One of the most irrefutable and radiant takeaways from the election is that it vividly illustrated the ever-increasing irrelevance and ineffectiveness of both the mass media and also celebrities when it comes to swaying and inspiring citizens on Election Day.<\/p>\n
Never in my 54 years have I seen more editorials and PSAs (from a plethora of stars\u2013\u2013everyone from Katy Perry, LeBron James, Natalie Portman and Robert De Niro to Lady Gaga, Bruce Springsteen, Alec Baldwin and every one of the late-night talk show hosts) urging people to get out and vote\u00a0… and yet, by all indications so far, the 2016 Presidential election represented the lowest overall voter turnout in 20 years.<\/p>\n
Not exactly something to smile about, but, by the same token, you could effectively argue that the trend toward not electing as President firmly-entrenched Washington, D.C., insiders (whether it\u2019s McCain, Romney or Clinton) isn\u2019t necessarily a \u201cbad\u201d thing at all, nor is it likely a trend that doesn\u2019t continue in various political arenas. (Can people really be so \u201cshocked\u201d and \u201csurprised\u201d that Clinton failed to win those key swing states\u2013\u2013not to mention garnering more than 5 million fewer popular votes than Obama did in 2012\u2013\u2013when all the nationwide polls the past few years have shown that U.S. citizens have never been more dissatisfied and\/or distrustful of our federal government in terms of what it\u2019s doing, and how it\u2019s doing it?!?)<\/p>\n
By the way, there was a letter by Boise-based Senior Circuit Judge (Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals) Stephen S. Trott in the Idaho Statesman recently\u00a0(\u201cElectoral College Has a History, But Does It Have a Future?\u201d) that does a terrific job of explaining how, when and why the Electoral College came to be in the first place, one that\u2019s must-reading for anyone who isn\u2019t familiar with it\u2013\u2013easily one of the most concise and informative things I\u2019ve read in a newspaper this year so far.<\/p>\n
John Pluntze<\/b><\/p>\n
Ketchum resident<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One of the most irrefutable and radiant takeaways from the election is that it vividly illustrated the ever-increasing irrelevance and ineffectiveness of both the mass media and also celebrities when it comes to swaying and inspiring citizens on Election Day. Never in my 54 years have I seen more editorials and PSAs (from a plethora […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","_pvb_checkbox_block_on_post":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-letters-to-the-editor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9378"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9378\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}