Let’s truly not forget.
I started my career on Capitol Hill when I was just 22 years old. While I had grown up in the area my entire life, it wasn’t until I began working behind closed doors that I realized how every single member of congress is worried only about one thing, re-election. I started off in IT doing help desk support and scheduling for the office’s which really just meant I was in their offices all the time over hearing conversations while I reset their passwords and planned equipment moves. After a few years of paying my dues I moved over to sales and I sold all of their communication tools they would need to reach their constituents including, websites, e-newsletters, telephone town halls, iPhone apps, etc. Naturally that meant I worked with their communication teams to get their messages out, recall messages and work side by side to ensure things were being presented the “right” way.
I started my career on Capitol Hill when I was just 22 years old. While I had grown up in the area my entire life, it wasn’t until I began working behind closed doors that I realized how every single member of congress is worried only about one thing, re-election. I started off in IT doing help desk support and scheduling for the office’s which really just meant I was in their offices all the time over hearing conversations while I reset their passwords and planned equipment moves. After a few years of paying my dues I moved over to sales and I sold all of their communication tools they would need to reach their constituents including, websites, e-newsletters, telephone town halls, iPhone apps, etc. Naturally that meant I worked with their communication teams to get their messages out, recall messages and work side by side to ensure things were being presented the “right” way.
Over the course of a decade I learned a lot about political campaigns, PR and most importantly how to shut down an office after a scandal would break. In this time it also frustrated me that one week I would be in an office with one message and then the next week working on another. This affectionately is known to the public as a flip flop and it angered me how politicians, no matter what side, bounced around until they were deemed “favorable” in the polls.
This brings me to keepin’ it real. Unfortunately our society has squirrel syndrome and our politicians bank on that. Heck, celebrities bank on that! How can we divert attention away from the negative? Hey, look! Over here! Look what they did! It works almost every time. This also causes us to lose sight of other problems that still exist and unanswered questions that remain. They get us looking in one direction when in all seriousness we should be hitting a checklist for answers regularly. Snowden, Putin, Kim Jong Un, The Monsanto Bill, Malaysian Flight 370, ISIS and the release of 5 terrorists from GITMO ALL have something to do with one another but we keep being directed to one at a time it’s hard to see it all in one place. We only talk about the latest information for each item instead of demanding answers for all. As the United States begins to re-engage in a war no one will admit to at the moment (you know... poor approval ratings), I sit here and I ache for people to pay attention and not get side tracked by the pointing of fingers because at the end of the day, no one on either side has given us anything but tidbits here and there in news sources to spin their image to up their ratings.
Friends have asked me a million times if I would ever tell stories from behind those closed doors and I don’t ever plan to. Why? Because I don’t want our public to focus on the petty stuff, I want them to know the real important stuff and not lose focus on one more headline.
original photo credit: Flickr
This brings me to keepin’ it real. Unfortunately our society has squirrel syndrome and our politicians bank on that. Heck, celebrities bank on that! How can we divert attention away from the negative? Hey, look! Over here! Look what they did! It works almost every time. This also causes us to lose sight of other problems that still exist and unanswered questions that remain. They get us looking in one direction when in all seriousness we should be hitting a checklist for answers regularly. Snowden, Putin, Kim Jong Un, The Monsanto Bill, Malaysian Flight 370, ISIS and the release of 5 terrorists from GITMO ALL have something to do with one another but we keep being directed to one at a time it’s hard to see it all in one place. We only talk about the latest information for each item instead of demanding answers for all. As the United States begins to re-engage in a war no one will admit to at the moment (you know... poor approval ratings), I sit here and I ache for people to pay attention and not get side tracked by the pointing of fingers because at the end of the day, no one on either side has given us anything but tidbits here and there in news sources to spin their image to up their ratings.
Friends have asked me a million times if I would ever tell stories from behind those closed doors and I don’t ever plan to. Why? Because I don’t want our public to focus on the petty stuff, I want them to know the real important stuff and not lose focus on one more headline.
original photo credit: Flickr
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