I was watching news coverage of the New Hampshire primary last night (what an ordeal, listening to all that blathering!) and I couldn't believe some of the utter nonsense coming out of the mouths of people who should know better.

First of all, the comments made about the racial composition--anyone who still claims that there is no racial or ethnic diversity there has obviously not been to Manchester in the last few years. The city, New Hampshire's largest (but not the capital, as John McCain called it--that would be Concord) is as racially and ethnically diverse as any comparably-sized American city, a fact clearly demonstrated during a quick walk down Elm Street (the main street through downtown) on a sunny afternoon.

Second, the suggestion that people in New Hampshire are so easily manipulated that they would change their votes based on who the MSM talking heads predicted would win--the "They say Obama's going to win, so I'm going to vote for Clinton," kind of nonsense. If there was anything I learned about the people there, it's that they decide their positions on things very early and it takes something like an act of God to make them change their minds. Yes, they are fiercely independent, but they are not so childishly independent as to change their minds about who they want in the White House out of pique because the press says they are going to pick this candidate or that one. Because the other thing I learned about them while I was there was that, in addition to being so fiercely independent, they are also fiercely stubborn, clinging to their positions with a tenacity that is truly amazing to behold--sometimes to a point that defies reason or common sense.

In fact, my biggest problem with them was that tenacity, that need to cling to their cherished ideals, even when it was patently obvious to anyone else that those ideals have been reduced to mere illusions. They are the most ostrich-like, heads-in-the-sand people I have ever met, refusing to see or hear anything that might challenge those ideals--try telling the average citizen in Manchester that 9/11 was an inside job and they will respond with the most convincingly blank stare you will ever see in your life. I knew a man who adamantly refused to see Fahrenheit 9/11 because he had some notion that just watching the film was somehow unpatriotic, but I could see in his face that he wasn't refusing out of patriotism--he was afraid he might learn something from it that he didn't want to know. And he is typical of the Republican voters in Manchester--some of the most determinedly uninformed voters I've ever come across. They vote the way they vote because that's how they've always voted and the facts of the situation be damned. After all, they voted for Nixon three times, and they voted for McCain the last time he ran, too. (They won't vote for Romney because they saw closeup what he did to Massachusetts.)

When President Bush visited the "Live Free or Die" State, protesters were confined to a tiny space across the street called a "Free Speech Zone," and arrested if they dared take one too many steps toward the other side--including one old couple who were simply trying to get to the restaurant next to the Radisson where Bush was without having even the slightest clue that he was there. No one, other than the protesters themselves, protested the imposition of these "free speech zones," no one else pointed out that the entire country is supposed to be a free speech zone, because no one wanted to see what was happening right under their noses.

Aside from all of that though, I was appalled at the way the media was making such a big deal about the whole thing. I mean, we're talking about a tiny state that a lot of people have never even heard of and I've actually met people who don't know that it's even part of the United States! If it's true that whoever the people there vote for end up being elected, then it has to be some kind of cosmic coincidence, because the people I met there are certainly not representative of the nation as a whole--not to the point that their choice for president has any influence over the rest of the country, anyway. And if it does, then God help us......