The team from my general geographic region is better than yours

So I had to drive around Pennsylvania today and I would like to say one thing about this part of the country. Apparently in the several hundred years that people have lived here no one has ever thought of straight roads, signposts or streetlights. Seriously, every road is a two lane, curving deathtrap in which it is just assumed that you know that you are supposed to turn on the dirt road to get where you are going. Yes it is pretty and all but for crying out loud just cut down some of the damn trees and let me get to where I need to go. It isn’t that difficult.

It is sad but if you ask me what I miss most about Kansas City my response would be straight roads and convenient parking. I do this my friends and my trivia games a lot but oh what I would give for parking lots filled with nice, empty spaces. Spaces that you don’t have to pay for, either.

(And of course, congrats to the Phillies. I’d be celebrating but it is not like I have any emotional investment in the team. I just got here and since I do live in another state I haven’t even heard any cries of jubilation. So apologies for no in depth analysis of the game or anything even though it would be nice if every game only lasted three innings.)

I did watch the Obama infomercial which aired over most of your favorite stations. It is a daring move, replacing normal programming with a campaign ad, but it did result in a show that was more entertaining than The New Adventures of Old Christine. Admittedly so is a test pattern but still, I have to say they did a good job with it. You always have to be worried about tone in one of those ads. It can’t be too pompous or appear to be a victory speech. It had to be straightforward and it was.

To me the most interesting thing is what wasn’t said. There wasn’t a single reference to McCain or even the opposition in general. While they attacked the policies of the past eight years it was not framed in a truly negative manner. Much of the talk was about hope and about bringing the country together. This is in stark contrast to the McCain ads that ran immediately afterwards that had stark black and white images and tried to imply that Obama is pure evil.

While negative ads have their place and they do work I think McCain has really made a mistake in going so negative. It is not a question that Obama does not have flaws that need pointing out. He certainly does. The problem is more of a misreading of the current state of the American culture. We as a people are tired. We’ve had seven years of wars including five of which are in a place we realized we never needed to invade in the first place. Over the past few months the economy has fallen apart and we are all significantly poorer than before. And more than anything our government has gotten mean and opaque. Lots of hidden agendas and secrets that when released go against what most people stand for. We don’t want attacks and negativity. We want solutions and hope for a better tomorrow. That is why Obama’s message has resonated so strongly in the past two years. Right now the country needs an emotional leader as much as a practical one and that is what he is best at. Why the Republicans have stayed so negative I’ll never understand.

Wednesday Night Music Club: I hate to say this but thank you MTV. Some of you may know but MTV just launched www.mtvmusic.com, which is essentially just all of their videos in a YouTube format. More importantly from my standpoint they are a lot more open to embedding videos. Hence, I can finally post a Jeff Buckley video to my blog. I’ve been wanting to do this for years. Pretty much the entire purpose of this blog is to keep Jeff’s memory alive.

Jeff Buckley MTV Music