And So It Begins

By Sule Aygoren Carranza

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I think I’m going to stop watching television. Not that I get much of a chance to watch anything with a full-time job and a three-year-old, but between the royal wedding obsession and the whole Obama birth certificate phenomenon, I’m pretty sick of what little I’ve been seeing (or subjected to) so far. So for the foreseeable future, it’s going to be Justice League, Tom & Jerry reruns and Yankee games at my house.

Thankfully, the royal wedding obsession will eventually die down now that William and Kate have officially tied the knot. Unfortunately, however, the ridiculous political coverage—if you could even call it that–will only intensify as we get closer to the 2012 election. Right now, we’re far enough away from the election that it’s not being treated seriously.

I’d even go so far as saying it’s become a bit of a joke, much to this country’s detriment. To an outside observer, everything that’s coming out of the “Birther” Camp, Sarah Palin, the Tea Party and Fox News in general is making US politics look like a sideshow. We have a massive national deficit, continued unemployment and a housing and foreclosure crisis (and those are just the tip of the iceberg), but most of the pundits out there are debating the citizenship of our legally elected president and giving credence to the would-be political aspirations of a reality TV star. And when I think about the number of people in this country who are actually taking all of this seriously, I’m a little disgusted.

Hoping for dignity in politics may be too much to ask, but the current state of affairs is simply embarrassing. I only hope that much of the hoopla will die down as the months pass and the field of candidates is narrowed down. It goes without saying that Barack Obama will run for reelection in 2012 as a Democrat, but it’s still not clear whom his main GOP opponent will be. The frontrunners—and by that, I mean the ones that actually have a chance, not the loudest or most controversial—appear to be Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, Ron Paul and Tim Pawlenty, in no particular order.

And then there are the rest—sadly, the ones we’re hearing from the most. Newt Gingrich is considering a run; frankly I think he’s the mildest of this bunch. There’s Rick Santorum, the ultra-conservative. If you haven’t heard about his (well deserved, IMO) “Google Problem” by now, just type his last name into a search engine. That’s all I’m sayin’ about that. And Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin? They’re riding the thin line between crazy and scary. Rounding out this bunch is Donald Trump. The Don. The Combover. Most folks in the commercial real estate industry are wary of doing business with him; the fact that some people in this country can’t see beyond an obvious publicity stunt and view him as a serious potential candidate is downright frightening.

Hey, maybe the Mayan calendar will prove correct and none of this will matter. Then again, if Trump or Palin end up in the White House, the world may as well come to an end.

(To search across all ALM blogs, go to www.Lexis.com.)