Colin Goh and Woo Yen Yen

The following was published in the Sunday Times on 10 February 2008:

Sunday Times 10 February 2008
Superbowl v. Super Tuesday: what’s the diff?
by Colin Goh

Last Sunday, a Singaporean friend emailed me to ask if I was watching the Superbowl (the American football finals) and whether I understood the game at all.

I told him I didn’t get everything – looks like rugby, except with body armour and more commercials – but that I’d tuned in to the halftime musical show, hoping to catch another “wardrobe malfunction” like Janet Jackson’s infamous booboo at 2004’s Superbowl.

However, when I learned that this year’s performer was 57 year-old rocker Tom Petty, the malfunctioning of whose wardrobe didn’t seem particularly appealing, I switched to CNN to watch Hillary Clinton locking horns with Barack Obama. As it turned out, it was like a political debate, except with body armour and more commercials.

By this I mean that both candidates had their defences up and set on ‘high’, and yet were trying hard to transmit appealing signals past their own shields. My impression was of two people straining to say a lot without actually saying much. Of course, all politics is like that to some extent, but in America it’s heightened because of the way the media functions, with pundits and blogerati picking over every utterance like some episode of CSI.

I also got a flurry of emails from Singaporeans asking me whether I preferred Hillary to Obama. My perplexed reply was: you care for what? As a non-US citizen, I can’t vote.

Not that I wouldn’t like to. Because everyone in the world will (not may) be influenced by what happens in the US. To us foreigners stationed in the States, it’s doubly frustrating because you’re actually in the country and being affected directly, and also can’t ignore the politics.

When the Wife and I first moved to New York, we were surprised that elections of some sort were going on almost all the time. Every few months, New Yorkers were choosing somebody for something – whether it was the President of the country, one’s Senator or Congressman, the Governor of the State, the Mayor of the City, one’s State Assemblyman, the State Comptroller, the City Comptroller, one’s City Council representative, district attorneys, judges, yadda yadda yadda.

And then there are the primaries where you choose who you want to put up for other people to choose, just like those on so-called ‘Super Tuesday’, when various state chapters of the Republican and Democratic parties select their presidential candidates, a process whose rules are almost as incomprehensible as American football.

Then there are the elections in whatever organization you belong to – your company, your union, your condo management committee, your co-op board … And all these elections come with campaigns, cheerleaders and commentators, dissecting every action just like in sports.

“Piang!” exclaimed a fellow Singaporean expat. “Waste time only!” Not to mention being unnecessarily divisive. The New York Times recently reported how many American families are at war with each other because the kids favour Obama, Mom prefers Hillary and Dad’s dithering over McCain. All for what? After all, rhetoric soon meets realpolitik, and today’s so-called change agents often wind up just treading the waters of the status quo. Certainly, a recurrent complaint from the American electorate is that ultimately, Republicans and Democrats aren’t really that different in office.

So if all this eternal politicking just produces acrimonious chatter which doesn’t go anywhere, Super Tuesday has no more significance than the Superbowl.

But a friend of ours, a refugee from a former Communist country, disagreed, recounting the first time he stepped into an American supermarket. When he saw the shelves lined with cartons of 2 percent milk, 1 percent milk, skim milk, reduced fat milk, low fat milk, less fat milk, fat-free milk, and lactose-free milk, he broke down in tears. “In my country, we would have been happy with just ordinary milk!” he said. “Americans are too lucky.”

“Their system only seems frivolous when things are going smoothly,” he continued. “Compare that with Putin in Russia, exploiting his position to block all challenges to his power. It may be okay now because he’s capable. But who knows if he’s really capable, because he’s the only one telling you that? And what about those after him? The jabbering forces Americans to keep thinking about the forces that shape their lives, so they can make changes when it’s necessary. And you know what, after Bush, it’s necessary.”

I couldn’t come up with a response that wasn’t cynical or which didn’t denigrate our friend’s deprivation. Imperfect choices are better than having none at all.

To those who’ve never truly experienced it, democracy really is a different ballgame.

Share on Facebook