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Penny Social Politics.
Jul. 25th, 2004 10:57 pmI just donated $25.00 to MoveOn PAC.
When I was a kid, the volunteer fire department of the town in which we had our summer cabin would raise money with events called "Penny Socials." Here's how it worked: A bunch of stuff would be donated to the Fire Department by area businesses. Then the Fire Department would sell sheets of tickets for a few bucks a sheet that all had the same number on them. You'd walk around these tables, dropping tickets into cups adjacent to things you wanted to win. You could increase your odds by dropping more tickets into a particular cup. Of course other folks who wanted the same prize were dropping their tickets in as well. At the end of the evening, they would take the tickets from each cup, pour them into a bingo cage, spin it and draw a single ticket. If that ticket was from your sheet, you won it.
One time there was this Model Rocket I wanted really badly. I dropped most of a sheet's worth of tickets in it. There was also a model car by Lindbergh. I liked building model cars, but Lindbergh's seemed to be poorly engineered, and they never went together right. I dropped a single ticket in that cup. Guess which I won? That's right, I was the proud owner of a POS Lindbergh model that, had I built it right, would have required more model putty than it possessed plastic. It was some 1920's dragster, a truly hideous thing. But, for all the tickets dropped, it was luck of the draw.
I've donated $25.00 to the Kerry campaign and $25.00 to MoveOn. I've dropped my tickets in the Kerry/Edwards cup. Somewhere, out there, someone's dropping tickets in the Bush/Cheney cup. But I know that at the end of the day, with the polls running as they are, the margin of victory in the election will fall within the margin of error for the election. That means the outcome, like the outcome of a penny social, is essentially random.
Is this what American Politics has devolved to? Have we reached the point where the most impactful office in the world is being filled not by a mandate from the masses, but by crass casualty? Where the caprice of Bingo night sets the course for our nation? Just please, please, let it not be that crappy Lindbergh model this time.
When I was a kid, the volunteer fire department of the town in which we had our summer cabin would raise money with events called "Penny Socials." Here's how it worked: A bunch of stuff would be donated to the Fire Department by area businesses. Then the Fire Department would sell sheets of tickets for a few bucks a sheet that all had the same number on them. You'd walk around these tables, dropping tickets into cups adjacent to things you wanted to win. You could increase your odds by dropping more tickets into a particular cup. Of course other folks who wanted the same prize were dropping their tickets in as well. At the end of the evening, they would take the tickets from each cup, pour them into a bingo cage, spin it and draw a single ticket. If that ticket was from your sheet, you won it.
One time there was this Model Rocket I wanted really badly. I dropped most of a sheet's worth of tickets in it. There was also a model car by Lindbergh. I liked building model cars, but Lindbergh's seemed to be poorly engineered, and they never went together right. I dropped a single ticket in that cup. Guess which I won? That's right, I was the proud owner of a POS Lindbergh model that, had I built it right, would have required more model putty than it possessed plastic. It was some 1920's dragster, a truly hideous thing. But, for all the tickets dropped, it was luck of the draw.
I've donated $25.00 to the Kerry campaign and $25.00 to MoveOn. I've dropped my tickets in the Kerry/Edwards cup. Somewhere, out there, someone's dropping tickets in the Bush/Cheney cup. But I know that at the end of the day, with the polls running as they are, the margin of victory in the election will fall within the margin of error for the election. That means the outcome, like the outcome of a penny social, is essentially random.
Is this what American Politics has devolved to? Have we reached the point where the most impactful office in the world is being filled not by a mandate from the masses, but by crass casualty? Where the caprice of Bingo night sets the course for our nation? Just please, please, let it not be that crappy Lindbergh model this time.
