It has been a week now since the results of the midterm election sent their final shock through the aged and weary Contract With America (TM). It's taken me a week, at least, to try to digest everything that happened on Election tuesday. In a lot of ways, elections are more like the old days, when results took as long as the horse ride to D.C. took from the Frontier. The more advanced the voting process becmes seems to have little inpact on the immediacy of finding out who actually wins.

Unfortunately, my vote was not heard this election. The New York Board of Elections managed to loose my registration not once, but twice. I had voted in the Primary election this past September, only to receive a scolding letter from the board that my ballet was thrown out since I was not registered to vote. I had registered along party line when I signed up for my ID, checking the box on the form along with the organ doner box. I received my organ info. But no voting info. So after the rejection letter, I registered again. But alas, still never heard anything, and thus my vote was not heard. Not that it really matters as my district is probably one of the most blue districts in the Empire State.

I move in two weeks to Bay Ridge, a much more red district. It makes me think how strange our country has become, that we divide it into color charts and maps. what do you do if you're color blind? Vote independent?

The media has played out this one quite well...Not the colors, but the color comentary during and after the election. sometimes I think it's like having me call out NASCAR racing, a blind subway dweller trying to explain who's on first or in first, and who's on the pole, which to me is something you hold onto when the train comes to a quick stop.

The comentary spells out clearly, in the eyes of reporters who didn't do a good job of calling the actual game, saying that the democrats would be lucky to pull off the fifteen seats and probably not get the senate. Shadowing their own imperfect predictions, kind of like weather forcastors, the mainstream media begin to use news that has little weight in the election once the election was over. Reporters, instead of reporting, comment on how America has changed, how certain votes or voting populations were ignored, how certain advertisements were the determining factor in certain races. They make predictions about who will do what, already focusing now on the presidental election of 2008. They predict about how we'll investigate Iraq and bush, and hmeland security.

What I would like to hear is less comentary by the journalists of newspapers and broadcast outlets, and more reporting. watching the nightly news last evening, there was one major international story with a domestic slant, Iraq, and then a fluff story on the auto industry meeting in Washington and a bunch of human interest and health stories. Where has all the news gone? Even if I had voted, I'd be hard pressed to actually learn about what my representative is doing for me and my district. I want political coverage, not speculation. I spent seven years in journalism school, undergrad and graduate combined. I learned how to report, how to gather facts, how to develop an exciting and informative story. commentary is for Plato, not Bernsteen.