Petty politics and Santorum

A few years ago I used to post a lot more about politics. Now, it's not only exhausting and feels so futile, an entire class of people have made it a full-time job. So my political ideas get relegated to the choice of articles I bookmark, along with their comments.

That said, it shouldn't be surprising to anyone that I'm fairly liberal. (I understand this may change with the arrival and rearing of a kid. I'll take Derek's lead on that...) So I was happy to see these signs across the street on our neighbor's lawn. Their leaning isn't surprising: if I had to guess, my Pittsburgh neighborhood covers a decent swath of the middle class into the working class. And Pittsburgh's a fairly liberal town on the whole.

But the anti-Santorum one was a little unexpected. When the story broke in the last couple years about the Penn Hills school district getting cheesed off because they had to pay for the Santorum kids' schooling, I blew it off. I may not like the junior Senator from Pennsylvania, but I think raising a family as a federal politician is hard enough as it is that we can cut them a little slack. And it's a crummy tactic to fault a parent for doing what he thinks best for his kids -- again, I might not agree that cyber/home schooling is the way to go, but that's his right as a parent.

Oddly, the story -- along with an obviously in-his-name residence -- seems to leave a bitter taste with a lot of people. Enough so that the Allegheny County Democrats created a posterboard website, complete with a "Meet the Press" YouTube excerpt of Tim Russert getting his grill on with Santorum.

It's just so petty and ultimately meaningless. There are so many other things to dislike about Santorum; can't we talk about those instead?