Look, the music is just music. It's an emotional tool, it's conversation, it's an art form, whatever. All the talk in the world gets blown away by one perfect note, so distinguishing and discriminating between this form of music and that is just smalltalk, chit chat, gossip.

So why is that more people don't dig jazz? In my not so humble opinion, it's because there are so many snoot-nosed, snobby elitists that call themselves jazz fans. Drawn to the form because of its legendary difficulty, these freaks desire the esoteric, so they can feel superior to the sweaty rockin' masses. These elitists actually drive potential jazz fans away from the genre. If jazz was just music, and especially if it was popular music, well it wouldn't be the test that separates the men from the boys, would it?

So listen up, creepy egotistic jazz freaks: Music isn't a test. Music isn't a game of Trivial Pursuit. Music shouldn't drive people apart. Music shouldn't be an elitist weapon. It shouldn't exclude, it isn't linear, it isn't evolutionary. Music is just music. All the rest is just gossip.

I really doubt that the real core of Obama supporters will be influenced by a television ad. There is a whole other world of young people out there, living among the rest of us but different. These people, many of whom are old enough to vote, watch more YouTube than TV. Few commentators, political spin-meisters, or television mavens get it at all. For example:

On this morning's Meet the Press on NBC (March 2, 2008) one of Tim Russert's Round table Commentators admitted that Barack Obama was popular. "But. what if he's a fad?" mused the commentator. (I am paraphrasing. The show is not online yet to watch again and get the words exactly, but this is a close approximation.)The panelist went on, "What if he's like the Hula Hoop?"

Now, I knew what the commentator meant. He was trying to say that the popularity for Obama could be as short-lived as the fad for hula hoops that swept out of nowhere across the country in the 1950s and swept away just as suddenly leaving the hoop a nearly forgotten example of crazy mass obsession. BUT WAIT!

Hoops are incredibly popular among high school and college aged young people right now. You can't go to the Burning Man Festival or any of the hundreds of other concerts and festivals held outside every year without seeing groups of hoopers undulating at the edge of the crowd. And the modern hoops are light-years away from the mass-produced toys made popular by the Wham-o company in the 1950s. Today's hoops are works of art, often individually made or decorated to reflect the tastes and personality of the owner. Modern hoops can be covered with colorful tape in complex designs or they can hold water, sand, bells or water. They can sport ribbons, feather and fringe. They can even be lit on fire, hoops of spinning flame- combining elements of danger and beauty into a spectacular night-time dance.

Hoops did not spring into existence in the 1950s, nor did they cease to exist after the height of their mass popularity. Evidence of toy hoops has been found going back as far as 3000 B.C. in ancient Egypt. Hoops have been popular in cultures around the world ever since, but it wasn't until the 1700's that sailors returning from Hawaii applied the word "Hula" to hoops spun around the middle of the torso. The name caught on. In the early 1960s, after the supposed fad had died away, competitions began which continue, in one form or another, right up to the present. World records for various aspects of hooping —spinning the highest number of hoops simultaneously, or running the longest distance while spinning hoops on the arms, and so-on— continue to be set into the 21st Century.

So lets take a second look at what that Meet the Press Round Table panelist actually said when he compared Senator Obama to the hula hoop: Barack Obama is like a hula hoop because he is a phenomenon arising out of long tradition, having roots on the African Continent with ties to Hawaii. They are both energetic and participatory, easy to watch but hard to imitate. They both appeal to young people, and they are both ...FUN!

I do believe he's right! Looking at it in this way, I think Senator Obama's popularity is a lot like the popularity of hula hoop, and that critical commentator was right, for once, despite himself.

It has been said that women should be more supportive of Palin, if for no other reason than as an act of feminist solidarity. Bunk. Phooey. Horse-puckey.

There are plenty of intelligent, rational and strong women out there who are capable of leading this country with dignity and wisdom. Sarah Palin is not one of them, and it is degrading to the idea of feminism to assert that all women should support her as a matter of course. Sarah Palin is a prime example of the lowest common denominator, and I stress "lowest" and "common". She may appeal to some self-destructive urge in the American people to select the least qualified among us to supposedly lead, but she is hardly the type of person we need to represent the United States to the world. We need the brightest and the best, not the ideologically warped, intellectually half-baked, sneering, snippy and totally phony version of womanhood we find in Sarah Palin.

I am a woman, and my feminism demands that I expect more, not less from a female candidate. Palin is embarassing as a candidate. As a Vice-President or worse, as President, she would be a catastrophe.