As media analysts from Karl Rove to James Fallows predicted, the outcome of Tuesday’s election has already had a profound impact on the American economy.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics has reported one of the sharpest spikes in unemployment in history, with the overall unemployment rate jumping from 7.9% on election day to more than 9% two days later. A spokesperson suggested that the increase, the largest two-day spike since the federal government began collecting data, has come from the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs in the media industry.
“What do we even talk about anymore?” said David Brooks, a former columnist for the New York Times. “I wrote articles about liking moderate Mitt Romney, I wrote articles about disliking an ultra-conservative Romney, and I wrote articles about writing articles about the election — what can possibly be more fascinating?”
“Is it too soon to cover Clinton 2016?” added Brooks.
On Wednesday evening, President Obama announced a new stimulus package that will disperse around $2 billion over the next year to those hardest hit by the post-election recession: pundits and journalists.
“In 2009, I tried a $825 billion stimulus that seemed to work but nobody really liked,” said a tired-sounding Obama. “This year, [Mitt Romney and I] collectively spent less than 1% of that, but everyone in the country has been talking about Tuesday’s election for months.”
“I’m hereby asking Congress to pass the 2012 Election Relief Act, which will mandate a general election each November, every year, by law,” said the President, who added that, “This definitely isn’t a bribe.”
Meanwhile, former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney issued a statement declaring that, “President Obama continues to pursue unsound economic policies that run-up the deficit and ship pundits’ jobs to China.”
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a Romney campaign staffer noted that, “if we’re forced to have an election every year instead of every four, Mitt’s going to run out of money a lot sooner than we thought.”
At Swarthmore, the aftermath of their first time voting left students feeling listless about what the future holds. Sources suggest that the end of election season has already taken its toll on social life at Swarthmore.
At Sharples, students reported having to think of new topics of conversation. “It’s not as easy to get everyone at the table to agree with you just by saying that Romney scares you,” said a junior.
“It’s not even cool to casually reference [statistician] Nate Silver’s ‘538’ blog anymore,” she added.
The Phoenix and Daily Gazette have not been immune to the pundit recession sweeping the nation as a whole. A Phoenix news story that attempted to connect a complaint that Swatties had to wait “for at least five minutes” at the polls to national issues of voter disenfranchisement was ignored by editors in favor of a column imagining the inner lives of cats, while an opinion piece that predicted a radical shift in the Republican party failed even to attract the interest of the writer’s parents.
As this paper went to press, the latest reports from the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicate that political satirists are among those hardest hit by the election recession. To make a donation or to suggest fresh material, please visit www.theonion.com
