Posted by
C. L. Palmer on Monday, September 15, 2008 10:44:29 AM
I've always found it interesting that the media have assigned red to Republican states and blue to Democrat ones. Don't they have it backward? Think about it. Red has always been the symbol of communism, which is (now officially, thanks to Barry Obama) the party platform of the Democrats. Shouldn't their map color be red as well, to avoid confusion? Isn't New York more of a red state, communism-wise, than Indiana? It must be a purposeful obfuscation of the truth. The media tycoons who came up with the color scheme must have been aware that if they made the Democrat states red, everyone would get the symbolism, so they went the other way. Still, every election cycle, I find this incredibly confusing. Am I alone in this?
If the media want to avoid the confusion of the red/blue state colors, they might go white/yellow. The Republicans could be the white states (which, at least considering the racial stereotypes most liberals maintain, would make sense to the media), and the Democrats could be yellow. I doubt even the Democrats themselves could mount much of an objection; they themselves admit to being anti-war in most every case. If they objected too much, we could always threaten to take the disagreement physical, which would both cause them to acquiesce and prove our point in the bargain.
I realize that the red/blue color scheme is designed to evoke a certain sense of patriotism, but let's be realistic. To most of the media, patriotism is another word for nationalism, and nationalism is evil. I doubt they'll really care much, although they might flinch at the notion that their attempts at misrepresenting the characteristics of the two parties have failed. They really do see themselves as much more sophisticated than the rest of us, and thus able to manipulate our feeble minds with relative ease. That's why they despise talk radio so much; its success reveals that we are able to think for ourselves, that we don't need a bunch of pointy-headed idiots to tell us what the facts mean. We are capable of assimilating data on our own, thank you very much.
Okay, I realize that my suggestions to change the color schemes of the state-by-state maps on election night will go unheeded. Still, someone had to say what we were all thinking. Let the Reds be red! Who do you think you're fooling, NB-AB-CBS?
Only yourselves.