2. The Political Spin (September 29, 2008)

This is an interesting e-mail I received :

“I'm a little confused. Let me see if I have this straight. . . . .

* If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you're "exotic, different."
* If you grow up in Alaska eating moose burgers, you're a quintessential American story.

* If your name is Barack, you're a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.
* If you name your kids Track, Bristol, Willow, Piper, and Trig, you're a maverick.

* If you graduate from Harvard Law School, you are unstable.
* If you attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you're well grounded.

* If you spend 3 years as a brilliant community organizer, become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate's Health and Human Services Committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works, and Veterans' Affairs Committees, you don't have any real leadership experience.
* If your total resume is local weather girl, 4 years on the city council, 6 years as the mayor of a town with fewer than 7,000 people, and 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you're qualified to become the country's second highest ranking executive.

* If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you're not a real Christian.
* If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you're a Christian.

* If you teach responsible, age-appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.
* If, while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence-only with no other option in sex education in your state's school system, while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant, you're very responsible.

* If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family's values don't represent America's.
* If your husband is nicknamed "First Dude," with at least one DWI conviction and no college education, who didn't register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable.

OK, *much* clearer now.”

I laughed out loud when I read this e-mail and then was a bit disgusted. The media is an ever going source that can skew even the straightest of lines. When I do watch the new, I often can't stand to watch it very long. To me, it seems that every story that the news covers has to be has to be so dramatic and sensational. Death and destruction are about the only two things that will always be there.

Maybe it was the lack of language skills or things just went over my head, but while in Germany the news was never so sensational. The need to strike fear in the watcher, I felt, was not there in the same way as in American news.

The most annoying thing I find with Obama vs. McCain is the fact that the issue of race is always brought up. Why is Obama judged on his race before the stance of his political views? I guess this race issue bothers me because I think of a person’s personality before the color of their skin. This is because of what my parents taught me growing up and I am very thankful for that. The exposure of people from other cultures and the consistent living out of the golden rule has had a great and positive impact on my life.

As I think ahead into the future as I pursue teaching, I want to create an atmosphere in my classroom of safety and equality. I hope to have a poster of Norman Rockwell’s painting, “Do to others what you would have them do to you.” I have loved it ever since seeing the original in the UN building in NY.