Bombarded with political ads: Guide to staying sane

DEAR MARIANN: How do I stay sane dur­ing this con­tin­u­ous cam­paign bom­bard­ment of polit­i­cal ads?

MARIANN’S RESPONSE: An inces­sant marathon of “bound­ary vio­la­tions” is how I would clas­sify the last nine months of resid­ing in the Buck­eye State.

Dur­ing recent trips to Seat­tle and Atlanta, the rar­ity of cam­paign ads was refresh­ing ver­sus the con­stant onslaught of what we are expe­ri­enc­ing here. How lucky or pos­si­bly unlucky we are as Ohioans to seem­ingly have the 2012 pres­i­den­tial des­tiny of this coun­try solidly planted on our vot­ing shoulders.

Speak­ing of “bound­ary over­loads” my least favorite are the Christ­mas adver­tise­ments and hol­i­day mer­chan­dise already dis­played in Sep­tem­ber. How­ever, that is a nation­wide onslaught, ver­sus hav­ing our state uniquely des­ig­nated to either win or lose next month’s elec­tion for either candidate.

This might be an appro­pri­ate time for a media reprieve and go back to the basics from our par­ents’ and grand­par­ents’ era, such as read­ing a good book or spend­ing more out­door time engaged with fam­ily in a riv­et­ing game of corn­hole. If you have deter­mined which can­di­date will receive your vote, unplug the TV, or use a DVR to skip through those pesky com­mer­cials. You can also access the tech­nol­ogy of “TiVo,” — not to be con­fused with the for­mer Den­ver Bron­cos quar­ter­back — to ignore those ugly mud­sling­ing cam­paign mes­sages, by watch­ing pro­grams “commercial-less.” It also can serve as a reality-check reminder of how much tele­vi­sion we watch.

At this point in the cam­paign, poten­tially most of us have become immune to what­ever out­ra­geous cam­paign com­men­tary is made, espe­cially about the oppos­ing can­di­date. Con­tin­u­ing the onslaught of neg­a­tive ads serves no pur­pose in help­ing unde­cided voters.

Find time to recon­nect with your fam­ily by talk­ing with each other and doing some­thing, any­thing, as long as it does not occur in front of the TV. Seem­ingly the more polit­i­cal adver­tise­ments we hear, the less we truly lis­ten and even­tu­ally they start sound­ing exact­ing alike. How about giv­ing our atten­tion to those around us or vol­un­teer­ing for an organization?

The most impor­tant fac­tor as this ugly cam­paign con­cludes is to vote, which is a sacred right of being an Amer­i­can. Please don’t waste this pre­cious opportunity.

Mar­i­ann Main is a licensed coun­selor and a Delaware native. Her col­umn appears weekly on Sat­ur­days. To sub­mit a ques­tion and have Mar­i­ann answer it anony­mously, visit delgazette.com/life-questions-with-local-answers or send mail to the Delaware Gazette office, 40 N. San­dusky St., suite 203, Delaware, OH 43015.

Posted by Mariann Main on Oct 19 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.