The politics of middle school

As a middle school teacher trying to follow the Democratic Primary, I've been suffering from an irritating sense of deja vu. The sniping between frontrunners Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama is reminiscent of two teenage divas viciously striving to become the Queen Bee of the adolescent set. After watching the South Carolina debate, I was embarrassed for both of them. My students behave better than that! To make matters worse, the majority of media coverage seems designed to encourage the squabbling, just like teen telltales who run back and forth between the two most popular girls in school, bolstering their own sense of self-importance by instigating drama. (Yes, Wolf Blitzer, Tim Russert, et al, I'm talking about you!)

Why does the media base its political coverage on the assumption that Americans are ignorant and shallow? Please stop insulting our intelligence. Stop assuming all women are going to vote for Senator Clinton simply because they are the same sex. Stop assuming that all African Americans are going to vote for Obama simply because they share a darker skin color. Stop assuming that nobody is going to vote for John Edwards just because he's a southern white guy, and therefore we've been there and done that.

We're not brain-dead. We know Hillary Clinton is a woman; we know Barak Obama is black; and we know John Edwards is neither. How about telling us where the candidates stand on the issues, instead of playing the adolescent "he said, she said" game? Americans are mature enough to sit at the grown-ups table. We don't need the media to cut up our food for us. Just set out the plates and let us serve ourselves.