A few weeks ago, a storm started brewing over the announced opening keynote speakers for ASAE’s annual conference: Karl Rove and James Carville. As I’m avidly anti-politics (I don’t even vote), I immediately got fired up upon hearing the name “Karl Rove” because I know enough about politics to know he bashed my hero Elizabeth Warren, so I automatically hate him. James Carville? I admit I have no idea who he is, beyond that he’s apparently the polar opposite of Karl Rove. Yes, I’m that apathetic and out-of-touch with reality when it comes to politics: I do not give a shit and wouldn’t waste five minutes watching people argue on TV. Ok, well at least watching people argue about politics on TV…people on reality TV arguing about nonsense? I plead the fifth.
On one level, I think having these two clowns do a live version of what I could watch on TV but choose not to at the opening session is so reprehensible and shows that ASAE is so out of touch with what I find interesting, relevant and/or educational that I honestly thought about not attending at all. On the other, do I actually care that much? Enough to raise a stink about it or even rant about it in a blog post? When push comes to shove, somehow I’m finding that it’s the latter…while I think it’s stupid and there’s no way in hell I’ll be attending that opening keynote, at the end of the day I mostly feel “meh” about it.
Does that mean that I’m just apathetic about politics and am tuning it out like I do any and all things political? Does it mean that my attitude towards ASAE has softened and I’m loathe to criticize them? Does it mean that acupuncture has turned me into a more temperate person who doesn’t get worked up about much of anything? I honestly don’t know. I am reading great, passionate posts about the issue, and all are persuasive and resonate with me, but at the end of the day, I feel oddly less upset about this than I would have thought I’d end up feeling. Or maybe it’s that I’m so upset I’ve just blocked it out. Who knows…I guess I’ll see how I feel when I’m skipping that session in Dallas.
There are no comments