'I really wish people wouldn't decide what the American Way is without asking me first.' by Kara
Sunday, August 19, 2007 at 6:49 AM

What part of 'I don't want to handle politics' does my workplace not understand?

For those who haven't been paying attention, the company I work for is a news website that also publishes ezines (e-mail newsletters people actively subscribe to -- and incidentally, we aren't spam and have all sorts of graphics on our site from people who will confirm we aren't spam). We've been expanding the kind of content we do, and pretty decently so. We got a section for religious news headlines and special-interest ezines for certain religions (which is doing pretty well). We've got a Spanish vocabulary section popping up, and we've just added a Politics channel.

Now ... with election year looming, I like the idea of the political news headlines (which come in through a news feed and are just straight-up news articles rather than editorials). And hey, you know, the columnists aren't bad. There's five from the left and five from the right, Andy Borowitz for people who prefer political satire, and some political cartoonists whose names I can't remember offhand (and I'm too lazy to check the site) but one used to illustrate for Dave Barry, so he must be good.

The managing editor was dividing up the workload a bit back, and asked me, 'Hey, Kara, do you wanna handle the Religion ezines or the Politics ezines?' Essentially, one of us would be getting one and one would be getting the other. Religion, please, I said quickly. No politics.

It's not that I don't have opinions. It's just that I often have a hard time defining them by any sort of party or leaning. When it comes to individual issues, I either don't consider myself informed enough (by which I mean first-hand and not listening to people talk about it) to state any sort of truly staunch opinion, or the opposite -- it involves something that happened to me or someone close to me, and thus I can't debate it without getting rather upset and defensive. Thus, I don't like discussing politics. I also don't like politicians, because I don't like the idea of having to choose between the l. of several e.'s.

It racks me off horribly when my friends try to wrap me up in debates anyway, or sit there and decide to talk them around me. The average human has 16-18 waking hours, so why choose the two or three at a time with me to start talking about it? I also believe (to a degree) that politics and entertainment don't belong together. That is, in a non-political environment. In things like The Daily Show or the Capitol Steps or actual politically-based movies (or, honestly, South Park), that's the point of them, and they're telling you so and you come in fully aware of that. With one-person stand-up, I can kind of understand because it's a solo performance, but I listen to comedians to laugh and politics don't make me laugh. When it comes to anything else, it really, really pisses me off because I feel rather like I've been duped -- I came to be entertained, and now I'm being expected to laugh at views I may or may not share. Especially when it's something I'm involved in. I've fought rather vehemently against being part of anything that decides to bring politics into it even for a second, and I'll continue to because the group of people I consider qualified to make any sort of public statement on politics within a piece of mainstream entertainment is very, very tiny.

(Incidentally, this pisses me off no matter what I think about the issue, because even if I'm okay with it from my point of view, there's a good chance that a third to a half of the audience just got alienated the way I do.)

So I want to keep my hands clean of that. I don't like it or want it to have anything to do with my job, because we already had political in-fighting before we launched this section. It's broken out even worse since we did, because now people are even more vehement about it. How dare we have this columnist on one side (i.e., the side they disagree with), and yet one who's just not flattering or representative enough on the other? Why did it take us so long to decide to get this person? Clearly it's someone in the company's fault.

It was really something my manager was behind. He was all gung-ho about it, and when asked my opinion, I said, 'Go for it, but I'd rather take on extra work anywhere else on the site than have to deal with this section.' But once it got stressful and started involving work, guess who had to spend all her time doing write-ups for the section?

I'm really full-up, and I've really had it. Next person who tries to discuss politics with me, sneak it into anything I have anything to do with, or tell an anywhere-leaning joke and expect me to laugh gets their fucking head ripped off and stuffed down my garbage disposal.

If you have been, fuck off.

. . . by Mich
Sunday, August 19, 2007 at 2:04 AM

I forget about what I really was going to rant about, but until the feeling of wanting to go down to the last apartment on the strip and ripping the guts out of one of the bitches down there goes away, I'm not much focused on anything else.

Be loud enough to be heard halfway down the row and then be a bitch about it. Too much. From now on I'll just call the police about parties out of hand. Of course the stupid police woman last night was singularly unhelpful and completely contradicted anything the other officers have ever told me about disturbing the peace incidents.

Bleh, anger is coming back, and I even managed to shunt it aside to fall asleep for 2 hours since the said house (and party) woke me up. The Mich is angry, and when The Mich is angry, The Mich feels violent.

The Mich fumes.

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