillary to crack, to prove there is more than a scintilla of bad blood between them, trying to form wedges? Isn’t that what people accuse women of doing all the time, holding onto grudges and forming new ones, to prove that Hillary’s full of hate? Notice Steve Kroft didn’t ask Obama his opinion of Hillary. Why does this matter? Presidential candidates have been known to pick running mates based on electability, not on their personal opinion. Hillary’s answers are all pat, pandering responses that deserve eye-rolling–yeah, we all waited on bated breath for the day where a white woman would run against a black man for president. She is right, though, in that this election is both about what they represent and who they are, more so than any other election. I question whether Obama’s ever had a negative ad run against him. He did run for Congress; senate races do have attack ads. Hell, even my local mayoral election had some nasty (yet clever) flyers sent out.

Look at Katie’s face when she asks, teasingly, if Hillary “couldn’t handle it”. She’s egging her on. Couric also asks about media treatment compared to Obama, and—this is before the “whining” in the Ohio debate—she acknowledges it, but says it’s ok. It has to be ok. If it’s not, she’s got a grudge, a vendetta, and even if that’s true, she can’t let everybody know it. It must not be verified.

Katie also goes into Hillary’s personal history. “Weren’t you the girl who sat in the front row who took copious notes and always raised her hand?” “Well, not always...” C’mon, Katie, weren’t you that type of girl too? They giggle, sharing a laugh about high school boys (it is pretty funny). It’s all designed—much like the entire segment—to show Hillary as human, feminine, to appeal to women voters, her base. I want to ask if it’s really necessary, but that’s a moot question. It’s what you do, and she’s been just as “aggressive” and “manly” in some of her tactics as commented on in the press. It doesn’t matter—you do what you need to do to win.

She doesn’t just do this on television. In this multifaceted media world, you have to hit every possible target, so why not do a spread in US Weekly? Here, she’s embarrassingly over-the-top and garishly girlish and giggly—exactly what this trashy mag is. She's trying to be "relatable", for all those young and middle-aged and bored women who like to thumb through those celebrity digs. It's downmarket Hillary. Look at those exclamation marks! Because it’s too elitist to be in a Vogue spread, since only Coasters read that magazine, and they’re going for Obama anyway. Downtrodden middle-class middle-American voters, that’s who she needs!

But since then, in order to be fair (and because an US Weekly staffer is an Obama fan), the other Democratic hopeful had his spotlight in this great tabloid. His though is cute, People-magazine friendly, with shots of his family and lots of kids, including himself as a lil tyke. Aww. It’s not embarrassing; it’s the male version of “He’s Just Like Us!” the popular feature where famous people are shown doing everyday things. Although one can argue that because Hillary’s been in the public eye longer than Barack has, it’s a better feature to show her atrocious outfits, especially because she’s a woman of power; she should know better. But instead, even with the ridiculous prose and tone of the entire publication dumbing them down, Hillary’s piece comes off as voyeuristic; it’s time to shake our heads and cluck-cluck at her stupidity. It can be relatable, but not in the Oprah way. Barack’s piece, despite him doing “normal” things, isn’t voyeuristic at all; it’s classy. It’s sweet, it’s what Life magazine would do if Life still existed or if he was running decades ago.

It's hard to be humble and confident, especially in politics. No one can be everything to everybody, but a presidential candidate's got to try. For those who accuse me of following the election based on identity politics, there were many times during this interview where I cringed a little. Hillary, like many driven, hard-charging women, comes across a little too earnest, and that turns a lot of people off. Earnestness is vulnerability mixed with passion; you see this trait when people get on their high horse over some issue important to them.

Is the analysis unfair? I’ve been pretty harsh towards both Katie Couric and Hillary Clinton. I don’t have a particular bias against either one of them; some people might call me a fan or apologist for them because of things I’ve said in the past. But I’m struck by the different tactics used in the interviews and by US Weekly. Their agendas were similar; both interviewers were gentle, and the spreads only served as another extension of coverage, reaching to people who may not be politically aware. In the interview, both Obama and Clinton gave excellent answers; I particularly liked Obama’s example of Google as a company that hasn’t been around long but that runs excellently. He has a point–but I also think that experience does go hand in hand with longevity/age, for lack of a better word–it’s why young people have such a hard time finding jobs and such.

But what might be one of the most telling moments in the entire segment is the ending: Says Hillary, “I have a clear sense that things will work out the way they work out. I will be fine.” It’s the quintessential ending for a female-centered story. After all, that’s how Sex and the City ended, with Carrie saying she’ll be fine, and that it’ll be just fabulous. I can just hear Hillary saying the same thing.

Is it okay to be unsure?

Everyone in my family plans to vote in the presidential primaries Tuesday.

None of us is sure who we’re going to vote for.

Polls and studies have indicated that many people make up their mind the day of, at the voting booth. Some people even make up their mind a day or two before.

My weekend–-and my Monday and probably my Tuesday–-will be made up of studying the candidates and finalizing my vote.

Is it ok to vote for someone even if you’re not sure?

I think of it like studying for an exam. You study and study and study, and worry and worry and worry, but finally you realize that you aren’t making any breakthroughs and you might as well just say fuck it and take a break. You’ve read and prepared and outlined to the max, and if you don’t know it now, then you never will. It’s the same for prepping for a speech or a paper: You know the deadline, and extending it just makes the process harder, so you just have to do it. I’m going to take what I know and believe and try to figure out a rationale why I’m voting for a candidate. The problem is that I like many of those running, and many of their positions are similar. I wonder about electability, dynasties, the things that influence me...I read an article the other day about Obama and his chances in the midwest, and a lot of those interviewed made reference to him being a Muslim, and how that worried them. That’s stupid, I thought, they're uninformed, it’s just small-town mindedness and pack mentality. Then I realized that I can easily fall into the same trap, but with opposite reasoning: Basically all my friends are huge Obama supporters, for his vision, youth, and passion, what he represents. Since I live in a different area of the country, one "more liberal", we reject all the nonsense about Obama's religious background. In the same vein, no one I know will vote for Huckabee because he’s an evangelist. We don’t do evangelism here. He’s "the best-liked candidate among people who will never vote for him." My brother, the great follower of politics that he is, dislikes all Republicans except Ron Paul, even though I pointed out to him that some of his beliefs align more closely with Republicans.

I am influenced by all these things, from reading Times editorials every day to listening to my friends expel the virtues of Obama and demonizing Hillary to falling under Andrew Sullivan’s spell in the Atlantic. I wonder at all the things I miss, all the things the media miss. I’ll never feel absolutely informed, and that pretty much goes for any subject. But all I can do is try, and work to constantly separate the minutia from the opinion from the facts to form my own opinion. I cannot not be influenced, from the articles I read to the arguments they give.

So if I'm so ambivalent, why am I even voting at all?

I am voting because I feel this primary is important, and I want to be a part of it, I want to say that I participated in something important and life-changing. If the U.S. is indeed at a crossroads, then I want to say that I was there, I remember, that I took part. My little vote is just one, but it’s something, and being engaged with the world is important to me.

I don’t care about endorsements. I dislike the Kennedys, and so the comparisons of Obama to President Kennedy makes me less likely to vote for him, not more. I pay attention to why newspapers endorse candidates–-for me, that makes a bigger impact than some senator saying "vote for this guy". This might seem irrational at first, as senators, congresspeople and other politicians have worked with the candidates and so have an idea of how they operate, but I never hear specifics from them, nothing concrete, which is what I want to hear--examples, the why and the how. Editorials and commentary from columnists have space to explain, to provide some facts and data.

I'm off to go study. I only have a little time left.

Politicking

I’ve been wondering why Barack Obama, the junior senator from Illinois, has such momentum in this presidential race. He basically came out of nowhere—that 2004 Democratic National Convention speech (how did he get picked for that?) made him our great next Democratic presidential hopeful. I understand that he’s young and that he represents a changing of the guard. I just don’t understand the particulars, how one speech that put him in the national spotlight also made it seem a given that he’s qualified enough to be our next president, and that he has a good shot of winning. Sometimes I wonder if people are supporting him because he’s black. Yes, he has the goods: charm, personality, an interesting background yet one that fits in with the status quo (lawyer), he’s young and ready to make a change…and he’s black, so why not? It’s that extra oomph that puts him ahead.

Contrast that with Hillary, who I feel is blackmarked by a lot of people because of her name. The brilliant op-ed piece by Gloria Steinem in today’s Times (#1 on the email list too!) articulates so well why the feminist in me wants to support Hillary. I know she’s worked hard her entire life, is considered an excellent senator, and really wants to be president because she wants to change things. So many people I know are anti-Hillary—and honestly, for the most part, I can’t remember why. Other than being who she is, her baggage defines her, and those are the main reasons that people don’t like her. She’s in a no-win position, damned if you do, damned if you don’t, regarding her background, experience, and the people who support her, because people don’t want to listen. They know that she’s just going to bring corruption and scandal to the office, that she reeks of the ‘90s. Although we curiously are a nostalgic nation when it comes to popular culture today, it doesn’t seem to work for the candidates referring to themselves as Kennedy-, Reagan-, or Lincolnesque. Maybe it’s because there’s a war on, and nobody is trying to be Roosevelt.

As I write this, I haven’t seen Hillary’s emotional outburst yet, I’ve only read about it. But even so, I get it. Campaigning for anything, devoting so much time and energy to any cause, let alone president, is completely giving your all. Of course it’s emotional. Every single thing these candidates do is scrutinized, and with Hillary it’s double. The pressure is exhausting and nonstop, and I applaud her for being human and for being real. Hillary, in a sense, has been preparing for this her entire life, and I’ve always liked seeing the person behind the persona, so to speak. It’s important to see it in our leaders, the people we admire and who get recognition for actively trying to make a difference in this world so we can really see how hard they work and how things get done, instead of just seeing celebrities buying cereal in the grocery store, the defunct mode of seeing famous people as ordinary citizens.

Maybe Hillary really is like Reese Witherspoon’s character in Election. Tracey Flick is a manipulative bitch, but she’s fascinating. And she does put her all into that damn election.