Comment: Election season phone fun

The other day, the phone rang and my son answered. After a couple of seconds, he called out, “Daddy, it’s Arye Deri.”

By DAVID BRINN
MKs call Kadima members 390 (photo credit: Courtesy)
MKs call Kadima members 390
(photo credit: Courtesy)
The other day, the phone rang and my son answered.
After a couple of seconds, he called out, “Daddy, it’s Arye Deri.” I got up from whatever I was doing, looking at him suspiciously and wondering why the one-time Shas wunderkind, later felon, and now political comeback kid would be calling me.
Sure enough, when I picked up the phone, there was his voice in mid-sentence explaining why Shas was the party with soul who would take care of the people. I chuckled as I put down the receiver on the taped message, and later recounted the incident to my wife.
“Yes, Shelly Yacimovich called yesterday,” she said, referring to the leader of the Labor Party, who’s struggling to emerge at the top of the Center-Left bloc against The Tzipi Livni Party and Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid.
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It must be election season if our politicians are reaching out to us ordinary citizens.
The major parties are taking advantage of telephone technology to blanket the potential voters, and the attention is enough to almost make you feel like a big shot.
Of course, getting junk calls (is that a term?) can have its downsides.
One friend stated publicly on Facebook that she would discount voting for any party who called her with a taped message. The way things are going, she may not have anyone to vote for by election day.
I actually received another call last week from a real human being, this one also from Shas. The caller wanted to know if I had decided to vote for Shas and when I said no, inquired as to the reason.
At that point, I felt obliged to thank him and politely slam the phone down (it’s really nice to still have a landline phone that’s not cordless).
Of course, that option can make me a little trigger-happy.
Thursday night, we were watching Maccabi Tel Aviv play in the Euroleague playoffs, and in the middle of the exciting third quarter, sure enough the phone rang.
Since the dawn of the cellphone age, the calls coming in on the home phone have trickled to a minimum, so chances are it was another tele-message. What if it was Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his familiar Yogi Bear voice urging me to vote Likud-Beytenu? I would feel unpatriotic hanging up on him, so I did the only thing I could. I let the phone ring.
He still has another 11 days to call.