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The US Student Council Election

May 9th, 2008 by Chris Ellis in How to Read | Viewed 3141 times since 04/15, 1 so far today

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Though I haven’t posted in a little while, other than the now-Daily Toast, I wanted to get this down before I forgot:

The more I read (consume is a better word) every bit of commentary and editorial about the democratic nomination in the US, the more I feel I’ve seen this before.

The MTV movie Election with Reese Witherspoon echoes what is going on down south. One candidate, determined and hard working, on every school club, running against a popular rival, who can cruise on equal footing with the burn outs, jocks, geeks, and freaks in their high-school student council election. The unifier vs. one who will not give up to the point of destroying everything around her.

Read the description of characters from Election taken from Wikipedia and see if you can match them up with the personalities in the primaries:

Reese Witherspoon as Tracy Enid Flick is an ambitious student determined to win her school election. She believes in hard work and ambition. Her drive can be attributed to her desire to be better than other people and she shows contempt for those who have wealth and popularity but don’t appreciate it. Her contempt leads her to be malicious to her competitors, and to violate her own ethical standard by lashing out against Paul Metzler in spite of all his hard work and dedication.

Matthew Broderick as Jim McAllister is a teacher who truly enjoys educating. His passion is with his work and the study of ethics. He cares about his students, but has contempt for those whose ambition gets in the way of their humanity. In spite of his lofty moral ideals, his contempt for Tracy renders him unable to live by his own ethical standard.

Chris Klein as Paul Metzler is a kind, generous, and extremely popular star athlete running in the student election. His inherent fortune, popularity and high ethical standard serves as the foil for both Tracy and McAllister, since he has what both of them strive for but cannot achieve. His generosity and kindness eventually contribute to his electoral defeat.

A) Howard Dean B) Barack Obama C) Hillary Clinton

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Posted on Friday, May 9th, 2008 at 1:25 pm. Follow comments through the RSS 2.0 feed. Comment or trackback.

One Response to “The US Student Council Election”

  1. Edward Keenan Says:

    I’m sure you’ve seen Slate’s Hillary-is-Tracey Flick video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rleUPHX8yfM

    Worth watching again. Seems truer all the time.

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