If you've ever had it, you'd know it.
It is a very common ailment in the good ol' summertime.
Here's one you've also likely had.
But likely haven't realized.
Election ear.
It, too, is a very common ailment.
And though you might be inclined to think otherwise, it actually exhibits symptoms year round, as opposed to just seasonally.
Symptons shortly.
I've been doing my usual ravenous reading re' the rhetoric politic lately and have noticed a slight increase in the number of election ear cases.
Many of the online news sites offer up "roundtable" assessments of various and sundry landmarks we pass crusing down ballot box boulevard. Roundtable being defined as a "mixed" group of contributors, a couple from this side, a couple from that side and a couple from the middle wherever, of course, said this side, that side and the middle happen to fall at any given time.
Despite obvious best effort to present a "balanced" look, there seems to be a pretty consistant pattern to the presentations.
And yet another affirmation that this ear issue is becoming more and more epidemic with each passing electoral cycle.
The last two weeks have been a cornucopia of dianostic opportunity.
Both major political party conventions have arrived and departed, sending their respective candidates into the masses to convince, cajole and/or otherwise conquer said masses, in hopes of acquiring the keys to a marvelous little mansion in DC just a couple blocks off Wisconsin Ave, close to schools, shopping and some silly illusion of bipartisanship up the street in that big building with the dome thingy on the top.
Meanwhile, almost to a roundtable, the roundtable "summaries" have boiled down to this.
Re' the Republican convention in Tampa:
The right wing experts praised and glorified it's whole presentation. The left wing experts gave begrudging acknowledgement to a very few things well done...and those "in the middle" guys observed that they saw and heard a whole lot of sizzle but didn't see anybody serving up anything close to a hearty steak.
Re' the Democratic convention in Charlotte:
The left wing experts praised and glorified its whole presentation. The right wing experts gave begrudging acknolwedgements to a very few things well done...and those "in the middle" guys observed that they saw and heard a whole lot of sizzle but didnt see anybody serving up anything close to a hearty steak.
And the two candidates who went into their respective conventions in a statistical dead heat came out of their respective conventions in a statistical dead heat.
As for the rest of us?
We acquired even more affection and admiration for Gabby Giffords.
And started adding "Eastwooding" to any conversation involving the wacky things that old people sometimes do.
Hey, Dems and Repubs, many millions of dollars well spent, you hear now?
Meanwhile, chances are better than good that nary a mind was changed.
Because of election ear.
Not so much a blockage of the listening canal, as much as a systemic process that filters out that which the particular patient's psyche considers threatening.
Think of it as an auditory version of antibodies in the bloodstream attacking viruses and bacterias to keep us alive.
In the Democratic ear this go round, it exhibits as an inability to even consider that Mitt Romney's experience in business might be just exactly what America needs to keep the USS U.S.A from being the subject of James Cameron's next historical disaster flick.
In the Republican ear this go round, it exhibits as a constant, perpetual, endless drone, arguably unintelligible, but purportedly proven to be heard as "anybody but Obama".
Each election year, millions, even billions, of dollars are spent on eradicating this debillitating deficiency with bumper stickers and post cards and glossy mailers and auto calls and speech after speech after speech and each election year, this debiliating deficiency defies any attempt at elimination.
In the end, the condition continues, the affliction advances and no amount of reassuring, romancing or rhetoric on the part of any partisan of any party stripe can clear the auditory canal sufficiently to create a possible pathway to a new point of view.
And just as the gloom and doomers have always attempted to buzzkill the hip culture by insisting that pot smoking inevitably leads to hard drug addiction, so, too, do the ear experts offer a similar cause and effect effect.
When it comes to politics, once a mind is made up, it is almost never changed.
And a closed mind inevitably leads to an untreatable case of election ear.
Oh...and as for the previously promised symptoms of said syndrome?
In fact, there is only one.
We hear what we want to hear.
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