In a country that prides itself on racial diversity and "all men are created equal" and nothing is based on race, sex, color, or creed, I find it ironic that race, sex, color, and creed are of the utmost importance pertaining to any newsworthy event. A lot of things from getting hired on at a company to running a political campaign has a lot to do with image.

An image of a suit, being clean cut, professionalism, and, basically, spewing out pre-written speeches that tell the people what they want to hear. It's funny that Jesse Ventura got a lot of crap for being a professional wrestler. It was hard for people to focus on anything other than that and even though he was honest and did what he promised to do, it was hard for people to see past that. But hasn't the political campaigns, as well as job interviews, been like a wrestling event? Wrestlers do interviews and it's all crowd pleasing. They know the way they want the story to go and the way they want the crowd to react and that's what they say.

And what's funny is that people eat this up. They know it's all a front, but they eat it up and it works. John Edwards has it right when he says that politicians now are too afraid to do what they actually believe in and care more for just doing what people want them to do. It's what I don't get with resumes and job interviews. They have all these books and people to tell you how to portray yourself at an interview and what to say and all that fucking crap and you get hired based on your ability to say the right things. I think that's pretty pointless. I would rather go out in a casual environment like to dinner or for drinks and talk to the person honestly, openly, and see and hire them based on who they actually are as a person. There wouldn't be much need for experience or credentials, but if I saw what they are capable of doing and finding the true person behind them, they'd be hired.

It would not have to even do with their past, which seems to be a main attack point for not only job interviews but in any political campaign. It shouldn't have anything to do with what someone did years ago but what they are doing now. For instance, there was a lot of focus on the fact that George Bush was an alcoholic-cokehead. As much as I disagree with, pretty much, anything he does now in office, his alcohol/cocaine past doesn't even occur to me. It never once told me of who he is as a person now and what he is capable of doing as a president. (Even talk about some memoirs that Barack Obama had written about when he was in college and did coke and whatever. I'm glad that he at least said he wouldn't deny that even if it hurt his political career and it shouldn't. )

That, to me, is what should determine the right person for a job. Someone honest and hard-working. Someone who is not afraid to be themselves and stand for what they believe in. Which is what I hate in the news and in the campaigns in the past and once again it's reared it's prejuidiced face again in the upcoming presidential runs.

When Al Gore ran with Joseph Lieberman in the 2000 presidential campaign, one of the things that turned me away from their's was the fact that not only was the media focusing on his being Jewish and he'd be the first Jewish vice-president, but the fact that he himself started using that as an angle. I had never heard of him prior to that election campaign, but since then, I've never seen him wearing his yamaca out in public. But everytime you saw him then, it was always with it and he looking all holier than thou and I thought that was cheap and weak. Sort of like the Budweiser commercial during the Super Bowl the other year when it was the soldiers walking through the airport and getting applauded as they walked through the herds of people.

Now with the 2008 presidential campaign coming, there's all this press about Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Both, in my opinion, are really great candidates for the job and that's not based on anything other than who they are and what I've seen of both of them.

They way that the media is hitting this is with race and sex. How do you tell your kids to not judge people based on prejuidiced opinions when you just turn on the television and there are people saying, "I don't know if America's ready for a black president or a female president"? Granted, the way that society is it may not happen and that's only because of the way that both blacks and women are portrayed in the media and in religions and just in the world in general.
I would say that in this day and age we should be getting past all that ignorance and ignore any statements like those and just focus on other things like issues on hand and where they would like the nation to go and how they will go about doing so. You know, the things that actually matter.