I don’t know if you guys saw, but there was an election last week.  I just thought you might want to know my thoughts on it, in the random order in which they occur to me, plus I give a couple of election-related recommendations:

• I’ll start out by being upfront that I am a democrat, and a pretty liberal one at that.  I don’t mind telling you for whom I voted—Obama twice, the primary and general election.
• Can someone please explain to me why CNN felt it necessary to employ hologram technology?  Please.  Did some producer, extremely low on sleep, decide that what would really juice up their election day coverage would be if there were some way to infuse a little bit of that Star Wars magic into their broadcast.  “I know,” he or she thought, “instead of just using cameras and satellites (that deliver a perfectly clear image), let’s make it look like that scene when R2-D2 projects the message from Princess Leia.  “Help me Obi-Wan, you’re our only hope.”
• I would now like to welcome the rest of the world to the Tina Fey fan club.  Yes, yes, her Sarah Palin impression was spot on.  However, I would like to give her props for the “Bitch Is the New Black” op-ed piece she did for “Weekend Update” on Saturday Night Live.  I just watched this today for the first time.  I heard about when it originally aired during the primaries—Tina Fey did a piece supporting Hillary Clinton proclaiming, “Bitch is the new black,”—and honestly, the idea of it made me cringe.  I mean, I think Hillary Clinton is great and as a woman, I am grateful for the huge crack in the glass ceiling she made for us all.  However, I don’t know, that message made me uncomfortable at first.  That is until I saw the clip.  Tina Fey is right.  Bitches do get things done.  Tina says she and Amy Poehler are bitches—you can count me in that group too.  Here’s a link to it:  http://www.hulu.com/watch/10236/saturday-night-live-tina-fey-on-update
• Speaking of Saturday Night Live, I wish them all the best now that we will have a president who isn’t a complete buffoon.  I heard Seth Meyers, SNL’s head writer, onFresh Air with Terry Gross last week.  He said it was harder to make fun of Obama because, “It’s going to be very hard to write a joke that he isn’t in on.”  Here’s a link:  http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=96258775
• I cried on election night.  A lot.  I even carried on crying the next day.  The tears started when I saw Georgia Representative John Lewis being interviewed about his experience voting that day and remembering his personal past marching with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 
• I got teary eyed again the next morning when I talked to my mom.  For a couple of years now my mom has been the Democratic Party’s official polling place supervisor.  I called her on my way to work Wednesday morning to get her reaction; especially because Missouri’s final results were still not in at that time.  According to my mom, her polling place usually gets about 300 people for typical elections.  Last week they had about 1,500.  Mom said, “You know, this was the election of a lifetime for me.  I wasn’t old enough to vote for Kennedy in 1960, but this…I never thought I would see the day.”
• This election made me very disappointed in John McCain.  About two and a half years ago I had a conversation with my mom about this election.  I told her if the Republicans were smart, and I didn’t think they were, they would nominate John McCain.  I thought he was the only Republican who would stand a chance against the Democrats in 2008.  I also said he was the only Republican who I wouldn’t be completely distraught if he won. I felt he was someone who, although I didn’t agree with him on many issues, I respected him as a person.  I believed he, unlike a lot of politicians, actually made decisions based on what he thought was best for the country, not what was best for him.  During this election, I couldn’t exactly pinpoint when, but I felt like somehow all that changed in McCain.  I saw a great program on PBS, Frontline:  The Choice, profiling both Obama and McCain.  Here’s a link:  http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/choice2008/view/.  After watching this, I’m convinced George W. Bush is responsible for this change in McCain.  Bush pummeled McCain with sleazy negative campaign tactics, including spreading a rumor that McCain had fathered and illegitimate black child, in the 2000 South Carolina primary.  McCain did not counter with dirty tactics and he lost.  Ever since then McCain moved closer and closer to the kind of politician that George W. Bush is.
• The Daily Show’s joint live show with The Colbert Report did not disappoint.  Steven Colbert renamed the show, “The Final Endgame Alpha Action Go Time Lift-Off Decide-icidal Hungry Man’s Extreme Raw Power Ultimate Voteslam Smackdown ’08.”  I was watching the election results at a party with A.  She mistakenly thought it said, “Voteslaw,” not, “Voteslam,” and she promptly declared that her favorite joke.  I have to agree though, “Voteslaw,” is pretty funny.
• My sister, T, volunteered as part of the Obama Voter Protection Squad.  This meant she worked at a polling place in Indiana on election day to prevent voter intimidation, fraud, etc. (she is a lawyer, but not the kind that typically has anything to do with election laws).  She was assigned to a polling place in a largely black neighborhood—when I say ‘largely’, I mean that according to her unofficial count, two white people voted at that location Tuesday.  When I talked to T on election night, after the polls closed, she told me to guess how many votes John McCain got at her polling place that day.  The answer?  Two.  Then it dawned on me, didn’t she also say only two white people voted there?  True, but apparently she helped one of those white people fill out a provisional ballot and the woman told her she wanted to vote for Obama.  Go figure.

Anyway, hooray America!  We did it…now let’s not screw it up again.