#36 The election has become a doggy-doggy world

Sometimes people don't quite understand the cliched idioms and metaphors that we use in daily life. Years ago, I had a student writing about how competitive our society had become. He explained that we lived in a "doggy-doggy world." We chatted about that statement, and I thought he understood that all statements, even cliches and idioms, had to make sense on some level, whether literal or figurative. Unfortunately, when he took a literature course from me the next semester, he wrote about Robert Frost's poem, which he referred to as "The Mending Wall." We chatted about THAT item as well (even though it was neither cliche nor idiom), especially since "Mending Wall"--the actual title--is an action by the narrator in the poem, and the wall itself remains admirably inactive.

I mention these past events because an AP/Yahoo article today indicated that pet owners favor John McCain over Barack Obama 42% to 37%. This poll also found that people who don't have pets favor Obama by 48% to McCain's 34%.

"I think a person who owns a pet is a more compassionate person — caring, giving, trustworthy. I like pet owners," said one pet owner, who owns two cats herself. Another pet owner indicated that, if a person owns a pet, that fact "tells you that they're responsible at least for something, for the care of something," though he also admitted that pet-owning would not influence his vote.

According to the online article, John McCain "has a veritable menagerie, including Sam the English springer spaniel, Coco the mutt, turtles Cuff and Link, Oreo the black and white cat, a ferret, three parakeets and a bunch of saltwater fish."

The American Pet Product Manufacturers Association estimates that 63 percent of American homes include a pet, including 88 million cats and 75 million dogs. That's a lot of dog poo and cat pee to contend with, and these individuals favor McCain by 43 percent to 34 percent for dog owners, and by 41 percent to 38 percent for cat owners.

Perhaps these statistics will influence the major political parties in subsequent nominations, by indicating that an equine-loving candidate would do even better, given all the homegrown #or$e$#!t he or she could shovel at the voting public.

These polls about cats and dogs lead me to believe that the press may think it has nothing better to do in this election than to ferret out some off-the-wall information to amuse the public. Well, if it doesn't become a habit, I guess we can handle it. But the media must not forget how serious and substantive the issues are, issues that will affect us and potentially generations to come: the national debt, our two wars in Asia, genocide in Africa, global warming, and a host of other problems that dubya's two administrations have caused or have ignored.

One final consideration in the media's feline-canine conceit: while he doesn't currently have a pet, Barack Obama is reported to have promised his daughters a dog once the campaign is over.

-- triton --