Saw an interesting documentary on the Cleveland PBS station last night, "Swing State Ohio"

[Berry Cool]

The documentary was made by some New Yorkers who spent some months in 2004 in Ohio covering the presidential race and the election. Overall, it was so depressing to watch. Although Kerry supporters were quoted and it was obvious he drew lots of big crowds, the ones for * were just as big, and listening to people talk about why they were planning to vote for him was infuriating. Knowing now what I didn't know then only makes it more painful.

There's quite a bit of Stephanie Tubbs Jones in it, which is also saddening now. Shows her at a rally in Cleveland the night before the election whipping out a pink woman's slip and waving it to say that Ohio is going to give * "the pink slip."

If there was anything that amused me in retrospect, it was two items:

1. Knowing that Ken Blackwell, the evil secretary of state behind the theft of the election, was defeated for governor by a landslide in 2006.

2. Seeing a born-again Christian guy who was convinced that the GOP had better watch out in 2008, because that was guaranteed to be a presidential race between Hillary and some Republican candidate or other (two of the names he mentioned were Rudy Giuliani and ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER!), and unfortunately the Republican candidate was bound to be one who would NOT be approved by the Christian right, and that would cause problems, because if you are a Republican and the Christian right doesn't like you, you are in trouble.

I'm sure this is being shown and has been shown on PBS stations in Ohio, but if you don't live here and would like to see it yourself, DVDs are for sale at swingstateohio.com. (Disclaimer: I am in no way connected to this project.) They are even selling 10-packs of the DVD on a spindle at near-cost for those who want to hand them out to others.

I think one of the smartest people in the whole movie was a girl who looked to be about seven or eight years old, who said smart people would vote for Kerry.