That Kid

It’s the last day before the election.  Here’s my last take.  If you’ve read my thoughts before, this will be no surprise.

Go back to your childhood years and remember something for me.

You had a pile of kids in your neighborhood you played with. They were pretty much ordinary – a few nerds, a few jocks, and lots of them in the middle. I bet you can name at least a dozen who you played tag with, or some touch football, or riding bikes all around town. Really – recall some of those names for yourself.  Remember their faces, their parents.  Their nicknames.  They had pets you can still name, even after all these years.  Mostly nice kids who helped create a good community to grow up with.

And there were the times you ‘d break out the board games and you’d play.  Monopoly.  Mousetrap.  Aggravation.  Parcheesi.  What were your favorite things to do with your friends?  It was fun, wasn’t it?

Except for . . .

That one kid in the neighborhood who pushed things around.  Outside, this kid was the one who would ride by on his bike, grab your hat and throw it in the ditch.  This kid would hear his mother calling when it was his turn to be ‘it’.  At board game time, this was the kid who ‘accidentally’ bumped the table to throw off the pieces just as the game was ending.  The kid who managed to ‘misplace’ the marble for the Mousetrap game when his mouse was under the cage.  The kid who shifted houses and hotels around on Monopoly when no one was looking.  The kid who would then make these instances look like some other kid had been pulling a fast one.  The kid wasn’t smart or dumb – he wasn’t from either side of the tracks. He just had this way about him.

Sooner or later, you and your friends really hoped this kid would move away.    

And that is where I am with Donald Trump.  He’s “that kid” to me. I never hated that kid in our home town, and I don’t hate President Trump.  Just like that kid in our home town, I just wish he would move away.

Advertisement

Week 41 – Negative Ads

A Checklist for Watching Negative Political Ads

When it comes to those negative ads, there are certain things that give away the falsehood so often employed in such situations. Here are just a few.

If there are unflattering pictures of the candidate, you can bet someone sat with an editing machine and purposely found bad photos of the candidate. That applies to your least and best favorite candidate’s ads. It is especially true if the ad is in slow motion.

If the candidate is heard speaking, you can bet that same editor sat with sound clips and took all kinds of things out of context. This one is especially true if the same sound bite is repeated often within thirty seconds.

If a candidate is blamed for some failed law or program, you can bet there are many others involved. It takes a legislature and executive branch to bring about all laws, successful and otherwise. To blame or give credit to one person just doesn’t follow in our system. No one person has that much command…. Have you ever met anyone who did? Same thing goes if the candidate is characterized as being blindly selfish.

If a candidate is connected with another candidate or well-known politician, you can pretty much bet there’s a whole more to it than is being said. This is similar to the last paragraph. No one or two people have that much influence that gets followed blindly. Again, do you know anyone who does have such pull?

I would be willing to be that you can see all four examples above in one single ad about one single candidate – and I don’t care what party they represent. Negative ads are manipulative. We should ignore them. We have lost too many good candidates because we have allowed ourselves to be sucked into such baloney.

Bottom line: Check out what the candidates have to offer, what their positions are. Read their literature. Watch their own TV ads, if you can find them among the negativity out there.