Who I Will Be Voting For

I’ve been waiting an awfully long time to be allowed to vote. 2008 will be the first election I directly participate in, and so I’ve tried to be as keenly aware as possible of the developing details. I’ve looked into candidates on both sides of the political spectrum, and attempted to educate myself through what means are available to me as to what agendas the candidates have. Careful consideration has brought me to the conclusion that Barack Obama is the person who should become President of the United States.

• Here’s a list of some of the reasons why I (and I hope you as well) will be voting for Barack in 2008:
• Alternative Energy
• Universal Healthcare
• End to War in Iraq
• Affordable Education
• Stem-Cell Research
• Homosexual Civil Union
• Separation of Church and State

He’s not quite perfect, of course. For example, he supports affirmative action, which I loathe on ideological grounds. But that isn’t enough to keep him from standing far, far ahead of my current second-place presidential pick, Rudy Giuliani.

I believe that if elected in the Democratic primaries, Obama will become the next President. However, there is one obstacle to this; one ugly, soulless obstacle. I am speaking of course of Hillary Clinton. She has no political ideology save whatever the most recent opinion polls indicate is most advantageous. For example, she voted in favor of the initial invasion of Iraq, and today decries the invasion as a foolish blunder of the Bush administration. She has no interest in anyone’s benefit but her own. She expects that women will vote for her simply on the basis of her gender. But of course, her key advantage is mere name recognition through her husband and through her First Ladyship. She publicly attacked Obama for accepting campaign donations on the grounds that the donator was a former Clinton sympathizer who became estranged after realizing Hillary’s true character. Quite simply: Hillary is deplorable.

Polls indicate that Hillary leads Barack in the popularity; however, the election is still far over the horizon, and she is steadily losing her lead. I hope I am not being overly optimistic in predicting that this trend will continue.

- Enoch

We Can Do Better

If I understand correctly, there has been an event at Drew very recently
in which students choose not to attend class in protest over the War in
Iraq, the idea being that our absence from class represents the troops’
absence from their homes.
I don’t feel I need to devote a great deal of energy to this, so I’ll
just say as simply as possible that I think this is pretty weak. An
event like this has no positive effect at all. Not only will the troops
never benefit from it or know about it, it’s unlikely that they’d care
even if they did know; they don't worry about whether you skip class or
not any more than anyone else. Further, I think that promoting absence
from class is an ill-conceived strategy. Whoever comes up with things
like this and participates in them should realize that we’re in college
to learn things. Holding protests and demonstrations should be lower on
a student’s priority list than academics.

-Enoch

To Be Honest......

The V-Day movement is obnoxious. For anyone that doesn’t know, it’s some creepy cult’s plan to make Valentine’s Day into a celebration of female independence through vagina-empowering rhetoric and rape stories formulated to stimulate male guilt. The chief weapon employed by this fringe faction is known as the Vagina Monologues, and it is Eve Ensler’s (a militant lesbian vengeful over being abused by her father) episodic play in which some women get on a stage and say stuff about vaginas.

So I figured I’d get into the play, sit down, and sit fuming for two hours about all the bullshit the audience was being fed. But to my surprise, there wasn’t nearly as much of that as I anticipated. In fact, the whole ordeal was pretty un-evocative. I don’t mean just fury, I mean in general. I was actually quite pleased to discover that about two thirds of the play is potty humor.

Yes, there was some bullshit, obviously. Like in the monologue of the woman who gets all offended that no one’s invented a more comfortable tampon. Takes it personally that it’s uncomfortable to go to the doctor’s office. Thinks that it’s a conspiracy against women.It might have been a joke, but it was hard to tell.

And in all the stories about all the abuses men inflict. Every story about rape built up dramatically to it, putting the event on a pedestal from which it could be seen by all men, that they might feel ashamed. They sometimes seem even to go so far as to neglect touching on the woman’s trauma at being raped in favor of using the story to lash out against the male gender.

But for the most part, the Vagina Monologues was just some harmless fluff. Some gross-out anatomical descriptions, some crude references for shock value, some lame potty humor, some cutesy kid-babble, some stupid would-be poetry about the vagina as some sacred something-or-other. Final opinion: Skip it next time. It’s hardly even worth getting mad about.

-Enoch