As crazy as it might sound, there are more important things going on, such as the 5-4 ruling by the Supreme Court that might have a significant effect on this year’s midterm congressional elections.

According to a Jan. 21 article in The New York Times, the ruling does not affect current bans on contributions directly from corporations to candidates.

There are many interesting things about this ruling and its immediate impacts, such as how it brings corporations one step closer to personhood. Although their speech should not be heavily regulated, a difference clearly can be seen between an individual citizen and a corporation whose sole interest is increasing profits.

The ruling now will allow corporations to run ads about specific issues in the closing days of a campaign. While this technically can be seen as the advertisement of one (corporation’s) opinion on a specific policy, it is very likely that the ad lines up ideologically with one of the candidates in a race.

The justices in the majority might have seen their ruling as allowing the most possible freedom. Eight of the justices support mandatory disclaimers for ads run by corporations so each American can decide on their own if the ad’s message is corrupted by the agenda of the corporation.

Opponents of this ruling still are concerned with giving a nonhuman entity rights that nearly amount to personhood. The newly reopened advertising avenues allow corporations a significantly louder voice than most other single entities. Specifically, the dissenting justices said that the ruling will further imbalance American democracy.

One of the more interesting parts of this ruling has been the lack of a commonly used adjective for the court: activist.

The adjective “activist” in this context often has been used when a judge rules in a way that significantly changes the way a certain sector of life works.

During Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation hearings last summer, she was accused of being “activist” and “legislating from the bench.” Those two terms have curiously been absent from most media outlets’ coverage of the ruling.

Its absence can be attributed to many things. The justices in the majority of this decision could be seen as preserving freedom of speech while also allowing citizens to decide for themselves if a corporation’s ad has ulterior motives.

President Barack Obama has vowed to work with Congress to create legislation that will restore some of the bans on corporate speech.

The most interesting result of this decision is the lack of outrage by most Americans. In a political climate dominated by populist movements like the Tea Party Patriots, there has been little outrage outside of liberal news pundits.

It is clear that campaign finance is a much less interesting water cooler topic than who punched Snookie last night or the change of an iconic school symbol, but it also is somewhat disheartening to be invited to at least three different Facebook groups and fan pages prematurely raging and not a single group about a significant change to the way in which elections are run and public opinion is formed.

Perhaps it is just the group of people I associate with, but if we as a society spent a bit more time being active in government instead of complacently standing by, then maybe we wouldn’t be complaining about it later.

In a way, this ruling almost makes sense. We live in a nation that, for all our talk of spreading democracy, has one of the worst voting participation rates among all democracies. The difference in volume between a corporation’s speech and an individual’s speech was already great, but now the difference is even greater.

Justin Covington is a State News guest columnist and journalism freshman. Reach him at coving27@msu.edu.