#823 Zeitung

I was reading an article translated from a German newspaper the other day. The Paper was called “Something-or-another Zeitung.”
Zeitung.
I decided to look it up in an English/German dictionary. Apparently, it’s quite a versatile German word, it can be translated as newspaper, paper, magazine and gazette.
Its base word Zeit, means, essentially, Time. So how does adding the suffix “-ung” change the word “time” to “newspaper”? Must be like we call some of our newspapers the Times. The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, that sort of thing.
But what all of these Times, German and otherwise, have in common is an obsession with the American presidential race. We are heading into the final months of an exciting election between the red, the blue, the old, and the new. And, to quote Dylan, it looks like the Times they are a changing.
The battle is starting to get desperate. The other day I heard Bill O’Reilly railing from an empty UPS van whose driver had left his radio blaring. Blaring Bill was ranting about those dread dreadnaughts of the opposition in America’s culture wars, Dave Letterman and Jon Stewart. Huh? That Bill O’Reilly would be so parched for political punditry that he’s attacking comedians seemed a little pathetic.
But these are the trenches in the war for votes. Hardcore Jon Stewart watchers and hardcore O’Reilly fans will likely never agree. But those 10 percent of channel surfers are the swing voters that will carry the election.
So swing voters are once again the focus. Last election the specter of gay marrying terrorists swung them to the right. This year the right is vacillating between calling Obama elitist and calling his wife terrorist. The left is calling McCain more of the same, and saying he may be hell on terrorists, but you’ll have to wake him up from his post-earlybird dinner nap first.
Blue state and red state. Some say they’re fundamentally different. Actually, most of the people from the blue states, where there are cities, moved from the red states, where there are not.
They were once red staters, but they moved for some reason.
Maybe they just wanted a better selection of newspapers.
America, ya gotta love it.