November 03, 2004
Confessions of a Junkie
Humor
I’ve been a political junkie since I was 15 years old. First I was seduced by newspapers that were unthinkingly made available to my impressionable young mind. I read things, formed an opinion on them and then I was hooked. It quickly progressed. Soon I was reading books. Then I got an internship at a congressman’s office. By my senior year of high school, I was a full-blown addict.
This is an easy way to ostracize yourself from society. The saying is not to talk about politics or religion? Politics was my religion. What else could I talk about? The weather? Sports? Celebrity gossip? Cooking? Knitting? Ick. Soon my circle of friends became smaller and smaller. I was sinking deeper into the depths of my addiction.
Yesterday, I spent 10 hours, yes 10 hours flipping back and forth between CNN and MSNBC and closely watching the CSPAN website. I had a fellow junkie give me the early exit poll data - nice fix! If I had to leave the room, I would hit pause on my TiVo as to not miss a single pundit or state update. I have a deadline. I have dogs that needed to be walked. I couldn’t stop myself. I fell asleep on the couch at midnight, only to wake up at 3am to check and see what happened with Ohio.
I've hit rock bottom. The addiction is insidious and subtle. It’s a slow indoctrination. One day you wake up and you’re alone with your political blog with nothing to show for it, but a couple of stellar Bush and Kerry jokes and a mild case of carpal tunnel. Where has the last ten years of my life gone? My family raised me better than this!
As of today - I'm on the wagon! I'm quitting cold turkey. I'm turning over a new leaf. I'm writing only in bad recovery clichés!
As of today - I'm going to toss my hair back, smile coyly and say, "I don't know, I'm not very political. Have you heard the latest {insert sports team here} score? Isn’t Britney Aguilera wonderful? Look, I'm knitting this fantastic sweater."
Tina, I feel your pain (Clinton-style). It’s one thing to keep a close eye on an election campaign close to home, but it’s quite another to spending 10 hours watching an election campaign on the other side of the planet, as many of us in Australia did on Wednesday.
With technology on our side, the ‘pond’ that is the Pacific Ocean matters little - flick between CNN, FoxNews, ABC America, NBC, Bloomberg and the BBC, and you can pretend you’re in the heart of Minnasota, or Ohio, or wherever the hell you want to be.
Posted by: Ari at November 4, 2004 12:14 AMtake heart Tina, you’re not entirely alone…knowledge sometimes is intoxicating…if it is your desire to understand and get to the depths of an issue, it can also be consuming…i’m glad the
election is over…now i can get back to life…my horse did’nt win and i remember feeling a cascade of emotions all at the same time when Florida went red…the democratic party was taken to the woodshed on November 2 and i wonder if they’ll recover…it seems that special interests, an uninformed public, fear and war mongers are going to put our feet to the coals for the next four years…i cringe at the thought…just today,
the neo-cons are looking to raise the national debt ceiling…if this continues, sooner or later,
with 1/3 of the US debt owned by foreign countries, the dollar will crash and americans will pay taxes and get nothing…the wolfowitz doctrine will accelerate this…along with big government spending sprees…there is already talk of the secret 70 billion dollar request for Iraq…we’ve become a warfare state and have taken
another step down the dangerous road of empire…hopefully the democrats will show some spine and stonewall him for the next 2 years, after that he’ll be quacking…i just hope this great nation of ours is recognizable by then…i’ll leave you with a quote you probably already know from George Orwell, which accurately depicts the “chickenhawks” and their neo-conservative agenda…
“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever.” I agree. take care and keep faith. mb
Comment deleted - Not on Topic - This is a political discussion website! — WatchBlog Manager
Posted by: Maggie at November 4, 2004 04:13 PMWow Maggie,
How insightful. I’ll be sure to take that in mind.
great quote Martin!
Posted by: Nick at November 4, 2004 06:04 PMWow Maggie,
How insightful. I’ll be sure to take that in mind. (insert heavy sarcasm here)
great quote Martin!
Posted by: Nick at November 4, 2004 06:04 PMNick,\
I see a bit of hippocrasy here, I do believe you were just chastising others (me) for dialoguing on a Liberal board. Hmmmmmm what are you doing here I might ask.
Bummer to be a hippocrit. Just like your posts on the liberal board.
Brad
Posted by: brad at November 4, 2004 10:09 PMI know exactly how you feel. I’m only 14 years old and when the war in Iraq was really bad I started reading newspaper articles. Then I slowly developed a severe obsession over political debates and opinions. I’m only guessing that one of the reasons that can explain my deep passion for government issues and international debates is that I am a Middle Eastern and hearing so many prejudice remarks infuriated me remarkably. As a matter of fact, I just finished a political debate about Bush a few hours ago!
Posted by: Miss Cali at November 5, 2004 03:35 AMI have to admit to watching every hour of the election coverage until I fell asleep at around 3:30am EST, sometime after John Edwards gave his short speech.
I subscribe to Dish Networks who had an ‘election coverage’ application where you could watch 6 tv screens at once, highlighting one to give you the audio, so you could cover what was going on at all times. CNN, FoxNews, NSMBC, C-SPAN, MTV and Comedy Central were covered. I spent the whole night there, from 6:00pm EST until 3:00am the next morning. Before that I was listening to the radio shows and reading Drudge, news.google.com, realclearpolitics.com, etc.
I’ve taken a few days away, long enough to actually get an offer to change jobs and accepting (yay!) and recharge my batteries. It won’t be long before I’m back in there posting articles in the middle column, critical of Bush as well as the Dems in the upcoming battles that they will be having.
I admit I have a problem, but I just choose to accept it!
Posted by: Rhinehold at November 5, 2004 12:22 PMTroll Brad,
Last time I checked this WAS the liberal board.
btw, How EXACTLY am I a hypocrite (which is how you actually spell it)?
