Pull the media ring from your nose

How do like our current political season? Regardless of which side of the political fence you stand on, (being someone who straddles both sides), I have to agree with the candidate who touts the media chooses our representatives in our rigged political system. Having campaigned for public office and having to deal with the media, I discovered firsthand how the media manipulates, you the voter, into voting for "their" candidate of choice. Have you asked yourself; why real people don’t run for office? Because you won’t vote for them. When I ran for office, I ran as a “No Party Affiliation” candidate, in a gerrymandered congressional district in Florida. Since I had limited funds to advertise, the media felt they had limited time to contact me, return phone calls or emails or report my comments upon having had a two minute conversation with a reporter. Reading the newspaper or listening to the TV and radio announce they had spoken with the “Party Candidates” about a certain topic, and I was unavailable for comment, was a lie. Having to deal with nasty emails and letters, phone calls, people taking my garbage from the street side container is a just a few reasons why real people don’t run for office and the media doesn’t want to report these kind of activities. What the media wants to report, has nothing to do with what is required from our representatives. They tell us; negative advertisements work. What works is; the person accused has to respond to the negative ad, (as directed by party leaders), and the money flows to defend a character attack. As you watch the media circus; do you know what your candidate’s political platform is? Does what they say in front of the camera, behind a radio microphone or to the newspaper reporter match what their website says? Millions of people have already voted for the candidate the media selected for them; are you one of them? Did you really do any background investigation, check public records for your candidate or did you just follow what the media reported? If you haven’t performed your public duty and when you step into the voting booth and ask yourself; who are these other candidates on the ballot, you are part of the political media problem. We no longer elect a candidate to represent us, we elect someone who will win. To be honest with you, I have fallen into the same rut as you, many times and now I have to ask myself; is our nation winning or losing because of the decisions we have made? It's time to pull the media ring from your nose.