Entertainment

‘. . . And I disapprove of this message.’

What a rotten time to have held an election — any election. Check that; what a rotten time to have run political commercials on TV.

So last week, more than two days after Sandy hit, I finally got to a place with an operating TV set. Of course, it was almost impossible to believe what I saw. Staten Island, Breezy Point, Coney Island, the Jersey Shore, on and on.

This was the kind of televised, detached devastation that we see from overhead shots of tornado-leveled towns in Kansas and from storm floods along the Mississippi. We make “Tsk, tsk, tsk,” then play “Jeopardy!”

Not this time.

But by the time I got to a TV, there also was footage of rescue teams at work, fellows in motorized rowboats, fire departments on the scene, men and women hacking their way in, then out, then back in.

And every few minutes, and on every Sandy-dedicated station, commercials interrupted — political commercials, loaded with the same the-other-guy/gal-is-a-rat messages that didn’t seem half as bad or ugly a few days earlier, before Sandy.

I suppose you’d call that circumstantial, fleeting perspective, yet it seemed to point to what our political leaders and candidates now choose to eliminate from their campaigns — statesmanship, the appeal to our better sides.

In other words, while watching footage of rescue efforts, followed by these put-down, name-calling political ads, it struck me that relief workers — pros and volunteers — might consider adopting the same positions.

For example, a volunteer, drifting in a boat down what used to be a residential street, might call to a stranded woman frantically waving from her second-floor window.

“How do you feel about abortion?” shouts the volunteer.

“I support a woman’s constitutional right to choose!” the woman hollers back.

“Know anyone on the block who’s pro-life and needs emergency assistance?”

Or the EMT driver, called to help evacuate a flooded, and suddenly roofless, nursing home.

“Hey, pal. Put this oxygen mask over your face, like this, and breathe nice and easily. That’s it. Everything’s going to be fine.

“So, how do you feel about Obama? You do? Ya plan to vote? Well, then, I guess you won’t be needing this, anymore.”

The policeman enters the flooded, broken home of a single mother and her two children. “What’s your position on the minimum wage?” he asks. “Is it a necessity for the working class or just a hollow gesture that fuels inflation?”

The mother stares back, blankly.

“I’ll put you down as undecided. Meantime, gather your kids and whatever else you need; I’ll get you out of here. But think about it.”

Imagine if during and right after Sandy the fire department responded based on the political makeup of the neighborhood.

“Last election they voted 61 percent in favor of wage freezes. Whattya think? Should we go, anyway?”

Odd and even gas rationing? Why not left and right rationing? Hardware stores that sell generators only to conservative Republicans; food stores that sell milk only to liberal Democrats.

“That greengrocer is finally open.”

“Not for me; I hear he’s a Green Party grocer.”

It took a Sandy to show us how ugly our leaders and their election opponents encourage us to be. Apparently, it’s now the only way to be elected or re-elected.

But most of us, as Sandy, and before that the 9/11 attacks, demonstrated, are far better than what our candidates — and all of TV as a commercial enterprise, for that matter — encourage us to be.

Sandy proved that the human condition is far better than what’s portrayed in political commercials. Or am I just still stuck in gone-with-the-wind, circumstantial and hopelessly sappy perspective?

Regardless, why does it always take three things — Thanksgiving, Christmas and disasters — for us to realize that we’re not nearly as rotten as, certainly by now, we’re supposed to be?