I'm the author of the essay "Mystery Unraveled: How a White, Moderate, Churchgoing, Middle-Class, Middle-Aged Woman Could Vote for Obama." Interesting to see the rounds that my post have made, even to this site! I don't own a GT40, but I registered in order to reply, particularly to John M.
As for the depth of my interest in politics, I'm sure my friends would attest that I'm a political junkie, year-round. My doctoral degree is in media studies, and my past academic work has focused on the formation of public opinion within the context of culture. While I do enjoy Jon Stewart, my information sources are a bit broader than that: the usual "MSM" (NYT, Washington Post and other assorted publications of what conservatives regard as the "left-media cabal"), Wall Street Journal, Forbes, The Economist, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Salon, international views (particularly British newspapers and BBC), and a smattering of more polarized views on the right and left (Fox News, to the extent I can stomach it; several conservative blogs such as Powerline; HuffPo, Slate, etc.) As a former media studies professor, part of what I teach students in the intro course, Contemporary Mass Media, is how critical it is to get information from an array of sources and to be well aware of inherent biases. While the latter are somewhat unavoidable, I think we can still make distinctions between information enterprises with an overt agenda and those that continue to make an effort to achieve impartial coverage.
As much as Republicans want to believe that many of us white voters who went for Obama are ignorant, we're not. I didn't opt to use my article as a space to outline detailed policy positions - I tried to give a general take on the major philosophical and practical reasons I supported Obama. Yes, Obamacare is unproven, as one commenter notes -- but what it seeks to remedy IS proven, which has been a catastrophe in terms of making affordable healthcare available to more Americans. Romney's agenda of radical privatization and tax cuts for the richest Americans is not a road I want to see our country go down. All it will do is exacerbate the massive chasm that's already grown between the richest and poorest Americans, and further erode the middle class. We simply see things differently when it comes to assessing what's going to work and what isn't. Time will tell.
As for the depth of my interest in politics, I'm sure my friends would attest that I'm a political junkie, year-round. My doctoral degree is in media studies, and my past academic work has focused on the formation of public opinion within the context of culture. While I do enjoy Jon Stewart, my information sources are a bit broader than that: the usual "MSM" (NYT, Washington Post and other assorted publications of what conservatives regard as the "left-media cabal"), Wall Street Journal, Forbes, The Economist, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Salon, international views (particularly British newspapers and BBC), and a smattering of more polarized views on the right and left (Fox News, to the extent I can stomach it; several conservative blogs such as Powerline; HuffPo, Slate, etc.) As a former media studies professor, part of what I teach students in the intro course, Contemporary Mass Media, is how critical it is to get information from an array of sources and to be well aware of inherent biases. While the latter are somewhat unavoidable, I think we can still make distinctions between information enterprises with an overt agenda and those that continue to make an effort to achieve impartial coverage.
As much as Republicans want to believe that many of us white voters who went for Obama are ignorant, we're not. I didn't opt to use my article as a space to outline detailed policy positions - I tried to give a general take on the major philosophical and practical reasons I supported Obama. Yes, Obamacare is unproven, as one commenter notes -- but what it seeks to remedy IS proven, which has been a catastrophe in terms of making affordable healthcare available to more Americans. Romney's agenda of radical privatization and tax cuts for the richest Americans is not a road I want to see our country go down. All it will do is exacerbate the massive chasm that's already grown between the richest and poorest Americans, and further erode the middle class. We simply see things differently when it comes to assessing what's going to work and what isn't. Time will tell.
