Recently, I was listening to a morning radio show. One of the DJs went out into the street holding pictures of public government figures and pictures of famous celebrities. He asked random people on the street to identify each one of them. Not suprisingly, most people knew all of the celebrities and about one of the government figures. This time he used those running for President, but before he held up pictures of the candidates running for Austin mayor.
It was amazing to see how little people knew about the government in the city that the lived in. I believe that this is the fault of both the Texas government and the public. Especially living in Austin, the state's capitol, the citizens should know those who hold office or who is running for office.
The government should do more to reach out to the public. They could make more public appearances or advertising. The government seems so far out of peoples reach. This could also be the fault of the public's education. They see pictures of famous celebrities and hear about their latest arrest or party in the news, and they don't even know what is going on in their own city. The citizens should look in the newspaper every now and then and see what new things are going on in the legislature.
Recently, celebrities have tried to get involved in publicizing government by the get out and vote campaign, or whatever it was called. MTV hosted specials on each of the candidates running for President and encouraged everyone to go and vote. It is sad that so many people in Texas don't care enough to vote. They think that since they live in a conservative state, their vote doesn't matter.
Both the government and the public need to put more effort into this problem. Those who run our state should be just as well known as what dress Jenifer Lopez wore to the Grammys.
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3 comments:
Hey, just a classmate, skimming for a blog to comment on for stage 4 - I really like your writing style. It's very solid, and you make great points in a colloquial way. Props. :)
Great article.
I believe that government and politics is just plain boring to most people. Generally, people are more interested in wild teen celebrities, presidential sex scandals, or who will the bachelor select as his mate on reality TV. There really isn't much that can be done to make politics more engaging. The common people are engaged when it directly involves them, for example, George Bush signed a bill that will increase the costs to apply for citizenship to almost a 100% increase. I took notice because it involves me, I'm currently just a Texas resident. To promote our government official as celebrities may make their faces more familiar, but that's not their job. They're supposed to be working for the people, not attending P diddy's birthday bash.
Very nice work. This is obviously one of my "soapboxes," the public is well-informed about things that just don't matter and uninformed about things that do....
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