Official Participant in the Youth Media Blog-a-Thon

It was last Saturday, and I was wandering San Francisco’s sunset in a dream state. I was somewhere around 34th and Ulloa with two very good friends of mine, about an hour into our wandering, when we decided the beach was our destination. We hooked a right down Ulloa and started walking. It was 10:30 P.M., and we started talking about only the deepest, most inconsequential, and pointless things possible. We are, after all, youth. Around 47th we took a right, and then rounded the corner onto Taraval, where we encountered my boss and a small percentage of my co-workers gathered outside a bar. Without a second thought I was back around the corner running, my friends in close pursuit.

“Silvano, stop!”

I stopped.

“What the fuck was THAT?”

“That was my boss. We’re leaving.”

“You can’t leave, she already saw you. She yelled your name, man.”

And so we returned, to see the woman who calls my shots in a drunken tussle with her sister, who was trying to get her into a cab. It was her birthday party, and she had just been kicked out of the bar.

We watched, we laughed, we applauded, and we moved on.

That last line basically sums up the election for me. The old and the ethnic toe to toe, trying to throw the other in a cab that will take them far, far away, leaving the victor to rule this country unhindered by that old, close-minded fool’s conservative ways, or free of that young African-American whose radical and rebellious ideas are fueled by a hope for change. Just another entertainment spectacle.

Is it because I’m 17, and too young to vote? It can’t be, because I plan on voting, and even so every time I turn the TV on to watch a debate, or what should be a moving speech, I find myself doing it for the laughs it will provoke and the amusement it will provide me with. I find myself more swayed by how clever the candidate is, rather than how much his ideals speak to me.

Then why is it that the election only serves to pass my time, just like movies, biking, and masturbation? Because it truly is just a fight between two people, a fight to make yourself look better than the opponent. And not only that, they use the dirtiest, slimiest, most pitiful methods to do so. Rather than playing off their positives to make themselves look better, they badmouth each other all day, trying to create a contrast that works in their favor. Instead of a fight to decide who’s better, it’s a fight to decide who’s WORSE. So let me put this question to you; do you really want to decide who’s the best of the worst, and then, once you’ve figured that out, appoint them leader of your country? Is that REALLY the most effective way to choose a “world leader”? And if that’s how it’s going to be, then do you really care?

Besides, when all is said and done, I’m still gonna have to pay that mortgage, and I’m still gonna have to pay taxes. I’m still gonna have to duck the law for that joint in my pocket, and I’m still gonna have to hide my forty in a paper bag. There are still gonna be people all over the world suffering by my governments hand, and there are still gonna be people all over the world who hate me because I’m American. And yes, the President is still gonna be a celebrity.
—Silvano Pontoniere