Song For A Day - Election Day

Okay, Arcadia really was the lesser of the Duran Duran offshoots but this video just gives me an excuse to re-post this week's column before it goes off to the C-J archives forever more...

I hope everyone voted in last week's mid-term election. It's mostly true that if you don't participate, you can't complain, but in all honesty I understand the desire to abstain altogether with the caliber of candidates we're faced with these days. To that end I feel that I can't really condemn those who choose not to participate.

I did my civic duty at the Brownsboro Community Center in Crestwood, and boy, was it ever depressing. Voting in the 40014 is a somewhat soul-crushing journey to the heart of red Kentucky.

Eight Kentucky counties went blue in 2008, and Oldham wasn't one of them. Not surprising, as I knew what I was in for when I moved out here and mostly I can handle living in the remnants of white flight, in a town where I'm 99 percent sure I'm the only Korean. I think I could probably apply for endangered species status.

So it was with a sense of the futile that I made my way to our polling place last Tuesday. The room was empty when I arrived, but as I sat down with my ballot behind what appeared to be a cutout cardboard box, there was a bit of a rush of people ready to get their Republican on.

As I contemplated the various races, I overheard one woman ask if it had been a busy day and they told her yes, voter turnout was good. She then went on to make tea party comments about how people are just plain fed up and they're right fed up and I think she used the term “fed up” four times while one of the poll workers chimed in about how no one got their change, and this ain't change and keep the change, and it was like every bumper sticker I see on every car out here come home to roost in a depressing auditory explosion. Furthermore, isn't it wrong for the people who work the polls to be giving their political opinions while others are trying to vote?

Dejectedly, I filled in the boxes for the Democratic candidates, none of whom I felt overly enthused about, as the woman's daughter loudly asked, “Mommy, where's Rand Paul's name?” Ah yes, Rand Paul, the libertarian savior. The bright smiling face of the Tea Party, lauded by Sarah Palin, who sees him as a fellow victim of the liberal media's “gotcha” game, and Kentucky's newest emissary to the United States Senate.

It will be interesting to see how Paul, part of the new brand of maverickism, fueled by faux righteousness, gets along as the freshman senator alongside Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. McConnell and the Republican party have already made strides in moderating Paul, but recently he's said in interviews that he will challenge McConnell. Jim Bunning, who was, let's face it, pretty cuckoo and an embarrassment to the party, might start looking pretty good as the tea partyers and their misplaced brio take their seats in Congress.

This election proved that people are angry, but where will this anger get the new Republican base? Where will moderate Republicans go? Will the tea party force a third party into our system? That's actually something I'm invested in. That being said, I don't think Obama's getting a fair shake (he's partly to blame for that), and I'm sad that hope doesn't seem to get things done in the same way anger does.

However, one beacon of light on the horizon is that Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert's Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear reportedly drew more than double the crowd of Glenn Beck's Restoring Honor spectacle. I'd like to make a joke about how you need to have honor in order to restore it, but I'll spare us all.

In the end, I'm not too morose about the Republicans taking back the House. Maybe now they'll have some accountability. That's my bright side here.