Sweet Little Nothings About Tom DeLay

When I was a little kid, I noticed that my mom was really into politics. She read both of Houston's local papers. (Back then we still had The Houston Post. Give me a second to compose myself, okay? I loved The Houston Post.) She watched the local news and the national news. Sometimes she would bring a small television into our den and place it by our big television so she could watched Dan Rather alongside Peter Jennings. ("That Peter Jennings...so handsome," she would say from time to time.) She read National Geographic and Reader's Digest. I didn't know the term at the time but she is what we would now call a "political junkie."

My mom died in 1993. A year or so later, we got our first internet connection at our house. One of those mostly text-based things. I remember loading a single picture overnight and thinking, "Man, that's awesome!" The internet connection at our house became faster and faster and eventually we got high-speed. After I became interested in following politics and other current events around 2000, I saw that there was just so much stuff out there. I don't think my mom would have ever got off the computer.

In the early days of my politics addiction, I would be on the computer constantly. I knew there was always just a little bit more to read about the George W. Bush-Al Gore election. I would be reading stuff during my off-periods from teaching high school history. And during lunch. And during the detentions I held after school. ("You know what real detention is? Four years of a President George W. Bush, that's what!") The Gore v. Bush decision made me realize that if yahoos like Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas could graduate from law school then it couldn't be that difficult. Thus I was off to law school.

The Bush-John Kerry election in 2004 was a replay for me. I really got into that election too. That was when I started blogging. (I think my anti-Bush blogging helped explain why John Kerry lost Texas by a smaller margin than one would expect.) I loved those little delegate maps that you would find on the websites of The Washington Post or The New York Times. I was also all about NPR and The New Yorker as well. Did my law school grades suffer a bit? Probably. But I considered myself a student of life. And I had the best teacher anyone could hope for. Myself.

After the disappointment of the 2004 election, I dropped out of following politics for awhile. Oh sure, I took secret joy in President Bush's incredibly shrinking approval ratings. (I had a t-shirt that said, "I don't like to tell people 'I told you so.' I'd rather just imply it.") Another thing that made me lose interest in the news was the departure from the scene of some of my favorite enemies: Tom DeLay, George Allen, Bill Frist, and Karl Rove. I saw that most of my interest in politics was in seeing the personal destruction of people I detested. Did I want to be that person? I can't say that I didn't like who I was because I did. But to think about people I hated all the time did get to be a bit much. I mean I talked about Tom DeLay on dates. Whispering sweet little nothings about Tom DeLay into a potential paramour's ear definitely does not work. I would not recommend you trying this at home, aight?

What drew me back to politics was the purchase of an iPod I made last year. There were a lot of political podcasts that I listened to occasionally through my computer. But I didn't really like listening to stuff while I was doing stuff on my computer. I found I liked listening to political podcast when I was going for a walk or going to the gym or driving around in my car. I got addicted to the Slate Political Gabfest podcast and the Bloggingheads.tv podcast in particular. I guess I can thank Steve Jobs for restoring my interest in politics.

The upshot of all this is I can get overwhelmed with all the sources of political news out there. I sample a lot of sites. I go through phases where I am all into The New Republic then I don't read it for months. I wonder sometimes how other political junkies get their news. If you are reading this modest blog, you likely are a fellow political junkie. Where do you get your political news hits, yo?