A Cheers to the Day the Dollar Equals the Peso
In my office there is, of course, a vehement hatred of the McCain-Palin ticket, and yet we spend the majority of our speaking hours talking about her. She is invading our mindspace to such an extent that my coworkers have begun to dream about her. I was hoping for some Sarah-Palin-ended-up-in-my-bed dreams, but no, I got a Sarah-Palin-was-painting-my-toenails dream instead.
I spent several years in ignorance, happily so. After a botched election I couldn’t vote in, and that whole summer of 2001, I slipped from the political scene, touting my protest credentials, and let apathy drag me into the consumer world.
I tried to explain this to one of our higher ups the other day — the reason for my disinterest and lack of knowledge. Having accidentally exited the office for lunch at the same time he did, I found myself politely and uncomfortable obligated to walk three blocks with him. I explained that I couldn’t care anymore, that the years of the anti-globalisation fights took it out of me, and that we were never able to achieve anything anyway, but he brushed my words off with a quick, I’ll tell you how it is with Palin lecture, and I bit my lip. He clearly finds note-taking my primary skill.
Whether or not “anti-globalisation” was the right fight (and I would argue that it was misappropriated and poorly defined), I hadn’t gone back in six years. But now, as this election nears, I’ve found it impossible to stay away. Here, political opinions are currently the high value social currency. While it’s nearly impossible to see the recession in this region (Anthropologie was just as bustling today as ever), we’re still clinging to currency that holds its value. She who cannot quote Palin’s gaffs or find Tina Fey’s impersonations on YouTube is an impoverished, and boring, soul.
So to maintain my status as valuable social being, I watched the debate (or rather a portion of it, which was all I could stand) and found it utterly boring. For all the humor that surrounds her, Palin’s thoughts were recited, empty, and thinly-veiled attempts to shape her new persona. The everyman’s woman, giving her “shout out”(!!???!!). Incredulity abounds. Biden, on the other hand, felt pedantic, belaboring. So maybe my foray into caring did not bear the expected fruit. Last night is case in point: With that tongue in our cheek — the one that could rattle off Simpsons plots sooner than it could rattle off the causes of World War II — we clinked our PBRs to the day the dollar equals the peso.