Candidates as High School Stereotypes

Looking at the elections in general, what do you see? I don’t know about you, but it sorta reminds me of high school.

In those rare times that I do think back, (its best not to dwell) it becomes this memory that a majority of your friends think fondly of, then you remember the stereotypes, and you ask yourself, “what was so great about high school then?”

Popularity was a rare and scarce commodity — you could have easily been the smartest person in school, but it wasn’t valued as highly as status, good looks or athletic ability.

Here are what the candidates remind me of:

Barack Obama as the geek – The one who was into computers. Who knew that one day, Facebook would take over social life management? He might’ve blurted out a few sentences which only affirmed his stereotype. Of course no one at the time even conceived that he’d be doing BIG things while the prom queens who weren’t able to step out of that image got the smaller jobs, the ones where looks weren’t as gleaming a qualification as book smarts. Unless of course they join pageants or modeling gigs.

Sarah Palin as the popular girl– In high school, being popular was better than being smart. Which is a generalization, of course, I can’t speak for this current generation, but that’s how it was in my day. The popular girls had images to maintain, so they can’t not be hanging out with high school royalty, plus, most of them were bullies. I asked, back then, “how could they be so beautiful and be so ugly on the inside?” Of course, some of them are now moms. Some got over it. Some, like Palin, became success stories. Keen instinct on where to look, and how to manipulate things into what they want.

John McCain as the jock – Obviously. This guy ran on testosterone! Wait, no, TESTOSTERONE! Doing without thinking. Promising something, and then suddenly remembering that he had a date, or a game to go to, so he does something else.

Joe Biden as the indie kid – He wasn’t ‘cool’-cool, but he didn’t care what anybody thought of him, which makes him ‘cool.’ Not that he was trying to be. (I’m obviously not well-versed enough in Biden’s stories to make clever satire, so there.)