Gossip Column Politics

It's fascinating--and rather dreadful--that in our huge nation, so seemingly powerful and prosperous, the main focus of this election year has been more on gossip and juicy personal tidbits rather than on the fact that, among the industrialized, commodity-stuffed countries, the United States has the most income inequity, some of the worst schools, and examples of eye-bulging poverty and cultural isolation that it's a wonder that Europe, Japan, China et al haven't decided to to band together and "take" this tottering behemoth...and, in many ways, they are beginning to do so. But our candidates aren't talking about this. It doesn't sell, doesn't sound good. Selling America and letting the poor rot in the slums, the blighted Appalachian disasters, the dusty New Mexico rural poverty, the sinking industrial Midwest doesn't grab attention. Actually, we shouldn't "compete" with the rest of the world like pumped-up high school jocks, nor show them what democracy means (perhaps the pre -2000 and 2004 voting stealing version)...the old saw about getting our house in order is exactly right. September, 2005, New Orleans. What a horror, what tragedy, what embarrassment. What will Potato Head (McCain) and The Hope Whisperer (Obama) do about all this? Meanwhile, we hear how Mrs. Palin has a pregnant daughter, and that Michelle Obama said something or other about finally feeling proud of her country. With so many indications that we are heading for an even more rigidly divided economic house, really, should we give a shit about things like that?