I am a blog nobody.... but I really don't care.

Here's my soapbox, for anyone that's still listening. Mind you I wrote this yesterday, before the final three showdown on Idol (and Elliott totally still deserved to go):
I haven’t blogged lately and there’s a good reason why. I’ve been living my life—cooking four pounds of beef for ten of my friends, dining at Mesa Grill (Bobby Flay’s restaurant), riding the train between 59th and 181st Streets in Manhattan more times than I can count—but I felt the need to get political for a second.

One of my friends was over when I was listening to NPR and President Bush delivered his speech about immigration last night. She said she wasn’t going to listen because she never liked anything he had to say. I’m not sure where I was taught this, but I’m of the mind that everyone deserves a right to their opinion, and the only way we learn as people is to listen to others and understand their point of view. We may not agree with everything they have to say, but we have to respect their freedom to say it.

So I listened to Bush. He had some valid points. There were definitely some things I disagreed with, of course, but even though I don’t like the guy and think he’s bad for the country, I don’t see him as a bad person. Call me a bad liberal, if you will, but I’ve been finding myself identifying and agreeing with some Republicans some of the time. To me, this either signifies that everyone really DOES become Republican as they age, or that I’m really just politically moderate.

I don’t think Pres. G.W. is a bad person, or an evil person, or bound and determined to destroy America by invading one country at a time. I think he’s doing what he thinks is right. And that’s all we can ever ask for. What I do hold in disgrace, though, is that the American public isn’t thinking very intelligently.

From American Idol (seriously, why didn’t we vote for Paris), to craziness over the Bird Flu Epidemic, combined that we're in some massive group denial when it comes to real issues with AIDS, education, and most recently, immigration, the American public isn’t doing a very good job representing itself.

I’m not innocent in all of this; I often flip past the articles in Time and Newsweek that discuss international politics to the Anna Quindlen essays in the back, or the latest commentary on bloggers. I certainly don’t volunteer, or contribute to society in any greater way than by working in publishing and helping to publish books I think are important.

But when I vote, I do so in an informed way. I learn about what’s important to me (education, health care, general foreign policy and a candidate’s voting history in political elections and things like vocal range, personal history and marketability for Idol) and make my decision. I try every day not to close my ears to what I don’t want to hear, except when its celebrity gossip. Maybe that makes me the exception.

I don’t mind, except there will never be another Kelly Clarkson unless we get the Taylor Branches of the world voted out sooner rather than later. (Postnote: Taylor totally was awesome on Tuesday's show, but you get my point. I couldn't think of anyone else truly atrocious, unlike last year's Scott debacle, or Ruben WINNING the goddamn thing back in the day). By the same token, we should also know, as a country, what our president says (other than his gross grammatical errors that exemplify how our education system isn’t truly effective) so that we can know whether or not we agree to disagree.

And if you think I'm just a white middle class girl from the Midwest being privledged and pompous, well- fuck you. Cuz you're probably right.