Continuously serving Kosciusko County since 1854
Tuesday will be an important day.
Please be part of it. Go to the polls. Vote. It is important.
I think the one thing that I will remember most about campaign 2000 is how negative it was.
It seems each election cycle, the candidates get more and more nasty.
The candidates are nasty on both sides of the aisle.
And they lie.
It's funny how if I wanted to sell something, I would be bound by truth in advertising.
Imagine what would happen if I advertised a 1999 car for sale and you showed up and it was really a 1979.
What would you do? Would you shrug and say, "Oh, well, close enough," and plunk down your money?
Or would you argue?
And when you argued, what would you do if I said, "Yeah, well, I know the sheet metal makes it look like a 1979, but it really is a 1999. Look at the odometer. It only has 8,000 miles on it. See?"
Would you be convinced? Or would you laugh in my face and walk away?
Of course you would walk away. You're not a fool.
But when our politicians advertise, they misrepresent, they exaggerate, they outright lie to us.
And what do we do?
We shrug and say, "Oh, well, close enough," and plunk down our votes anyway.
Why do we do that? Why aren't we outraged? Why do we allow them to lie to us?
I think truth in advertising should apply to candidates.
I think we should hold them accountable for what they say.
A great idea to move us along that path has been put forth by Kathleen Hall Jamieson, dean of the Annenberg School for Communication of the University of Pennsylvania.
She proposes that when a candidate starts a new radio or TV ad, the candidate be required to simultaneously post the supporting documentation on his or her Web site.
That way, when the advertising agencies and consultants are preparing political ads, they would be less likely to play fast and loose with the facts.
This is no magic cure, but I think it would help.
Surely other campaign reform is needed. Things like increasing the individual contribution limit, capping soft money contributions and limiting the amount a candidate can raise outside his or her district would be nice.
It also would be nice to see the networks donate a few minutes each night in the month before an election to each candidate.
Of course campaign reform is not really popular with either major party in Congress. After all, the ones charged with making meaningful changes are the ones who benefit most from leaving things the way they are.
So until we have reforms we have half truths, innuendo and outright lies.
Nonetheless, it is still important to vote.
So as we head to the polls on Tuesday, I wanted to leave with you something that has been floating around on the Internet.
It pretty well sums up my view of the difference between liberal and conservative philosophies of government.
The Ant and the Grasshopper, classic version:
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.
Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The grasshopper has no food or shelter and dies in the cold.
The Ant and the Grasshopper, modern version:
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.
Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.
The networks all show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food.
America is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can this be that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?
The grasshopper appears on Oprah and everyone cries when they sing "It's Not Easy Being Green."
Jesse Jackson stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house, where the news stations film the group singing "We Shall Overcome."
Jackson then has the group kneel down to pray for the grasshopper's sake.
Al Gore exclaims during an interview with Peter Jennings that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper and calls for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his "fair share."
The EEOC drafts the "Economic Equity and Anti-Grasshopper Discrimination Act" retroactive to the beginning of the summer and sets the grasshopper up as a new protected class of individual.
The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs during his summer food gathering operation.
The grasshopper, represented by Rose Law Firm, sues the ant for discrimination. The ant loses and the grasshopper is awarded damages.
Not having enough left to pay his taxes, the ant's home is confiscated by the government.
The ant trudges off into the snow to start over.
The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits of the ant's food while the government house the grasshopper lives in (which happens to be the ant's old house) crumbles for lack of maintenance.
The grasshopper decides he'd much rather live in a warmer climate. He uses the last of his settlement money to head south. He calls a press conference to criticize the non-inclusive social nature of honey bees, labeling them as politically incorrect.
The abandoned house is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the once peaceful neighborhood.
The moral of the story?
Vote conservative.
