Aversion Therapy

I am so glad the election is over. So glad. I can’t tell you how glad I am. I had someone ask me last week “What are going to do when the election is over?” to which I replied “Be happy.”

I think there is a misconception that reporters love politics. Well I don’t. It’s not that I don’t have political leanings or take an interest in social or economic topics. I do. I enjoy those things immensely.

But to me, “politics” is something else entirely. It connotes pandering, muck raking, grim hyperbole and faux sincerity. And working here at the newspaper full-time, has acted as a sort of aversion therapy. Each day I would plop down at my desk only to find an onslaught of emails all but bleeding from my inbox that, just like their TV counterparts, make drastic claims about the smallest detail. And, the closer we got to the election, the more narrow the scope got, honing in on the most irrelevant minutia.

Hearing the same politicians say the same things over and over and over and over just inured me to their effects. They lost their punch about two months in. Add to that my skepticism that campaigning does anything to influence elections and all the fanfare surrounding polling. Despite our jumps in technology and improved polling methods, nobody knows who will get elected until the election is over. So, as far as I am concerned, it is all just noise. I could have missed nearly 90 percent of what people were talking about this election season and I doubt my life would be an different for not knowing.

All of it together equals me feeling relieved that everyone can now shut up about the election and how great/bad it is going to be when [inset candidate’s name here] gets elected.

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