CSotD: Poli Sigh
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It's my blog and I can start with the cartoon that spurs a personal memory if I want to. Particularly if it has some vague connection to a more sweeping issue.
Edison Lee has been running for Student Council President, and it's been an entertaining riff on the current presidential campaign, but today's unleashed an epiphany, because I also ran for Student Council President, albeit not in elementary school.
This being 1966 and "student power" still rare at the high school level, only one candidate did things like hanging posters promising to press to have the doors replaced on the bathrooms, a move that had been made so that teachers could more easily sweep in and catch us smoking.
Or that said, "Vote for Matty Alou!" under which, in smaller letters, was "… but, if it takes more than a high average to impress you, vote for Mike Peterson."
I was called down to the principal's office and told of the rule that posters must be approved in advance and ordered to take them down and thus learned that it is indeed better to beg forgiveness than to request permission, since, once something has been seen, it doesn't have to remain visible.
Things came down to a run-off between me and our eventual valedictorian, and things were close enough that the outcome largely hinged on the votes in our own senior class of 94 students.
After that second vote, the principal stopped me in the hall and said, "I wanted you to know before we announced it: Steve won, but only by five votes."
Which I told a friend, who said, "That can't be right. Mrs. Burns hasn't turned in the ballots from her (senior) homeroom."
So I told the principal, who promptly collected them and then told me, "Well, Steve still won, but only by two votes."
Which I told a friend, who said, "That can't be right. Miss Hill hasn't turned in the ballots from her (senior) homeroom."
Miss Hill had all of about 20 students in her homeroom, six of them members of my (unofficial, banned) fraternity, plus several girlfriends of frat brothers who were friends of mine in their own right anyway and a couple of fellow-wrestlers. I had well over half the room before the closeness of the overall vote even came into play.
So I told the principal, who said, "Well, it's too late now. The election is over."
Lesson learned.
And the reason I want Bernie to stay til the bitter end is that, when one of our classmates was caught smoking in the doorless boys' room the day before finals and his ability to take finals and graduate was in jeopardy, I was — elections be damned — the one who was asked to lead the senior walkout in protest.
Bernie isn't done, either, despite the best efforts of Principal Wasserman-Schultz to keep him on double secret probation.
My political education did not end in high school.
As a junior in college, I ran for Student Body President in order to present an extensive student-rights platform written by a former SDS head who was by then a law student at Michigan.
I carried his banner only with a firm understanding with my runningmate that there was no possible way we would win and be forced to serve.
Which we didn't, though I understand large parts of our platform did emerge in the following year.
Wouldn't know personally: We had both dropped out by then.
The night of the election, I came back from play practice to find that my campaign manager had bought several cases of Ripple and put enough of it into the reporter who was waiting to get my reaction that the poor sodden wretch was unable to focus on the task at hand, so I wrote the story for him and a very good story it was, utterly free of the usual polite phrases normally extruded on such occasions.
It ran on Page Two, since Page One was largely taken up with a statement from the editors defending the ethical standards of their election coverage, the critical difference being that I don't think they were laughing and sloshing down cheap wine when they wrote it.
We also borrowed the reporter's camera to take this equally ungracious photo (scanned from microfilm; sorry), which made, I felt, a nice contrast with the one of the losing conservative candidate sitting despondently on his bed contemplating the tragic nature of life or some such.
So high school prepared me for dealing with the power structure while college prepared me for dealing with the media and now you know why I'm such a cynical son of a bitch trenchant political analyst.
I probably should have offered this as a Juxtaposition:
(Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal)
The reporting tends to be more accurate if you simply give the reporter something to drink and write the story yourself, but it's not always an option, and, having been interviewed more than once, I know what it is like to pick up the paper in the morning as if it were ticking.
That's not a Juxtaposition. THIS is a Juxtaposition
No, I mean it: You don't have to get them drunk. Just tell them things. Anything you like. Really.
Just don't include any science or math.
Now here's your moment of insightful media analysis:
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