Returning home from early voting, I sat back, relaxed on the couch, and sighed: “I’m thankful that’s over and done.”
Then, I must have nodded off for a moment and slipped into a dream.
Upon awakening, I turned on the TV. Peace and harmony seemed to permeate the airwaves with commercials like in the good ol’ days, before this election year. A guy in one commercial was shouting about a car sale “like no car sale ever before.” Then a lady with long black gloves modeled the diamond bracelet her boyfriend or husband had purchased for her, a proof of his love: “shouldn’t you show your love, too?” Then there was one about the guy trying to help people not become their parents too soon.
Something was missing in those commercials that caused me to smile. “Ahh, yes,” I exhaled, “it’s the political commercials. Where are they?”
I flipped the channel, and then another, and another—NO POLITICAL COMMERCIALS.
My jaw dropped as the thought set in: “It must be because I voted early.”
I felt like Kevin McCallister: “I made the politicians go away.”
I smiled with contentment.
And then the trouble began.
Lori turned on the TV.
The volume jolted me awake. I had been asleep the whole time; my political-commercial-free-TV was part of a dream.
“Or was it?” I asked, rubbing my eyes.
I could only hope.
“Maybe, just maybe…”
Nope, within 30 seconds, there it was: another political advertisement.
I covered my eyes, peering through my fingers, “No, no, no,” I moaned, “they’re back. They won’t go away. They will never go away.”
If somehow, someway, voting early could exempt us from seeing political commercials, I’m convinced everyone would vote before Election Day, November 3, 2020.
I googled, “I hate political ads,” and found a news report from 2014 of people complaining about political commercials. But, before I could view the segment, I had to wait for a current political ad to play. It wouldn’t let me skip the ad; it forced me to watch it or mute it.
Political ads will top in at about $11. 2 billion this election year, with presidential ads accounting for $5.2 billion.
We complain about the negative commercials, the attacks back and forth, but have you ever thought about how much good could have been done with all the money spent on those ads?
We don’t even like to talk about them like we might with the Super Bowl commercials. Even with friends, the conversation can quickly turn into arguing about the candidates. Then it descends into the status of the political climate, all of which has the effect of further alienating us in this stormy political climate that has become our ever-present reality.
The ads are a constant reminder of how divided and angry our country is. And the commercials are everywhere we are.
They are on practically every google site. Turn on the car radio, there they are. Drive home, see them on the billboards. Turn off the main road, they on yard signs.
One friend of mine commented, “It’s just gotten out of control.”
Indeed, it has.
H.L. Menken, the journalist, who was a regular at political conventions from 1904-1948, cynically observed, “A national political campaign is better than the best circus ever heard of, with a mass baptism and a couple of hangings thrown in.”
What would that cultural curmudgeon say of the 2020 political landscape? I’m guessing the cigar-chomping Menken would have bitten his cigar in half months ago.
As for me, I’m convinced the politicians would invade my sleep if they could.
But I’m not going to let them. Not for a second. I’ve got a dream-filter. After all, I voted early, doggonit.
“Sweet dreams,” Lori said to me later that night.
“Don’t let the political ads bite.”
“Not if I can help it,” I said before drifting off.