In an attempt to cut down on the automated comment spam that I’ve been receiving here lately, I turned comment moderation up a little too high. As a result, a couple of comments that were made got stuck in the queue for a bit. It wasn’t my intent to actually moderate any valid comments, just to catch the comments of this particular jerkwad who wants to advertise his poker site via my web server without paying me to do so.

I’m all about the free speech…Just not the free advertising.

So, after having watched the election results last night, I have to say that the US networks that we get up here have a lot to learn about covering an election from the Canadian networks. The coverage was only distinguished from any other typical night on their news programming by the ticker on the screen showing current electoral college votes, and the occasional discussion of a particular state. To get good information (or “news” as it used to be called) instead of punditry, a person had to go to the internet, which wasn’t really an option where I was. Pretty sad.

With that out of the way, I’d like to mention the results, and my take on them. First, as may come as quite a shock to a lot of you, I’m not really disappointed that Bush was re-elected. I think he’ll be better than Kerry would have been for Canada economically. Likewise, I wouldn’t have been too disappointed if Kerry had won, because he perhaps would have been more tactful internationally than the current administration has been.

Second, something that has really disturbed me in the runup to the election, and the subsequent discussion that I’ve seen discussing the results, is the insane opinion that for someone to disagree with your position, they must be either stupid, or uninformed. I’ll grant that there were probably lots of stupid and uninformed people who voted for Bush, but there were probably just as many stupid and uninformed people who voted for Kerry. That’s the nature of stupid and uninformed people - they sometimes agree with your intelligent and well informed opinion by accident. Especially when it comes to something where there are only two options. It is entirely possible for a person to be well informed, and intelligent, and for them to come to completely different opinions of the same situation. Anyone who thinks differently is stupid and uninformed (just kidding…)

I watched the Daily Show coverage of the election, and it really brought home the fact that The Daily Show is completely misunderstood by a lot of people. For some reason, they really seemed to attract the anti-Bush crowd - probably because they call the administration on their mistakes. The pro-Bush side views this as obviously being biased toward the Democrats, but in reality, it’s biased against the current administration. Quite simply, the challenger doesn’t have as much chance to screw up enough to write comedy about. I think The Daily Show actually did a fairly good job of remaining objective, even though most of it’s fans clearly did not. The funny thing is that people will disagree with me on this point, but most of them have never watched much of the show. I’ve watched it pretty regularly since before the 2000 election actually, and while there have certainly been a lot of bits that could be construed as anti-Bush, there have also been a lot of bits that were poking fun at the Democrats. What’s interesting is that the Bush hating crowd seems to not care so much about the Democrat bashing, and continues to pass around the clips of Bush bashing on the net. Meanwhile, I’d bet there are very few Republicans who watch the show regularly. Those that do, obviously have a sense of humour about it, and take it for what it is - satire. Jon Stewart’s infamous Crossfire appearance really underscores what their target is - media. The media have become lackeys of the politicians on both sides, and as a result, people aren’t asking the tough questions anymore, or they accept glib answers, because that’s what makes “entertaining” news. It’s disturbing to me that the two campaigns combined to spend $600 million on advertising for the election. Instead of winding up with the best man for the job, you wind up with the best rich man willing to do the job. Let’s be honest here, the average middle class schmuck has about as much chance of ever becoming President as Osama has of being invited to the White House for Thanksgiving turkey.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “Lousy teachers, trying to palm off our kids on us!” - Homer