A new poll shows that nearly two-thirds of Americans expect great things from the Obama presidency, according to CNN:

“The public thinks it’s likely that Obama will improve race relations, improve economic conditions, bring stability to the financial markets, make the U.S. safer from terrorism, reduce the country’s dependence on foreign oil, reduce global warming, win the war in Afghanistan and remove U.S. troops from Iraq without causing a major upheaval in that country.”

That would be a tall order even for a president coming into office on a thriving economy and a nation whose residents are generally satisfied.  For a president taking office in a slumping economy when many people have been saying for years that the country is headed in the “wrong direction” and we face a stunning national debt, those expectations seem a bit ludicrous.

How much can one president accomplish?  It remains to be seen.

But I’m curious about what you’re expecting.  Vote in the Patrick’s Place Poll in the sidebar.

What’s your favorite social networking site?  Do you Myspace?  Do you Facebook?

I think my first foray into social networking sites was on Friendster, which seemed to be harmless enough.  One or two people I know were actually on that site.

Then I joined Myspace.  More people I know are there, but there are a lot of people I don’t know who sent me friend requests because they saw that I worked in television or that I like to write.  I had lots of “friends” there but few real friends.  (Such is life, right?)

Not so long ago, I joined Facebook, too.  Most of the people I actually know from Myspace are also on Facebook.  There seems to be a lot less of the blind networking based solely on common interests, but that seems to cause less distraction when it comes to finding people you actually know.  And unlike Myspace and Friendster, the amount of spam seems to be next to nil.

I’ve thought about deleting my Myspace account, but there are one or two people I know who don’t use Facebook at all.  (I didn’t for a long time when it appeared that you had to have a valid college email address to register; my college days were behind me.)  I’m definitely going to delete my Friendster account, because the only messages I get there are from Russian women looking for a husband:  I know immediately that I’m dealing with spam when someone sends me a note with the subject, “Hey, cutie.”  Only a spambot.

Cast your vote in the sidebar poll.  Which site works the best for you?  And if you use one not listed, select “Other” and feel free to leave a comment here and let me know which one is your favorite.

Here are the results from the latest Patrick’s Place Poll, which asked which candidate you thought was most ready to lead from Day One, an obscure qualification that no one can really define because it means different things to different people.  Regardless of the vagueness in determining what exactly might make a candidate ready for such a task, here are the results:

• Barack Obama: 67%
• Hillary Rodham Clinton: 23%
• John McCain: 7%
• Mike Huckabee:  3%
• Ralph Nader: 0%

I’m a little surprised that McCain got so few votes; Hillary seems to think he should rank well above Obama.

Who’ll be the Democratic presidential candidate in 2008? It would seem that Karl Rove has already decided that it’ll be Hillary Clinton. In his Newsweek column, he discusses how the Republican candidate — he apparently hasn’t decided who that will be, yet — can beat her:

“Say in authentic terms what you believe. The GOP nominee must highlight his core convictions to help people understand who he is and to set up a natural contrast with Clinton, both on style and substance. Don’t be afraid to say something controversial. The American people want their president to be authentic. And against a Democrat who calculates almost everything, including her accent and laugh, being seen as someone who says what he believes in a direct way will help.”

I wonder if Mitt Romney read the article. Romney already makes John Kerry, the man accused of being the new millenium’s first real flip-flopper of a presidential candidate, look like he never changed his mind a day in his life.

Clinton has gotten lots of attention the past few days, and she seems to have gotten points for her handling of a hostage crisis at her campaign headquarters in New Hampshire. She seemed calm under fire, authoritative, decisive. (Even though she likely made no decisions at all about how that particular crisis was being handled.)

Meanwhile, just as people have been forgetting that pointless squabble about why she won’t admit that her vote to authorize Bush to invade Iraq if necessary was a “mistake” (and use that specific word), Bill Clinton made a remark that will probably put him (back) in the dog house: speaking to an Iowa audience, he said that he “flatly opposed” the war in Iraq from the beginning.

Of course, back in 2003, he told a graduating class at Tougaloo College, “I supported the President when he asked the Congress for authority to stand up against weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.”

And in 2004, he said this in a CNN interview:

“I have repeatedly defended President Bush against the left on Iraq, even though I think he should have waited until the U.N. inspections were over.

“[After 9/11, Bush's first priority was to keep al Qaeda and other terrorist networks from obtaining] chemical and biological weapons or small amounts of fissile material.

“That’s why I supported the Iraq thing. There was a lot of stuff unaccounted for.”

Is this a rewriting of history or a clarification of what Bill Clinton really felt but didn’t come right out and say because of his wife’s pending run for the White House? It makes little difference, because either way, it gives Hillary’s critics more ammunition.

And while Clinton’s critics are typing up a storm on the blogosphere, there is now word that Barack Obama has now taken the lead (albeit a slight one) in Iowa over Clinton and John Edwards. Obama is still riding the high of campaign assistance from Oprah Winfrey and the endorsement of Des Moines’ mayor, as well as a fiery speech three weeks ago in which he vowed to turn away from the partisan battles of the Clinton-Bush years.

That’s something all candidates should be promising. And exactly what the winning candidate needs to deliver.

• Take the poll: Who do you think will win the Democratic primary in Iowa?

The procession was led by two horses pulling a pine box topped with a boquet of fake black roses. Funeral-goers weren’t crying.

They were cheering.  Continue reading “Laid to Rest?”

The local community of Mount Pleasant has banned smoking in indoor workplaces, including restaurants and bars, effective September 1st, according to the Post and Courier. The city of Charleston plans to enact its own smoking ban in July.

Unlike Charleston and nearby Sullivan’s Island, whose smoking bans carry a maximum fine of $500 per offense and up to 30 days in jail, Mount Pleasant’s only carries a top fine of $100 and no jail time. Still, once the law takes effect, smokers could really pay a stiff price for lighting up.

Some restaurant and bar owners are less than enthusiastic, because they think the ban will send their profits up in smoke. I’ve been to restaurants with a non-smoking section just a few feet away from a smoking section without so much as a partition to separate them. Smoke, unfortunately, doesn’t seem to care which section it drifts into.

Naturally, the biggest criticism comes from smokers who think that they have a right to smoke where they please. (As far as I know, smoking isn’t listed in the Constitution, but that’s an argument for another day.) I can understand their position, even though I don’t smoke. I find it odd that so many of them seem unable to understand my position.

I have a problem with cigarette smoke. It’s not a life-threatening problem, but it’s a problem nonetheless. To put it simply, I have a mild allergy to smoke. When I’m in a room with a lot of cigarette smoke, my eyes begin watering, my throat becomes scratchy and I start coughing. I have friends who don’t smoke and who also don’t seem to be affected by people who do. So maybe I’m in the minority when it comes to dealing with cigarette smoke.

A while back, I ran a Patrick’s Place Poll about a ban on trans-fats in restaurants:

Is the government right to force restaurants to stop using trans-fats?

39% - Yes. We’re not doing a good-enough job of eating healthy on our own, so we need all the help we can get.

61% - No. What we eat (and figuring out what is and isn’t healthy) should be left up to us.

I can understand these results. We all have a choice when it comes to eating “unhealthy” food. If you don’t want to eat food dripping with oil, we can avoid those restaurants that serve them.

The problem is, smoking isn’t just about the smoker. If smokers decided that they’d just get their fix with a nicotine patch, that handy little aid that is supposed to help people kick the habit, I wouldn’t object. Why would I, after all? That’s completely their business. I’m in no way affected by the delivery of nicotine in their system.

But when they get their nicotine the old-fashioned way, they’re polluting the same air I have to breathe. They’re making me uncomfortable. And, according to health experts who warn about the dangers of second-hand smoke, they’re creating a potentially-unhealthy situation for me, not just themselves. And I have a problem with that.

Sure, smokers could take a look at me and argue that weight is likely to send the grim reaper my way a lot sooner than the little bit of badness I inhale from their cigarettes. The point is, however, that I’m on a weight loss and fitness plan, through which I’ve lost 58 pounds, in order to get healthier. I’m not trying to shed the pounds so I can then get out more and wind up with emphysema or lung cancer because of their smoking.

That, I think, is the line in the sand when it comes to judging the fairness of such laws. If it’s a problem that affects other people, I tend to not have a problem with the government stepping in to control it.

Do you agree? The new Patrick’s Place Poll asks your position on smoking bans. Vote now.

(Insert your own joke here.)

But seriously, folks, it’s time for a new edition of the Patrick’s Place Poll, and what better topic at the moment than the story that’s getting national attention: the transfer of Paris Hilton from prison to house arrest, or, from rags to riches.

There’s a lot of debate out there from both sides. Some say that if she were poor or black (or both), she’d still be sitting in that cell. Others say the “real” truth is that if she were anyone else, (read: not a celebrity), she would have been out and no one would have questioned it at all.

What do you think? Vote now.

You’ll note, by the way, that I did not include an “I don’t care” option. This is assumed, to one degree or another, of most of the people who actually vote. Paris Hilton is news in our society, because our society has decided that what celebrities do, particulary the “naughty” things they do, is something it is interested in. Its consumption of all media items related to Hilton is a demonstration of this fact. I wish it were not so, but it is. Unless you are a personal friend or family member, there’s no real reason why you should care. That’s why I didn’t bother to include that option.

I visited an online forum for sufferers of agoraphobia, panic attacks, and related conditions. I don’t have agoraphobia, the fear of going out in public, but I do have social anxiety, the fear of being in crowds of people. And I’ve definitely experienced my share of panic attacks; they’re never fun.

Anyway, one of the posters complained about a recent episode of a reality series in which a “viewer tips” segment answered a question about someone’s fear of leaving the house. When the writer asked what he should do, the response was that he should put a box over his head before leaving the house. I get the joke: if the person has the box over his head, he won’t realize that he’s out of the house. Of course, he won’t realize when he walks into traffic, either, so it doesn’t strike me as a particularly funny joke.

It struck the person who posted the mention of it even worse:

“I was offended by it! It’s like they were making fun of people like myself that can’t leave the house, I wonder if the person who wrote in actually is agoraphobic, I doubt, someone would want to be made fun of like that though! Anyway just wondering other peoples thoughts…..”

My first thought was that she used far too many periods in her ellipsis. There should only be three. If they end the sentence, there should be four. Never five. But that doesn’t answer her question, so I neglected to mention it.

I did read the four responses that were posted before mine. All of them unanimously supported her offense to the comment. Some feigned equal amounts of outrage over the insensitivity of the joke. Two of them threw in the point that I would make: that anyone who would make such a joke clearly doesn’t understand what it is like to experience such anxiety.

Here’s a portion of what I wrote in response:

“Am I offended? No. Not at all. I suspect that someone probably made up the question and the answer to go along with it. Or, if it was a genuine question, whoever answered it has obviously never gone through a panic attack.

“The point is, it’s clear that whoever made the remark just didn’t know what he was talking about. It’s not worth getting yourself so stressed out about. After all, stress only leads to more anxiety. Don’t let their uninformed words raise your blood pressure. Really, there are more important things to worry about. Just chalk this up to someone not thinking before they spoke.”

It seemed like a reasonable response to me. But maybe the original poster didn’t take it that way. Here’s what she had to say:

“I am not getting stressed out about it and I have the right to be offended by what was said, I just wanted to hear other people’s opinions! I don’t think the question was genuine, because the whole [segment] is meant to be stupid and a joke! But it’s not very funny to make fun of something like that and they shouldn’t of put that on TV!”

The right to be offended? Is that a right? I’ll have to check the Constitution on that one, but I don’t recall anything about Freedom of Hurt Feelings in the Bill of Rights.

I could have left it alone, but I decided not to. Besides questioning her on her assertion about having the “right” to be offended, I said this:

“I agree with you that it isn’t funny. I don’t see any humor in it at all. But there are people who laugh at things I think are just plain stupid, so sometimes I wonder whether I’m the one with no sense of humor.

Sure, you have a right to your opinion, and no one — myself included — said otherwise. You also asked for other people’s opinions. I gave you mine. You said you wanted other people’s opinions, yet you seem to be arguing with me as if I’m wrong and you’re right.

The point is, while I agree with you that it wasn’t funny, I don’t know why I’d waste my time being offended. It was stupid, it was a dumb joke. But not all jokes are funny to all people. With all due respect, I don’t know why you would let yourself get so offended that you’re still willing to argue the point with someone who doesn’t see it as being as big a deal as you do. I just don’t see what that accomplishes.

To me — and you said you wanted to hear what others thought — I have a long list of things I worry about and get upset about on a daily basis. I don’t need a one-time joke on some television show to add to that list: I have quite enough to get anxious about as it is.

That’s my opinion.”

It seems to me that what offends us is really up to us. The first step in becoming offended by something is allowing yourself to be offended by whatever it is.

There are some people who seem to want to offend as many others as possible. I’m not one of them. Still, in the more than three years of blogging, I’ve managed to offend a few people here and there when it wasn’t my intention to do so.

Don Imus said something stupid, incredibly stupid, on the radio. It’s probably a safe bet that those who are most likely to have been offended by Imus’s style probably weren’t listening the day that he called that girls’ basketball team a bunch of “nappy-headed hos.” I wonder whether any of the same people would have been offended if they had heard comedian Chris Rock joke that there is “nothing a white man with a penny hates more than a n—– with a nickel.”

Is one funny and the other insulting? Or vice versa? If it depends solely on who is saying it, then it’s not the words that you really have a problem with. Offensive should be offensive; a comment that is inappropriate should be inappropriate no matter what the color, or mental condition or size of the speaker. When you reduce it to the written word, that equalizes things a bit: you have to look at the words themselves, not the speaker.

But even so, you have to decide whether you are “offended” or not by those words.

I’m a fat guy. True, I’ve managed to lose about 48 pounds or so on this diet program I’m on, but I know I’m still fat. When I lose another 45 or so, to get under 200, which is my goal, I’ll probably still be overweight. I can choose to be sensitive to every fat joke there is, or I can check to see whether the person who makes the fat joke is fat or skinny and then decide.

I’ve battled depression and anxiety for years. I can either be insulted by any joke that in some way makes light of mental illness, or I can wait to see whether or not the person making the joke happens to battle the same conditions I do, and then wear the appropriate amount of insult and hurt feelings like some sort of badge of honor.

Or, I can learn to loosen up a bit and stop wasting a lot of time with all that “processing” for every comment I hear. We either value free speech or we don’t.

On the most recent Patrick’s Place Poll, I asked about a double standard with regard to potentially-offensive language in the entertainment industry. The results were somewhat interesting:

Should black entertainers who use racially-charged language be held accountable the way “shock jock” Don Imus was?

48% - Yes. They are at least as responsible as people like Imus, because they are perpetuating the stereotypes that others feed on.

16% - Yes. They’re more guilty of contributing to prejudice than people like Imus.

12% - No. They’re just trying to “reclaim” words.

12% - Yes. They’re part of the same problem.

8% - No. It’s the same as what Imus did, but he shouldn’t have been punished so harshly.

4% - No. If you have ever been a victim of prejudice, you should have an extra excuse to say whatever you want and not be held accountable.

It is somewhat disturbing to see that there is still that tired old “reclaiming words” argument. Let’s face reality: blacks have been using such words for years in an effort to “reclaim” them. If it was going to work, it would have by now and no one would even raise an eyebrow when someone uses such words.

It’s also a little disturbing to see that the option suggesting that anyone who has been a victim of discrimination should be able to have extra license to say whatever they want. I think the Rutgers team targeted by Imus showed considerable grace and strength of character by not attacking Imus in similar fashion. I hope those ladies sent a message to that four percent.

I think that if we’re going to go on some kind of moral witch hunt, then everyone — no matter who they are — who is guilty of the same “offense” should get the same punishment. Prejudice is prejudice, no matter who commits it. But more importantly, I think we as a society need to learn that sometimes, rather than trying to dictate what we can or cannot say, we need to learn to get over ourselves and stop wasting so much time being offended by what others say out of ignorance.

We know who we are. We know what we are capable of. We should stop trying to define ourselves by what others think we are. How would they really know what’s on the inside of anyone but themselves? How would any of us?

Should radio host Don Imus be fired for his controversial comments about the Rutgers ladies basketball team? It depends on whom you ask.

There are some people who are quick to call for his termination. The Rev. Jesse Jackson, a usual suspect, is one of them. Some go to the extreme of saying that not only should Imus be fired from his current program, Imus in the Morning, but that he should be banned from television and radio for life.

The people who support Jackson in his desire to see Imus lose his job (or line of work) represent an interesting double standard. And you know how we feel about double standards here!

Imus has apologized, profusely, for calling the student athletes a bunch of “nappy-headed hos.” (There seems to be some controversy about how to spell that last word. Some have chosen to use an apostrophe to incorrectly make the word plural so that the pronounciation is clear. I’ve seen others spell it with an e as in the garden tool, which Imus was definitely not referring to.) In any event, Imus has seemed genuinely remorseful to some of his listeners. He certainly claims to be genuinely remorseful.

But Jackson and others say that’s not good enough: an apology won’t suffice. Neither will Imus’s suspension from the microphone.

How quickly they forget. It was Jackson himself who publicly apologized on April 15, 1988, after he called New York City’s Jewish community, “hymies.” He was also associating with Black Muslim leader Louis Farrakhan, who called Hitler “a great man” and Judaism “a gutter religion.”

If we followed Jackson’s present non-forgiving stance, Jackson should have given up his public forum 19 years ago. Why does Jackson get to make that kind of statement, apologize, then expect no one to judge him or question the sincerity of his apology? Why is it assumed that Imus’s apology must be anything less than genuine? And why should Jackson, of all people, be the one to say that someone else who made an insensitive remark against a group of people should lose his job?

Granted, Imus apparently has a history of making insults towards various groups of people, not just blacks. (I say apparently because I’m not one of his regular listeners.) But then again, Imus is a “shock jock.” He’s supposed to stir things up. That’s what a shock jock does. Take Howard Stern, by most accounts the king of shock jocks, who seemed to be sorry that Imus was apologizing:

“He’s apologizing like a guy who got his first broadcasting job. He should have said, ‘F*** you, it’s a joke.’”

You wouldn’t expect anything less from Stern. So why the surprise over Imus?

Should he be fired? Of course not. Broadcasting is one of the most democratic industries in existence. If a performer falls out of favor, people stop watching (or listening), the ratings drop, and eventually he’s off the air before he can say, “contract negotiations.” But the issue is about a much more important point than sitting back and allowing the public’s viewing habits to dictate who gets to stay on the air.

It’s the Freedom of Speech, stupid.

Assuming that Imus didn’t violate the FCC’s indecency rules, and apparently he didn’t, he should be allowed to speak his mind. That isn’t to say that I agree with what Imus said. It was out of line. It was inappropriate. Even Imus, I think, is beginning to realize that now, if he hasn’t already figured it out completely.

But if we’re going to live in a country where some people can get away with saying hurtful things because of who they are or what they believe, then everyone should have the same right to speak their mind. I note with no surprise the fact that Jesse Jackson is not calling for the end of broadcasting of the music of hip hop stars like Ludacris and TLC, both of whom have published songs that contain the word ho in the lyrics. (I’m sure there are more.)

As a black writer recently commented on CNN, the word ho came into being from the hip hop recording industry, in which black artists routinely use such terms, including the N-word, to refer to black people. Why aren’t there protests to get this music off the airwaves in an effort to stop fueling the fire of boneheaded comments like Imus’s?

Does allowing Freedom of Speech mean that someone can say something so outrageously inappropriate that their words can cause others distress? Sure. But look at what else it has done: There was a time, a few decades back, when someone might have made a similar statement without all of the backlash. For all of the talk of damaged racial relations over incidents like this, there’s even more encouraging evidence that people of all races can see — quite clearly — that this was the wrong thing to say. Imus’s critics in this incident are not restricted to people of color. That could be a sign that things have improved…at least a little.

But before I close this post, I have to point out one last detail that I find disturbing. I’ve seen a great deal of anger on behalf of the Rutgers team. People have talked about how much Imus’s words have hurt them. I have to wonder why Imus’s words have that much power, particularly if those people are so easily able to write Imus off as an ignorant racist?

At one of my previous television stations, I worked with a receptionist named Kecia who seemed to get more calm as more demands and pressure was heaped upon her. I noticed this more and more over time, and finally I asked her about it. She sat back and smiled, then said this:

“I don’t let other people’s crap rent space in my head.”

In other words, she didn’t allow such foolishness to bother her. No matter how snippy others became, no matter how many “emergencies” were thrown her way because someone else forgot to plan ahead, she kept what was important in mind and proceeded accordingly.

This is where some of you will kindly suggest that because I’m white, I have no concept of what the pain of racism is. And you would be correct. But because I’m fat, I have a great concept of what being judged by one’s appearance is all about. I could lose another 20 pounds — hopefully a lot more than that — and still encounter someone who takes one look at me and calls me “fatso” to my face.

Would I like it? No. Would it sting? Definitely. But whose fault is it if I let it continue to gnaw at me, after the person who uttered the heartless remark is long gone? Mine.

There’s a lesson in that, I think. There are people who are letting silly words rent far too much time in their heads. They should have never been said. But they were, and it is time to stop giving words the power of those proverbial sticks and stones.

This week’s edition of the Patrick’s Place Poll asks whether you think Imus should get canned. Vote now!

The most recent edition of the Patrick’s Place Poll asked about a proposed law here in South Carolina that seeks to require that women wanting an abortion be presented ultrasound images of the fetus before the procedure could be carried out.

There is a lot of confusion, depending on whom you ask, about the exact phrasing of what is being proposed. Some have said that the bill would require women seeking an abortion to view the ultrasound images. Others have insisted that the intent is to make the images available, but that a woman who specifically did not want to view them would not be forced to do so.

Last week, South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster weighed in on the debate:

“In my opinion, it would be illegal and improper for the state to force a person seeking an abortion to view an ultrasound image against her will.”

McMaster, a Republican, said doctors could be required to show women seeking an abortion an ultrasound image of their fetus, but the proposal may be unconstitutional if it’s interpreted to force an unwilling patient to view the image.

For those of you who responded to the poll, the basic question was whether or not a woman should be forced to view ultrasound images of her fetus before having an abortion. While it was a yes or no question, there were actually three possible answers:

1. Yes, they should be forced.
2. No, but the ultrasound images should at least be made available.
3. No, the woman should be educated about what is involved, but ultrasound images need not be made available.

I’m happy to report that a total of 72% of respondants agreed that women should not be forced to look at ultrasound images. Forty-four percent said the images should be made available, but a woman should have a choice as to whether or not to see them. Twenty-eight percent said they’d be fine with no ultrasound image even being made available, as long as the woman was educated about the procedure and what it would involve.

The remaining 28% seem to have no problem forcing a woman to view the images. I expected that number to be a lot lower. I have a hard time imagining why someone would want to so control someone else’s life as to force her into a potential guilt trip over a procedure that is, as of this moment, a legal option to begin with.

It sounds un-American to me.

A normal day’s breakfast consists of a bowl of chocolate cereal, toast and processed meat. For lunch, there’s a burger and french fries, sausages and a whole pizza. Dinner means fast-food takeout. Over the course of the day, there are snacks about every twenty minutes, including four bags of potato chips, cookies and other goodies.

If you have any common sense at all, you must know that this is an unhealthy diet. It’s also the normal diet for Connor McCreaddie. What’s worse, he’s 8 years old and already weighs more than 200 pounds.

His weight problem was so severe that British social workers were considering taking him away from his mother, who describes her son as being obsessed with food:

“He’ll hover around the kitchen for food. He’ll continually go in the fridge. I just keep telling him to get out of the fridge, wait until meal times and stuff. But at the end of the day, he was born hungry. He has always been hungry.”

Connor already has health problems because of his weight:

The boy, who lives with his mother and sister, has difficulty dressing and washing himself, misses school regularly because of poor health and is targeted by bullies.

Health officials called his lifestyle “extremely dangerous” because he is at risk of developing diabetes by his early teens, and cardiovascular and nervous system problems by his twenties.

Alarming obesity statistics in England have prompted the attention on cases like Connor’s. In fact, in the last quarter century, obesity cases have tripled. More than half of the country’s women and two-thirds of men are at least overweight. Obesity is blamed for some 18 million sick days and 30,000 deaths a year there.

In considering the removal of Connor from his family, the implication is that he was being neglected, an idea Connor’s mother, Nicola McKeown, flatly denies:

“If I’d neglected Connor, he would be a skinny kid, a skinny little runt.”

Though acknowledging that the amount of food he eats is substantial, she adds that if she didn’t give him so much food at his regular meals, he would just go at them all night for snacks.

The government has ultimately decided to work with the family, allowing Connor to stay put.

But the question remains: which is more important, parental rights or a child’s health? Should the government have the authority to remove a child from parents who cannot control the child’s weight or in any way enable the child to overeat? What do you think is potentially more damaging to the child: to be removed from his family or to be allowed to continue to gain weight through an unhealthy diet?

Vote now in the sidebar. Results will be posted next week.

The most recent Patrick’s Place Poll asked who you’d vote for if the election was right that minute. The results were pretty interesting.

For one thing, there was one clear Republican winner — probably not who you think! — and two strong Democratic contenders. Because of the amount of votes received by the runner-up on the Democratic side, the winner was only able to tie the standout Republican candidate. That should give everyone pause, though there’s still plenty of time to get to one single candidate on each side.

The top Republican vote-getter wasn’t Rudy Guiliani, regarded by some as the most likely candidate for ‘08. It wasn’t John McCain, who many others think will surpass Guiliani. Instead, the top Republican in the poll was Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas, the man who replaced Sen. Bob Dole. He got 24% of the vote.

Guiliani followed with 11%, with McCain getting a close 10%. Mitt Romney claimed only 2%.

Hillary Clinton tied Brownback with 24% of the vote. But there wasn’t as large a spread between her and the runner-up. Barack Obama had 16% of the vote. Together, the two came up with two-fifths of the total votes. Behind Obama, John Edwards got a surprisingly-low 6%, while Al Gore did even worse with only 5%. Retired General Wesley Clark received just 3%.

It’s worth pointing out the irony of the two lowest vote getters on the Democratic side: remember the big deal that John Kerry made of his military service in 2004 (after having denounced the tactic when it was used against Clinton in 1992)? Remember the cheers when he saluted and said he was ready to “report for duty?” Gore and Clark are the only two Democratic candidates in the poll who have military experience, and yet they get the lowest amount of votes on that side.

And if you’re keeping the ultimate score, you will have realized that regardless of specific candidate, Republicans got 47% of the vote while Democrats claimed victory with 53%. It will be interesting to see how those numbers change as we narrow the number of candidates between now and November, 2008.

Earlier, I mentioned that I was having a hard time struggling through Stephen King’s latest novel, Lisey’s Story.

In particular, the far-too-numerous appearances of a euphemism for the f-word, an “inside joke” between the book’s two main characters, was getting on my nerves. I decided I’d stick with it a little longer to see if it got less annoying.

Then, while that little word’s appearances grew less numerous, more words and phrases, like bools and “strapping it on” have become more and more frequent. Eventually, I have some lingering confidence, there will be a clear explanation of what the hell these little ditties mean. But I’m tired of sitting through them while I wait.

I feel like I’m attending a party of close friends who are speaking in their own little code built from shared experience, and I’m forced to nudge someone next to me to explain what they’re talking about. The problem is that as a reader, there’s no one to nudge.

It may be the greatest novel King has ever produced. If so, I guess I’ll just miss out. After lasting through the first 129 of 509 pages, I just can’t take it any more. And despite my frustration and my general lack of patience, I still, for some reason, feel somewhat guilty about giving up. I shouldn’t feel guilty; after all, I’ve invested my time to get through more than a fifth of the book, so it’s not like I haven’t paid a price. But somehow, I still do.

What I also feel, besides guilt, is concern. I wonder if my manuscript will keep the reader interested after the first fifth is over. I think it will, but is that enough? How can I really be sure?

I’ll be taking Lisey’s Story to the local used book store. And because I treat my books with kid gloves, they’ll probably be delighted to put it on their shelf.

In any case, while I’m pondering those thoughts, I have started a new novel, a debut novel, in fact, from Joe Hill. Heart-Shaped Box is about a man who finds a strange online auction offering the chance to buy the ghost of the seller’s step-father. The lead character buys the ghost (shipped in a heart-shaped box), thinking that he’ll enjoy the novelty of claiming that he’s made such an odd purchase. But things don’t quite go as planned….

It’s an interesting concept and I’ve read some early positive reviews about it. While this isn’t Hill’s first published fiction, it is his first published novel, so there’s the bonus of getting to read a first major work. I hope that one-fifth of the way through this one, I’ll agree with all of those great reviews.

And that brings me to the next Willoughby Poll. You’re reading a book and while you give it what you consider a noble effort, you’re just can’t get into it. How long will you give it to pique your interest? When you think of a reader giving it the “old college try,” what does that mean to you?

The responses are somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but pick the one that’s generally closest to what you’d do. Vote now!

The last poll asked if you had ever given, or ever would give, a custom piece of writing as a Valentine’s gift for a loved one.

The response was unanimous: no one said such an idea would be out of the question. I guess that if I had voted, I probably would have been the only one. Then again, maybe the right person would have been able to elicit some kind of sweet prose out of me. If I ever find out, I’ll be sure to let you know.

For the official results, 86% of voters said that not only would they consider doing so, they already had. The remaining 14% thought the idea was good enough that they’d seriously consider doing so.

So the big question is, did anyone actually do it this year? If so, how did it go?

When votes first started coming in for the most recent edition of the Willoughby Poll, which asked whether you make new year’s resolutions about writing, it was beginning to look like a clean sweep. Every vote that came in was a negative.

But after a few days, that changed quickly.

Eighty-two percent of participants say they do make some sort of writing-related resolution. Now that January is over, it might be interesting to ask them whether or not they’ve broken any of them, yet.

The remaining 14%, and I fall into this category, don’t make any formal resolution for the year when it comes to writing. I gave up on goals and firm personal deadlines — I know that if I’m published, I’ll have real deadlines I can’t put off, and that’ll be fine because a paycheck will be involved. I find that I am a more productive writer when I write when I want to and because I have something to say. I also find that I enjoy writing a lot more when it’s on my schedule.