Elections are round the corner. What might George Carlin say? :)

I wish I could speak the brutal truth to students.  I reminded them about elections, and that tomorrow is the deadline to register. I even highlighted how the Nobel Peace Prize recipient is in jail simply because he made political comments ... and that he would love to have the freedom we take for granted ...
I wish I could have added more ... but, my sense of professional responsibilities prevents me from such blunt talk ... I hope a student or two would wander here to this blog and get the rest of the story :)

First from a contemporary contrarian, Christopher Hitchens, who writes that we get the politicians we deserve:

What normal person would consider risking their career and their family life in order to undergo the incessant barrage of intrusive questioning about every aspect of their lives since well before college? To face the constant pettifogging and chatter of Facebook and Twitter and have to boast of how many false friends they had made in a weird cyberland? And if only that was the least of it. Then comes the treadmill of fundraising and the unending tyranny of the opinion polls, which many media systems now use as a substitute for news and as a means of creating stories rather than reporting them. And, even if it "works," most of your time in Washington would be spent raising the dough to hang on to your job. No wonder that the best lack all conviction.

And now over to the crankiest and funniest contrarian ever :)