opportunity knocks

As someone who considers herself a fairly informed individual, especially in comparison to some of my university peers, I of course watched Friday evening's presidential debates. I saw the eye rolling, the name calling, and the "Truth Squad" from NBC point out the factual errors of each candidate in the post-game analysis. (Eisenhower did not write a letter of resignation. Take that.) And I agreed with most of the commentators: the candidates did a good job of reassuring their respective camps of their policies, but really didn't say anything new. Sure, they breezed over the specifics of the financial bail out, but who wouldn't? No one wants to hear that because investment banks are tanking their kid's school is going to even further cut the music program. It's the way political jargon is expected to run.

And then, when I was standing outside Martin Stadium in Pullman yesterday, I found myself standing about 4 feet away from Dino Rossi, as he was kissing the usual ass of Eastern Washington. And a thought came to me:

What would I say if I walked up to him and asked one question?

Think about it. We complain about biased coverage all day long (shout out to Chris Matthews), but if given the chance, what would we want to directly ask of a political candidate?

My first thought was broad, more along the lines of "hi, my name is Joy Bacon. Why should I vote for you?" In Dino Rossi's case, I want to ask him if he ever learned about fallacies in high school AP language arts, because if he had, he would know that you can't prove a causal link between Christine Gregoire and food prices in a 30-second TV spot. And then all the other questions that flood my mind surrounding social policy end up pinning me as a one-issue voter, which I hope to God to never be. And even now, as I sit in my office and try to come up with some intellectual, world-changing question, I can't decide.

I guess what it comes down to is that I'm tired of scripted answers. I'm fed up with ads that I don't trust or speeches you don't need corrective eye wear to see through. I want a straight yes or no, a simple explanation, or a simple "I don't know, but I'll get back to you." Now all I have to do is find the perfect question to get me that answer.

The things that can happen

Since I've been on a bit of a hiatus from the blogosphere, I've been feeling quite detached from the Internet world. Instead of reading 20-30 articles a day from various news sites, I maybe skim the headlines of two American sources before I have to scamper off to the next thing. But in the time I have had to be an informed individual, here are the stories I found that you may have missed:

1. TRL (Total Request Live) is going off the air in November. In other words, the part of my life that was lived out with Carson Daly from 3:30 to 5 p.m. every day is now being canceled. This means MTV will have even less music-based television, showing yet again how the culture created through music tends to dominate over the music itself. Get ready for more "My Super Sweet Sixteen" marathons that we should be asked to tolerate.

2. New York Times' columnist Maureen Dowd finally showed how the West Wing wasn't just a bunch of theoretical, ratings-driven mumbo jumbo by creating a conversation between the show's presidents, Jed Bartlet, and Barak Obama. Good stuff.

3. The View is becoming somewhat of an authoritative voice when it comes to political analysis. Who knew that when I sat on my couch and was rooting for Elizabeth Hasselbeck (then Elizabeth Filarski) to survive the Australian Outback, I would be rooting for one of the up-and-coming daytime co-hosts of today. Although I do think she wears entirely too much pink.

4. I wrote a sports column for The Whitworthian as a last-minute space filler. I'll never escape.