Judging a Book by it’s Cover
April 1, 2008
Let’s imagine, for a moment, the following scenario.
A couple of books are nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Let’s imagine that the people awarding the prize are the entire American populace. What if 82% of these people loved Drama, and would refuse to vote for anything else. Now Let’s say that there is one book that pleases this specific audience, one that has a really attractive cover. Everyone looks at it, reads the blurb on the back, and doesn’t really bother to look into any others. It wins the prize, but turns out that there were more books that were much more deserving of the prize.
So, it’s a bit of a stretch, but this is how we treat our politicians. (By the way according to census in 2001, 82% of the nation is christian) I understand it is human nature to judge someone by how they look physically, but we go much farther than the basic human nature. Politicians have become celebrities. Now, I will never understand what is so fascinating about celebrities that has people gawking at them, and following their every move and their every decision. It’s also amusing when the phrase gets thrown around, “They’re just like us!” You can’t possibly mean they have lives, problems, feelings and taxes? Nonsense! We, the people, refuse to believe it. But I digress; This is exactly how we treat our politicians. I think Americans need to get back in touch with politics. The point of an election is to choose a person who has the best plan for our current situation, someone who has a good idea of what they are going to do, and someone level-headed with a minimum bias. Unfortunately, it’s become a disarray of discrimination.
If Obama is black, does that make him any less able of becoming a leader? If Hillary is a woman, are her ideas invalidated? Ridding the world of discrimination is an age old goal that may never come true, but we could at least try to not discriminate where it counts, when choosing a president. It’s all fine and good that you choose someone who you can relate to on a personal, or religious level, but that does not mean that they will make the best choices for our country.
Politicians have lives too, they make mistakes, and they have problems. People feel that they have the right to judge politicians based on these small mistakes that anyone would make. Take for example, Bill Clinton; A fantastic president, and an overall great guy. So he got into a little fling with an intern. Yes, it’s wrong, but is it any of our business? No, he shouldn’t have to go in front of a court and try to defend himself. If this happened to any of us, we would settle it with our significant other, and not with the American public. And it sure as hell wouldn’t affect our career. Unfortunately, because of what the media did to it, and the way our society works, it was blown up into a huge scandal.
Lastly, I come to the separation of church and state. If we keep religion out of schools and the workplace, What place do they have in our politics? It seems that if you put two candidates that were exactly alike next to each other, but one of them being christian and one being atheist, the christian would win. Why? Because of the majority of the United States is christian, and unfortunately they believe that a non-christian candidate is a non-moral candidate. I guess I’m asking for the ignorant to become informed, the stubborn to listen, and the frightened to take risks. Maybe I am asking for too much?
All images from sxc.hu (the stock.xchng)
