Weekly Rorschach

I tuned into This American Life this week. Normally, I don't use this space to react to one specific show or event. I don’t do reviews for the Rorschach as such. I try to go for the big picture. But this week I was stunned. Throughout my media consumption I’ve been beat over the head with the inevitability of Barrack Obama’s glorious victory next week. Now of course I’m biased, but I look at the map, and I look at the polls (which almost unanimously show Obama leading comfortably WITHIN the margin of error) and I just don’t see it. Even the New York Times admits that even if every tracking poll is completely correct, Obama is still shy 10 electoral votes shy of the 270 he needs.

Now when I first tuned in to This American Life and realized the topic was going to be the election, I almost turned it off right there. The last thing I needed to hear was more cheerleading for The Chosen One (who’s really Darth Vader, anyway). But no. Wait. What’s this I hear? Dejection!

The show sounded like a mournful primer for the Obama campaign pity party! Of course, it included a segment in the middle that dismissed Union members who won’t vote for Obama as simply and incurably racist. Cold comfort, for them.

Most of all, I was encouraged by the story about campaign workers in Pennsylvania. These workers call themselves “Democrats for McCain.” The host even admitted that her liberal friends started spewing expletives at the very mention of such a creature. The reporter doing the story followed these volunteers around who knocking doors (successfully!!) persuading the liberal residents of Scranton, PA to vote for McCain. It seems that McCain/Palin is managing to drink Hillary’s milkshake after all. God bless America.