I turned on the TV and put on CSPAN as I often do on the weekends- and it was the red carpet for the White House Correspondent's dinner. Women in very nice dresses and lots of make-up, men in suits (and maybe make-up). Some faces I knew from TV news. And some faces I knew from Hollywood. What was Patrick Stewart doing there? I like him- but he is not a news guy. He is Captain Picard.
After a couple of minutes I had to turn it off. It just seemed to represent all that is wrong with our country. It is all about money and celebrity. If you don't have one or the other, you are a nobody. If all you have is a good idea- you have nothing at all in politics.
Democracy doesn't scale up well, and we are a very big country. And not so democratic- the senate still requires a super-majority for most matters (although this wasn't always so). And the senate is the chamber that has two senators for every state, regardless of population. One person-one vote is certainly not the rule here.
I think this White House Correspondent's Dinner has become this yearly ritual to help take the attention of the masses (or those with any political interest) off the bigger issues for a little bit. Maybe that is okay. Maybe it is impossible to really fix anything in our current political system. And really, who can simultaneously think about the national debt, peak oil, resource depletion, the greenhouse effect, and growing economic inequality/loss of jobs due to technological innovation, without going mad. I certainly can't- I can only perform this feat thanks to massive amounts of psych meds. And it still has me a little crazy.
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