Political Sports

I just finished watching last night’s Daily Show, where Jon interviewed President Bush’s close friend and advisor Karen Hughes. Karen stated that she had been “inspired by the political process,” and Jon retorted, “How can we do that again?” He followed his implication with an analogy to baseball, comparing the Democrats and Republicans to Yankees fans and Red Sox fans. He explained that they are so polarized against one another that they focus only on the smallest of differences, but fail to see how much they are the same. Karen, of course, laughed that off; but I think it is foolish to do so.

This idea is why Hedda is so enamoured with Ralph Nader and his campaign. It’s why she is volunteering to work for them several hours each week. She keeps telling me, and I mostly agree, that the two parties are really the same. The differences are so small as to not matter, and the continuing drop in voter turnout is evidence of that. The increasing apathy and cyncism among mine and following generations is symptomatic of that. We neither feel like our government represents us, nor do we ever expect it to; so why should we bother?

People don’t care much about baseball when they are football fans.