Tara Graham

Work in progress...

This story was originally published as coverage leading up to the Nov. 4 election on the Pop + Politics website. It also appeared on The Huffington Post's Off the Bus page under the title, "Millions of Ex-Offenders Did Their Time, But Still Can't Vote."
 

Tuesday was no ordinary day. I think it's safe to say that we'll forever remember where we were and what we were doing when we heard the news.

While most of my peers were partying it up with the Dems at some local celebration--popping champagne, high-fiving and hugging, and chanting about change--I was (not by choice) at the GOP's "Election 2008 Victory Party" in Orange County.

W00t! W00t! Some victory.

All the pundits agreed: The stakes were high for John McCain during last week's presidential debate. Not only was he trailing Barack Obama in the polls, but many argued that McCain lost the previous debate and Sarah Palin, well . . . uh. Smile and nod.

No doubt about it, the Republicans were hurting, which is why a gaffe out of McMaverick was strictly out of the question. However, when the topic of the Bush-Cheney energy bill surfaced, McCain -- with a smirk on his face and a finger point in the direction of Obama -- let two fateful words slip:


"You know who voted for it? You might never know: That One . . . You know who voted against it? Me," said McCain.

And the "mainstream-'gotcha'-media" went wild.

As we grow older, most of us collect commitments with the understanding that they add a bit of meaning and worth to the person inside us. We strive for them, acquire them, and wear them proudly, perhaps as we would bangles round our arms. We stack them high so can they clash and clatter with every flick of the wrist and folks can see and hear just how busy and bound we are. It's good to be bound -- by the demands of life -- no?

I know me some folks over in Venice Beach who might beg to differ. These people move and go as they please. They wear tie-dye on their chests, peace signs around their necks, and the burn of the sun on their brows and cheeks. Some wear the signs of insanity, others wear the vapid glaze of drug addiction, and then there's this chick sitting cross-legged on the sidewalk, with a guinea pig in her lap, more than a few piercings here and there, and a contagious smile on her face. She's young and colorful and probably homeless. If she is, she's not bothered by it one bit.  

You'll find her slumming around on the boardwalk, along with other vagabonds and musicians and artists, not to mention the literally-living-but-figuratively-dead crowd. They strum their guitars, bang their drums, sell their knickknacks, have a good time, or simply sit there with a "pretend I'm dead" sign in tow. These people do as they please. Tag the walls as they please. Sit and smoke as they please. Converse (quite intelligently) with as many imaginary friends as they please. They're an unbound people.

Those of us who work or school from nine-to-five visit Venice to watch and partake in the spectacle at play in this other world of anything goes. It's a place where we can let our hair down, take our bangles off, and let loose for a change. It may be a freak-fest, but there's undeniably a little bit of Venice in each of us. Why else would the boardwalk be so crowded on such a cloudy day?

Let's get one thing straight: Whatever happened during Friday's presidential debate had no relevance or bearing on the media frenzy that happened after it -- or before it, for that matter. Case and point:

The ad above reportedly ran on the opinion web page of The Wall Street Journal the morning of the debate. That is, the debate hadn't even occurred and the McCain campaign was already in gear to pass its dirty laundry through the spin cycle before releasing the goods back into the public. Some observers claim the ad was a fake, but Reuters tracked down a McCain spokesperson who said the ad posting was a mistake. Rhetorically speaking, a "fake" and a "mistake" are two very different things; whereas the first is beyond control, the latter indicates a certain degree of, ahem, involvement.

I distinctly remember the day the C.E.O. of the online publishing company I worked for barged into an editorial meeting to announce the arrival of a new priority: user-generated content (otherwise known as UGC in geekspeak).

Of course, all of us editors were a bit miffed that the work of the readers was suddenly more important than our own. Did this mean we would all be out of a job soon? To the contrary, Mr. C.E.O explained how UGC would actually sustain our jobs and create new ones. The more we editors could encourage our readers to actively engage with the website and, in turn, invest themselves in the larger network, the more those readers would have reason to come back for more and point their friends in our direction as well. "Let the readers do the work for you," he chuckled. And this was the new way of the web.