I've decided I want politics to be just one-fourth as interesting as they're made out to be by most media outlets.
Let me just lay it out for you as plainly as I can: POLITICS IS BORING. I mean, it's "watching your fingernails grow" boring. It's "any Ryan Reynolds movie" boring. Politics is SO BORING, if you pay enough attention to it, your brains will actually leak from your ears and try finding a new cranial host that has more interesting pursuits. That's the reason most politicians seem so dumb, by the way. It's SCIENCE!
I realize politics serves a purpose but, so does a diaper. Whatever purpose politics serves, I'm here to tell you it's an entirely boring one. I've honestly tried to watch C-SPAN on occasion, and even my television asked me to change the channel. On a more micro level, I've sat in on enough city council meetings to know firsthand they're more often than not face-meltingly boring. I've looked at my watch during city council meetings and actually witnessed time going backwards.
To reiterate: POLITICS IS BORING.
Yet, whenever I watch the news or read something about politics, it all sounds inexplicably fascinating.
I mean, there are all sorts of headlines like "BOEHNER SLAMS OBAMA" or "OBAMA RIPS CRITICS" or "MCCAIN DRINKS THE BLOOD OF HIS POLITICAL ENEMIES." If media headlines and lead paragraphs were to be taken literally, one would be forgiven for thinking politics is more interesting than an Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) free-for-all. Can you imagine Boehner actually "slamming" Obama like a professional wrestler dropping an opponent over a bended knee? Me neither; at the very least, Boehner would throw his back out even attempting such a physical impossibility, and that's even IF Boehner could get close enough to Obama to attempt a slam without the secret service stepping in and beating him to within an inch of his life.
The verbs used by so many media outlets is just plain overdone. "Slams!" "Rips!" "Decimates!" "Sodomizes!" "Disembowels!" "Global Warms!" It's politics, for crying out loud; nothing even remotely close to any of that actually happens. Looking at most politicians, about the most action you can expect to see might be "eats food through a straw."
I understand why media outlets resort to such hyperbole. After all, "Obama destroyed his opposition" sounds a lot better than "Obama utilized an arcane parliamentary procedure no one has ever heard of--and some people aren't even sure actually exists--to advance a section of a bill no one cares about, in what his opponents are calling 'Yawn, what time is it? Should we order Applebees?'"
The last time I was even mildly interested in politics was back when Clinton was impeached for lying under oath about having "sexual relations, with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky," and even THAT was boring.
Think about that for second: politics makes even sex boring.
That's just sad.
Posted by Ryan at May 28, 2013 01:07 PM | TrackBack
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