Target: Survivor: Washington, D. C.

I returned home tonight for an odd mixture of things.

Anchorage opened its first Target store in Alaska today so there was this mad rush of people heading to see everything that wasn’t available in the far north until today. The store is 172,000 square feet (about four acres) and the ‘official’ opening is not until Sunday but they opened a few days early so everyone could get a brief look and bargains before the weekend. The mad house today was like the opening of the Golden Corral restaurant a few months back . . . packed house with a full parking lot overflowing into the spaces of the soon to open Kohl’s, Lowe’s, and several other stores. I think Target’s red bull’s eye found its mark in Alaska.

I sat down and flipping through the channels came across the movie ‘Transformers’ thinking it would be a stupid silly movie. I started watching and could not turn it to another channel. It was fun, witty, and sci-fi entertainment. As I sat there watching thinking about what I wanted to blog about tonight I watched the first sliver of light start rising over the mountains outside my living room window. A beautiful waxing gibbous moon was growing as it peeked and rose into the almost dark sky. It took about three minutes to fully see the brightness and as it made its way above the horizon and with the higher it raised the color slowly changed into a harvest color of almost red/golden hues.

I didn’t really want to write about politics today but I started thinking about it during an email earlier this morning while I was working. I watched the debate last night as well as the Vice Presidential debate last week.

I was definitely more interested in the Vice Presidential debate than the Presidential ones, if more for the potential entertainment value than the political "capital" that will be claimed by both sides. For several weeks I felt that Sarah Palin’s handlers were giving the impression by her answers to the media of lowering expectations of her debate. She came out rocking and showed much of the Palin I have seen here in Alaska over the last several years.

But in this year, as Americans struggle with health insurance, gas prices, high heating costs, a kid in Iraq for the third time in the past five years, the loss of their job, the local plant closing, the list goes on, and realizing government is not working right now. This year, Americans are saying, “Not this time, we had enough.” Americans are carefully weighing the reality of the current situations, the candidates’ records, and the candidates’ plans for the future.

They’re listening to candidates hoping that they will address economic problems, like job losses, inflation, and health insurance cuts. But sadly no one is really saying much about those things. Debates are fascinating things and maybe we should change the format this year.

They may need to mirror our predilection for so-called "reality TV."

Make the campaigning like watching a season of "Survivor: Washington, D. C." for the last two years. This is kind of what we’ve done in the primaries this year with those “voted off” as we headed to the different conventions. Many politicians seem to forget or do not realize they can be voted off during each election cycle.

We are, all of us, in this together as Americans. Regardless of our points of view, the vast majority of us are looking for the best outcomes for our society. It is up to us, as the majority (as divergent as we are), to keep the debate civil, and keep the country making forward progress. Let us relegate the "wacko fringe" on both sides to the entertainment industry, where they belong . . . perhaps with a "Survivor: Presidential Edition " . . . although that concept already has reasonable success on MSNBC and Fox News. Those running for office on ideology above the good of the country need to be rejected and sent home. It's time to take this country back to Common Sense.

Last week it was "Survivor: Gabon---Earth's Last Eden" . . . Tension builds in one tribe when food starts to run low because of some teammates overeating. In the reward challenge, one female player is roughed up so badly that it could cause her to be cast off. The third person is voted out at tribal council. Thursday at 8 on CBS.

This week it was "Survivor: Presidential Edition " where Survivor’s “Outwit, Outplay, Outlast” mantra seems to play into the debates which seems designed to show how the candidates can outmaneuver each other, stab each other in the back, make alliances they have no intention of ever keeping, and generally showing what schmucks they are. It's not politics at its finest but plays well on television.

So really what does all this mean, in any substantive form? Like much that goes on during a political campaign, very darn little. But we are a society with a very low attention span who gets our information from ten second sound bites. It is just too tough to . . . you know . . . actually find things out for ourselves. After all we have important things to concern ourselves with, like Survivor, NCIS, and American Idol (Not).

So with morbid fascination, America watched last night’s debate between McCain and Obama. My prediction: each side will claim victory on principle and no one's mind will be made up as the undecideds are still on the fence.

Sigh.

Ice