Posted on 11/06/2008 9:43:29 PM PST by JennysCool
I finally put my finger on something that's been bugging me all day long -- a day when the mainstream media has been trying its darndest to get the sheeple all worked up over Barack Obama choosing retread Democrat party blowhard Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff, and endeavoring to interest the crowd in unnamed John McCain staffers dishing the dirt over Sarah Palin.
Two days after a "monumental" Presidential election -- this is the news?
And that's when it hit me: the "news" is all done. At least any news that will energize Americans to lavish the sort of attention on an election aftermath that they usually have in the past.
"But," I can hear you emoting, "we've just by God elected the first African American President of the United States!"
Well, yes we have. And that's the thing. America went and made history. Again. We tend to do that a lot.
But it was getting the African American elected that was the point. Like a long and fitfully engrossing TV mini-series, we all endured a ridiculously tedious months-long drama, with oftimes ludicrous twists and turns, and when it was all over, the unprecedented election of a person of color was the outcome.
After which we spent the remainder of our election night -- which was much shorter and more boring than anyone could have possibly anticipated -- saying things like, "Well, er, congratulations, America," and "I'm going to bed."
American attention spans are notoriously short, so here it is -- two days after what the media told us was a mind-bogglingly historic election -- and the big monolithic "national moment" seems to have about as much staying power around the water cooler as the last episode of "The Sopranos" -- gabbed about for a couple of days, and then slipped into the back of the mind while more prosaic concerns -- like staying afloat in the leaking economic lifeboat -- return to their positions of prominence.
In some respects -- maybe most respects -- Barack Obama has already gone and jumped the shark. Sweeps Week is over, to use another TV analogy. The whole 2008 election was pretty much like the classic "Who Shot J.R.?" arc on "Dallas." For months, everybody excitedly guessed at the outcome and the nefarious assailant, and when we found out it was just the fetching Mary Frances Crosby, we shrugged our collective shoulders and moved on.
Which is why we have Palin bashers and -- good God! -- Rahm Emanuel on the front page 48 hours after the event to end all events. The climax really was an anti-climax. Sure, we have the first (in reality -- TV and the movies have done it many times before) African-American President. "That's cool," we say, watching as the shark disappears over the horizon.
The pundits have made a huge drama-queen deal over this somehow being a "triumph over racism," but it's really only the '60s-worshipping pundits and provocateurs who thought this was a racist nation in the first place, anyway. Most Americans long ago knew it was not.
Beyond us, then, lies the normal, turgid government work, just like always. The incoming President may not look like "the guys on the dollar bills," and that's interesting enough, I suppose. But, as always, we're all way more interested in the dollar bills than we are in the President.
Do us all a favor. Keep the change.
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