Last week I wrote a column about my perception that children with greater financial means appeared to receive more leeway in elementary school. As a student of a private, Catholic school, Immaculate Conception, in Las Vegas, I generally felt treated well and respected.

That was most of the time. But during at least one year in elementary school, I felt there wasn’t exactly ethnic discrimination, but a bit of a class (as in social, financial status, side of town) distinction. That was the gist of my column, which leaves the question, “Has anything changed?”

The pervading theme of that column was whether and in what way some people feel elevated by putting someone down. And the illustration I used, the time my attempt to “out” someone who was cheating on a spelling test, backfired, is evidence that I too thought I could score points by getting someone else in trouble. I thought then it was good to accentuate the negative.

Just as one can conceivably rise by stepping over bodies of those underneath, I often wondered how put-downs provide a leg up.

Some of my elementary school classmates must have believed they were earning indulgences for squealing (we called tattlers “chuchos”). Do politicians, regardless of party affiliation, accrue some kind of elevated status among voters by scooping up dirt, raining on someone’s parade, slinging mud (or whatever political cliché comes to mind)?

Well, that spelling incident, which spans six decades, must have impressed me. Has anything changed? As I write this, I watch an endless procession of commercials — most of them for the top job in New Mexico — in which Susana Martinez slams current Lt. Gov. Diane Denish. But in the next spot, Denish wields the cudgel and whacks Susana, La Tejana, whose birth was in El Paso.

A minute later, it’s Martin Heinrich and Jon Barela exchanging barbs, and let’s not forget Steve Pierce and Harry Teague, calling each other corrupt. Is this what we voters want from our candidates? Does heaping dirt somehow elevate the mudslinger? Does one’s nativity in a border city — in this case El Paso, the same hometown as Sen. Jeff Bingaman’s — make one candidate more legit than one born in Hobbs?

So this is what we’re being asked to send money to? It enriches most of the electronic media and for what, or as my late mother would ask, “Y pa’ que?”

Now, let’s see if we have this straight: Each candidate for a major office has a well-lubed machine happy to collect donations from the gullible public, donations that will enable the candidates to buy even more vitriolic ammo they hope will stick to some mythical mephitic walls. So if we send, say, a hundred dollars to the campaign of one of them, he/she can devise even more paid commercials in order to slam the opposition.

We, who the politicians must think of as gullible, are being told some incredible things: My opponent wants to raid Social Security; my opponent is a Socialist; My opponent wants to take food off your children’s table (or even more graphically, My opponent wants to pull food out of the mouths of your children).

Enough already! We have the dirt on your opponents but not a clue as to what you stand for. Can you tell us — without even referring to your opponent — why we should vote for you?

I realize it’s our patriotic duty to vote, but for the first time in my life, I’m wishing there were a “no” lever to pull or a “none of the above” choice, at least for the top races in New Mexico.

Reciprocal flagellation isn’t my idea of good times.

• • •

Before the Obama-McCain race in 2008, I met a man from La Jara, Colo., at the hot baths in Montezuma. The conversation turned to politics. He said he could never vote for Obama “because he’s pro-choice, not pro-life.”

“Then do you mean,” I asked, “that you’re a single-issue voter? Is there any other reason to vote against Obama and for McCain?” Then, knowing the answer I’d get, I asked, “Does this mean that there were no abortions during the eight years of George W. Bush’s tenure?”

Well, we settled nothing and talked about football instead, from separate ends of the hot baths.

Obviously, abortion is a controversial matter that shouldn’t be used as birth control. It bothers me that a woman’s body is her own, until she conceives. Then immediately, her womb becomes property of the state.

• • •

In the heat of next week’s midterm election, we’ve heard a lot of attack ads that contain the words, “The list goes on and on.” That’s usually in the context of listing an opponent’s peccadilloes. A politician might say, for example, “My opponent voted with Nancy Pelosi 97 percent of the time, voted against veterans, and failed to appear for three crucial votes, and the list goes on and on.”

It doesn’t. “The list goes on and on” is merely a way of saying, “I don’t have any more hyperbolic accusations to provide about my opponent.

And on this subject, I could go on and on and on.

• • •

There’s an electronic billboard on Legion Drive near Sierra Vista Elementary. As we’re almost into November, don’t you think it’s time to replace the September announcements with something more current?

We’re not referring to fine wine here. Notices of long-past events don’t improve with age.