odd: today i heard an interview on a public radio station with an author about inequality in this country and how people’s abilities and opinions are being overlooked simply because they’re “average” – not millionaires, not celebrities, etc… because people are wealthy, or popular, their abilities are given greater weight even when they are defintely not the most qualified. they did an interview with some author about the “schwarzenegger syndrome”, how arnold schwarzenegger wasn’t the most qualified candidate, yet still won the california election in a large part due to his celebrity status. people who may be significantly more skilled are passed over since they don’t have name-power or financial abilities.

(it was a very funny interview, though, due to technical difficulties: the host of the show could hear the author on the phone but couldn’t speak with him, the technician at the station could speak and hear both the host and the author, and the author could only speak with and hear the technican… while they were figuring out their techinical difficulties they said something like “this is a noncommercial radio station, so we can’t break to commercial!”)

anyway, it was an interesting listen. on cnn tonight just a little while ago i heard an interview that touched on several of the same points that the one earlier today did, except it was completely different people. interesting that it’s such a popular topic all of a sudden…