The Pendulum
OPINION
Thursday, November 6, 2008 / Page 21
Those who vote change direction of the nation Every election cycle, the debate about voter turnout is revived. The United States is far from having full participation and generally, turnout settles somewhere between 50 and 60 percent in presidential elections. American society loves to complain about where government fails, but Taylor Doe apparently nearly half of Columnist Americans don’t care enough to actually try to change it. In Australia, voter participation is mandated by law. If citizens don’t show up at the polls, they face a fine and in some extreme circumstances, jail time. As a result, their voter turnout is approximately 95 percent. Other countries, such as Belgium, Peru and Switzerland, have various forms of compulsory voting laws and in these countries, most citizens support these laws.
Maybe in the United States, citizens don’t see voting as important. It is true that Americans are more political than many other countries when it comes to letter–writing campaigns, calling representatives and staging protests. So perhaps voting is seen as one piece of the puzzle and only one part of civic responsibility. But if individuals don’t vote, make no mistake, they will be ignored by politicians. When voters don’t show up at the polls, the deal breaker in elections is which party can mobilize its base the best. Therefore, candidates will speak to the more divisive issues such as abortion and gay marriage, shutting out important issues such as education and health care that everyone agrees are in dire need of attention. In this year’s election, candidates for both parties debated the issue of predatory lending to students in need of loans for college. This didn’t happen because the polarized wings of the Democratic and Republican parties decided this issue was important. It happened because young voters showed up in record numbers during the primaries and the
candidates could no longer ignore them. If Americans don’t participate in the process, their opinions don’t matter. Candidates don’t care about issues until voters give them a reason to pay attention. If someone, some group in particular, shows up at the polls, politicians will take notice and they will focus on the issues that voters demand. There was a record turnout in this election and millions of those who showed up at the polls were first-time voters. If this trend continues, politicians will have to answer to the electorate and won’t be able to ignore the tough issues anymore. That’s why it is so essential to be informed about the issues and make opinions known by voting. With the rapid spread of early voting and the option of absentee ballots, there is absolutely no reason why anyone should have sat out the 2008 election. This was an historic election and those who cast their ballots can know that they played a part in shaping the revolutionary direction of the country.
Election coverage shifts focus from significant international issues The networks have been obsessively blasting election coverage with a vigor that rivals the frenzy of candidates’ final stumping travels. For the last couple of weeks, election speculation and pundit supposition have been aired with reportage not seen since the broadcast of the Beijing Olympics. Margeaux The world has not ceased Corby spinning to accommodate Opinions Editor the 2008 election, but major international issues have been almost ignored by major networks. The War in Iraq all but disappeared from headlines unless a candidate gave a quick, and generally shallow, sound byte. As of Tuesday, 4,193 American military personnel have been killed in Operation Iraqi Freedom according to the Department of Defense. Where are these stories? American households should still be made aware of the troops who have died in the name of democracy and freedom. Instead, we were exposed to the absurdities of CNN fillers about an undecided woman flipping a coin to choose the next president of the United States. “The media world sees the war as less of a story right now,” said LTC Monte Yoder, a military science
professor at UNC Chapel Hill. “It is a world affair,” Yoder said, citing the turmoil and tension in the Middle East and parts of Asia. “The media have a responsibility to keep the world informed of critical events.” What about other important shifts of power abroad? The Czech Republic will assume the rotating presidency of the European Union in January and as a result will lead 27 independent states such as Russia, France and Germany. The country has not yet adopted the Euro and recent regional elections show Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek is almost as popular as President Bush, Barack Obama will govern 165 million people as the next commander-in-chief compared to the 470 million Europeans the Czech will be responsible for leading. Are Europeans’ futures not as important because they live across the Atlantic? “There is an American arrogance where the European Union is concerned,” said Betty Morgan, associate professor of political science. “The economic crisis has shown us the European Union is a significant player in the world and we must start paying attention and stop being so dismissive.” The U.S. economy became the divisive issue in the election as the market continues to dwindle and show lackluster improvement. The number of unemployed people in Spain has reached 11.3 percent, which is the highest climb since spring 1996. The United States is still only at 6.1 percent as of September 2008.
ILLUSTRATING THE ISSUES:
Elon student fall semster accomplishments
Cartoon by Lars Bredahl
This type of perspective needs to be forced on Americans if we wish to continue to be successful players in a global economy. According to Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, CBS featured attacks by the McCain camp 5.2 percent of the campaign coverage while health care as an issue was only featured 2.9 percent of the time. CBS also broadcasted McCain’s “lipstick on a pig” more than issues of health care. It seems that not only did media refuse to feature other national and global stories, but its choice of campaign stories were also extraordinarily irrelevant to the real substantial issues. “We get the media we demand,” said Rich Landesberg, assistant professor of communications. Landesberg claimed society wants to be entertained, but that change is on the horizon. “The times are too serious with the economy, the wars, the future, for people to spend too much time on the trivial,” he said. American media has such a focus on election results it has developed a frightening tunnel vision. Important stories were excluded for unexceptional and non-newsworthy B-rolls of candidates coming out of booths and the construction of respective McCain and Obama raves Tuesday night. The media’s exclusive coverage of the election these last couple of weeks speaks to a disturbing isolation and national narcissism. The election of the 44th president of the United States should be the biggest story, but it should not be the only story.
The difficulty of being politically correct The commonalities people share with one another vastly outweigh the differences, a fact often lost in a world that seems inundated with competing and varied interests. Most of those similarities tend to be ones people would rather not possess. The need to please, to be accepted by others and to live in the most efficient, painless way possible seems to be ingrained in human DNA. The powers that be have attempted Ashley Jobe to transform American culture to avoid that terrible feeling that accompanies Columnist an insult or condescending remark. This “politically correct” culture has come to reign in formal everyday conversations. The term politically correct is just a way of manipulating words into others that have the same meaning. Some people say that politically correct terms (or people who force themselves or others to use them) create an intensely stressful existence. It’s an eternal uphill battle, one that makes it tiresome to stand up for those who, indeed, need defense. In a Nancy Mairs memoir “On Being a Cripple,” she states that the words disabled and handicapped “seem to me to be moving away from my condition, to be widening the gap between word and reality. Most remote is the recently coined euphemism 'differently abled’ which partakes of the same semantic hopefulness that transformed countries from 'undeveloped’ to 'underdeveloped’ then to 'less developed’ and finally to 'developing’ nations, she wrote. She refused to be called something other than what she was because she felt as if it was an insult to her actual condition. Could her ability to get over her condition, and to call things as she saw them, be the key to eradicating the intense sensitivity each one of us possesses about ourselves? The realties of a person’s differences cannot be ignored simply by putting a different label on the surface of their distinctions. Society is caught in a web of social responsibility to speak the truth but not receive a social reprimand. The issues we all confront on a daily basis need be acknowledged, but not exploited. Thus, people must properly navigate those treacherous waters by exercising personal discretions.