A number of conservatives make no secret about blaming Barack Obama’s victory in the election on media bias. John McCain’s campaign got only negative coverage, where Obama only got positive coverage. I’m not going to dispute their claim, though I disagree with it. Let’s assume it’s true: the press was exceptionally positive towards Obama and exceptionally negative towards McCain. What could this mean/why could this be? The way I see it, there are four options:

• Barack Obama is legitimately better candidate than John McCain, and the media is merely reflecting the realities of the situation.
• Barack Obama is roughly on par with John McCain in terms of his ability to lead the country or win votes, but he ran a better, cleaner campaign.
• Barack Obama is roughly on par with John McCain in terms of his ability to lead the country or win votes, but the media liked him better so he was given a free pass and remained positive in the public perception.
• Barack Obama is a worse candidate than John McCain, but a vast media conspiracy concealed these obvious truths, and tricked the American public into voting for him.

I tend to favor one of the first two options. Though I will acknowledge that Obama was something of a media darling during the summer months, he had already weathered some pretty unpleasant media scandals during the primaries. And let’s face it: he has a compelling narrative.

Obama had people fired up about him irrespective of the media. He had massive support on the internet, and a terrifyingly efficient grassroots political machine.

Those who are inclined to favor the latter two options, I have two words for you: John Kerry. There is no way the media gave Bush more favorable attention than McCain in this election. He was pretty universally reviled at the time.

But even besides that, look at the record turnouts among young voters. If the media is biased, it has always been biased. Something about Barack Obama’s campaign made him popular among a generation of people that is largely disaffected with politics.

And he definitely ran a better campaign to reach these people. He brought technology into politics, in a prominent way. There were internet-based campaigns, and stories written about how internet-based politics were the way of the future. People received updates on text messages. His transition website uses some very web 2.0 technologies. John McCain was not a bad candidate, but his campaign, especially in comparison to that of Barack Obama, made him unelectable. It ruined his brand. It made him look like a bad candidate. He did it to himself, and the electorate responded.

I have two theories, since this seemed to be a common theme. One, I did not successfully coat the entire tongue–and I imagine the back and sides are important to the full experience. Two, I drank beverages too quickly after consumption. I imagine it needs time to sit, or something.

Lemons were definitely a great success. The juice especially was one of the most delicious things I had ever tasted. But as far as the evening went, I’m not sure I really felt like the miraculin really defined it. I enjoyed the Ethiopian food we had before a lot more.

I can’t really complain, though. The company was, as always, superb.

I talk about adventures a lot–like road trips with no map and no itinerary, just you and a car and three thousand miles of freeway to explore. Or just driving around randomly on country roads, and stopping to explore creepy abandoned houses. I want to go exploring. I want to make mistakes. I want to be terrified. And I want to come home after and tell stories about it. I wish I’d been arrested when the police stopped us in Minnesota. I wish I’d spent a cold night in a cell, furious that our trip had been ruined, upset that I was locked up so far from home. All it would have taken was a bit of cheek.

But I’m a pragmatist. When my friends start talking about things which will end badly I’m the first to say this is a bad idea. I think I’m afraid that mistakes will become a virtue, that we’ll start making decisions simply because it will end badly and there will be a story later. The mistakes I love are the stories of failures, the stories of taking risks and then suffering for it. They don’t have to end in disaster. But they might. I can’t wait to find out.

I’m not sure I’d ever really noticed this before, perhaps because I was taking a vacation of my own in previous years, but the world just stands still during December. People are visiting family, taking time off work and school. Then, in January, things just kind of start happening again. Everyone gears up to go back to work or school, the endless parties stop happening, and life, such as it is, picks up again.

And even (or especially) those who aren’t doing anything terribly special, you can tell the holidays are here. There’s just this month-long lull. I sometimes wonder if the reason I like the new year isn’t just that it’s the signal that it’s okay to start doing things.

In many ways though it’s Comeau’s side projects and the little posts he writes describing comics that I have fallen in love with. His Overqualified letters are always amusing, but they also always tell a story, capture something human. Sometimes it’s a tale of mediocrity, but there’s so much life behind each one.

It’s not a comic I read because it’s funny. It’s a comic I read because I kind of wish it’s a comic I’d written. That’s something I don’t usually think when I read something. In any case it is highly recommended, as is exploring the entire site. (And read the alt text, they write a comic that has alt text.)

Also worth checking out is his Fly The December Skies album from 2007. It is largely similar in tone, with a few humorous/ridiculous/whatever you want to call them tracks (which I also enjoy). It is free music and a good thing to have during the winter. Highly recommended!

I started 2008 in Seattle, working the New Year’s Eve shift at an Italian restaurant. I was looking forward to a number of things–my birthday, landmark concerts later in the year–but I was starting to sense that my time in the Emerald City was running to its close. I’d lost focus, if I ever had it to begin with. It’s still the first city I can really call home, but something was missing.

The election injected some spirit into me. I hadn’t seen so many people in my demographic get excited about politics ever. John Kerry was a lackluster candidate, and we were too young to really care about or even really understand the 2000 election. Barack Obama was exciting. I started following the primaries, reading political blogs, visiting polling sites, talking about political news–and I had always been the apolitical “eh, I will start voting when they give me a candidate I like” type.

As summer came, a friend of mine moved from Ellensburg to Boston. I became increasingly aimless. Then he suggested I should move also, and the more I thought about it the less reason I could think of to stay. I’d even written a story about it–someone moving off to Boston and flying back for a visit. I’d move and try to find work. It would be a change of scenery. It would get me on track, though as always I never really made plans.

We flew east in my dad’s small plane. He dropped me off with my half sister and her family in New Hampshire, who drove me down to Boston and left me at my new house. I spent some time settling in, exploring, getting used to the area. Then, some time towards the beginning of October, things got weird. It is hard to really describe why it was weird, but the crowd I started hanging out with was filled with awesome people, who are fully in support of awesome things of any variety. Crazy ideas became more than ideas–they became possible. They became a reality.

As much as I missed Seattle, I knew the people here were a unique combination, and I was fortunate indeed to have found them.

I was also closer to my half-sister, who I never saw much when I was living in Washington. I spent Thanksgiving with her family, and met her half-brother for the first time. I really feel that my life has generally expanded. It’s been an interesting experiment, and I’m not going to hesitate to say it’s been a successful one, in ways I couldn’t have imagined before.

Finally, a look into what 2009 will hold. I am not generally given to making resolutions about self-improvement. Nothing about my health or being more confident or anything like that. But I do like projects. In the year of 2008, I tried to write a poem every day–this got derailed after a month, due largely to my contracting deathplagues in early February. (By the way, if you want to read them, I do not mind emailing them to people. Help me pick out the good ones!)

This year I am going to give myself a slightly easier project. I intend to write a blog post every day. 2009 will be the year of the blog. I will frequently do so on Dreamers Often Lie, and I will do so on here. You can obviously expect less politics. And when I finally put my website online, I’ll do a lot of my writing on there. I’ve got plans for the new year, and they are, as is appropriate, secret plans.

These are the plans that aren’t secret. I’m visiting Seattle again this month. I’m applying to transfer to colleges and finish up my bachelor’s in polisci. I’m still looking for work. I’m excited for 2009. I have focus, direction, and motivation. This will be my year.

I’m not going to say the honeymoon is over for Barack Obama, but there is some talk circulating, including at least one unfortunate headline, which makes it sound like people think Obama knew about Blagojevich’s mind-numbingly stupid corruption. And people were concerned about his cabinet choices–Clinton cronies, people who have a history of sending dead fish to people they don’t like. They wonder if his politics of change was just talk, and if he will basically be the same as any other politician–or worse, because he’s from Chicago, which is comically corrupt.

I’m not sure if this qualifies as buyer’s remorse, but I haven’t lost my generic hopefulness just yet. Consider a comparison of the McCain and Obama campaigns, if you will. McCain’s campaign felt like it was being run by his advisors. McCain allowed himself to be herded and ended up appearing disingenuous. Obama never seemed to lose control. Perhaps he simply chose the right advisors, but it seems like he has the force of will to keep any of his staff picks from running amok–or at least that he can reign them in and use their powers for good.

But Blagojevich! He may sound like a badly written villain in a comic book, but is his corruption going to ruin the Obama presidency? In this particular instance, I am going to say no. The American public has the memory span of a goldfish, so even if he did something shady, he’s in the clear in four years–and he has already been elected. Right now, public opinion can’t do anything to him.

The media is a big fan of freaking out. It always ends up blowing over.

Had they recognized they had lost before that point? Did they think their only chance was to hope the conservative base outnumbered Obama’s legion of supporters? Were they counting on the youth vote to be as unreliable as previously? The strategies after the conventions seemed risky. Sarah Palin seemed at once a cynical attempt to attract Hillary’s supporters, a grab to energize the Republican base, and a desperate stab at weakening Obama’s message of change by bringing someone else who can lay claim to being an agent of change.

I am not convinced that balancing act would have been possible even for a political mastermind, and I certainly don’t think Sarah Palin fits the bill. I grant her bloody, luxurious, avaricious, false, deceitful, sudden, malicious, smacking of every sin that has a name; she may even be intelligent and clever. But she is not cunning. She is a creature of gimmicks. She was also almost entirely unknown, apparently even to the McCain campaign. The convention bounce came, held for a while, then faded into an Obama lead once the public got an idea of who she was–and was less than impressed.

But I’m not really here to talk about why the campaign failed. He was taking some risks and failed. I think they got away from him at some point. He lost balance, things happened too fast, and the only choice was to run with it and hope. I can’t say it was a civil campaign at the end. But I think it is important to remember at least this much: John McCain is not a monster. His supporters are not all hateful fearmongers. Perhaps it’s time to make the attempt to make some unity happen?