Let me put this in a way you can understand

Who is the average US voter? 

I tried to do 'The Google' search and the first ten hits were blog sites so I don't have any reliable statistics for you right now. (Sorry, I wanted to give you all Staight Talk (TM) but that would be like quoting Wikipedia for a history paper.)

 

I think the average US voter is the person that gets most of his/her political information from the 10 o'clock news (you know, right after the report the mayor's latest affair with a two-cent-lady-of-the-night and before the one on Brangelina's latest excursion to McDonald's), Good Morning America, Katie Couric and Matt Lauer, Extra, E! News, the Yahoo! front page, Oprah, and of course--the most reputable source--campaign ads.  

But the news--especially local news--totally suck at reporting anything that has to do with elections or presidential campaigns.  They just don't do politics very well.  

And its not their fault! Really, in many ways, its our fault. Or maybe we can blame it on our culture and society. 

The fact is, we're like crackheads when it comes to news, especially political news.  We want instant gratification.  You know, just enough to make you happy and keep ya going.  

News people (i.e. the big guys at Corporate who own like 100 different news subsidiaries and NBC) can't make money if we don't watch the news.  We won't watch the news if they do long, substantive news reports on the political haps. There's a reason no one--not even your Grandparents--watch C-Span.  They have to literally dumb down the news to get people to watch.  Its way more profitable to do reports on Paris Hilton's release from prison than to do extensive reports on McCain's latest rally speech.  

So what we get in the news are 4-5 seconds worth of sound bytes from those speeches and two seconds of video of McCain waving at an audience.  Awesome.  

And we don't complain! We're pretty happy with this system. 

But what ends up happening is people like Sarah Palin can become the next Vice President OR President of a small country known as America. 

So, to all the conservative or Republican-leaning "average" US voters, let me put this in a way you can understand: 

You know, but you can trust John McCain--he does have his own 'Straight Talk Express'--when he says the Republican party IS the party of change: 

No matter who wins this election, the direction of this country is going to change dramatically. But the choice is between the right change and the wrong change, between going forward and going backward.

I guess in McCain's case, Straight Talk stands for in-your-face, cross your fingers-hope to die-stick a thousand needles in your eye, honest to goodness rubbish. 

(Thanks for the comic.)