Share:

Presidential elections always seem exciting to me. A competition that every four years, takes on a different shape, but ultimately leads back to a one-on-one event that is decided over a 20 hour voting process.The elections are in essence the most important sporting event in the country. They have it all. The flash, flair and magnitude of the Super Bowl, the tradition and history of the World Series, and a sense of national pride that is comparable only to the Olympics. Even though I was too young to vote or even really care about past elections, I always seemed to find myself glued to CNN on election night to have Wolf Blitzer call the play by play of my favorite sporting event.

This election is different. Now I am able to vote. I decided that I would dismiss all my preconceived notions about any political parties, and start from scratch. I would do my homework on the candidate’s backgrounds, find causes I really cared about and the candidates that cared about them too, and in the end I was sure I could find a candidate that suited me well.
It turns out that choosing a candidate is much more of a group effort than I thought. The media becomes your partner whether you like it or not. Everyone that can find themselves a national forum seems to have an opinion, and whole networks lean their programming towards a certain party or candidate.

I was watching TV the other day when I saw Renee Zellweger tell me that she was voting for Hillary Clinton and why I should vote for Clinton. I didn’t really pay much attention to it because post “Jerry McGuire,” frankly Zellweger hasn’t really impressed me that much. I realized however these were some big “Bridget Jones’ Diary” fans watching or maybe even a few people that thought “Me, Myself and Irene” should have won her an Oscar. It became apparent that the only reason she would make this announcement on TV would be to sway people to vote for the candidate of her choice. I convinced myself not to put too much emphasis on the celebrity vote though, because if I were to choose a candidate based on famous endorsements it would have definitely been Mike Huckabee, who had the endorsements of Chuck Norris, professional wrestler Ric Flair and rocker Ted Nugent. Even with the amount of cool that those endorsements brought, Huckabee had to drop out of the race.
Clinton, however, can probably use all the help she can get with the celebs because her opponent Barrack Obama has been welding a super force named Oprah for about the last six months of his campaign. Obama used Oprah Winfrey, the syndicated talk show host watched by millions every day, as a secret weapon for the Iowa Caucuses where he needed a win, and guess what? It worked he won, and after that started to pick up momentum that has carried him to a slight lead over Clinton in this part of the race.

Democrats haven’t been the only party getting caught in media bias; even the Republicans have gotten into the mix. John McCain has sewed up the Republican Party nomination, but that doesn’t mean that all die hard Republicans like it. Rush Limbaugh, who in his own way is like the Oprah to republicans, has come out and said he would vote for Clinton rather than stick with his own party and vote McCain.

The media networks themselves are perhaps the most frustrating. Fox has a large and unwavering conservative bias, and doesn’t even try to hide it. The only reason Fox News had to come into existence however was the already liberal media bias that CNN produced.

Even my favorite TV shows were getting into the mix. Two weeks ago Saturday Night Live dedicated a whole segment of its weekend update sketch to have Tina Fey talk about why Clinton needed to be president. It was funny, but instead of its main purpose being entertainment like most Saturday Night Live sketches, this was all about getting people to vote for Clinton. Obama and McCain didn’t get any time on SNL, they didn’t get to respond to what Fey had said, but that’s just the way the media is.

After all the work I put into finding the candidate I wanted to support, I was left with nothing. I tried to hear every angle, but that’s exactly what I got. I decided to wait until after the party conventions are over, and the playoffs start, to make my decision, then there will only be two people to choose from and you never know maybe Ted Nugent will switch to one of the active candidates, or Zellweger’s next fill will wow me, but until then I’m going to try and do all the research myself and stay away from the networks and celebrities. Well, that’s at least until Wolf Blitzer and Election night ’08 start, than I will be there with my box of popcorn and seven red bulls to keep me going though the night.

Follow: