So today Hillary and Obama got into it, through their surrogates. Billionaire David Geffen was once a FOB(AH) (Friend of Bill and Hillary), but no more. He held a fundraiser for Obama and said some unkind things about the Clintons. The Clinton camp shot back at Obama that this amounted to “going negative,” which Obama had sworn off, and therefore Obama (who hadn’t said anything) should apologize and — my favorite part — return the money raised. Obama’s flak returned fire that the Clintons didn’t seem to mind Mr. Geffen when he was writing checks to them and camping out in the Lincoln bedroom.

To me this all seemed very familiar. In fact, I hear a variation of this exchange just about every morning, between my 4-year-old and his 8-year-old sister. It’s usually about who poked whom first, who did or didn’t say a bad word and then who did or didn’t respond, whose turn it was to pick a TV show and so on.

This sort of back and forth isn’t confined strictly to my kids or the Democratic contenders who have been designated by the media as “the frontrunners” — whatever that means at this stage, given that the first caucus is a year from now. This morning the quote unquote vice-president was slinging hash on John McCain; McCain yesterday called the veep’s good friend Donald Rumsfeld “the worst secretary of defense in history.” Cheney’s response was a good one: that just recently McCain had said some unpleasant things about Cheney himself, and then rushed over to apologize — and perhaps he would be rushing over to apologize again. (My heartbroken feelings about Mr. McCain’s long slow slide from respect were expressed poetically here.)

All of this fills me with a sort of sadness. I’m not naive; I do understand the motivations of all involved — Hillary to show she ain’t takin’ no guff, Obama to show he’s tuff enuff, McCain to distance himself from the wrack of Iraq, Cheney to suffer no fools, and the media to somehow justify more than two years’ of expense accounts for covering these little snits. But that doesn’t make any of it taste any better.

To put it in perspective:

• 1/6 of the people on this planet can’t get a drink of clean water.
• Many double-income households (sometimes with two parents working more than five jobs) can’t afford a mortgage (especially in places like greater Los Angeles).
• The Middle East seems more unstable every day — especially, in some ways, Saudi Arabia, which is funding terrorism in an effort to appease its internal radical element — and that’s where most of our energy comes from.
• For most of us, traffic is impenetrable.
• Meanwhile whole sections of middle America are dying out, major industries having pulled up stakes,

and on and on.

And against all that, the major stories of the past two days were: Clinton and Obama’s meaningless dustup, and Britney Spears’ self-induced head shaving.

I realize I risk sounding like a relic, but I’m waiting for a candidate who will seriously address real issues. Even if it means standing up for something. And even if it risks the media not reporting it because it isn’t entertaining.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 21st, 2007 at 11:31 pm and is filed under On being, Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.