Best-Selling Humorist.
Could Mrs. Blago be yet another in the long line of supernatural reasons the Cubs will never win the World Series?
During the call, Rod Blagojevich’s wife can be heard in the background telling Rod Blagojevich to tell Deputy Governor A ‘to hold up that fucking Cubs shit … fuck them'”
Is this an Evil Eye? A Harridan Hex? A Wifely Whammy?
On the other hand, maybe she and Lee Elia can get together and record some party records.
Some arresting television this morning, as Governor Blago is nabbed outside his house by the FBI. In one of those moments that will stick in my head forever, like John Lennon’s killing and the first OJ verdict, I found myself in line at the Ravenswood Post Office buying Christmas stamps–the ones with the little nutcrackers on them–when I heard the news on the radio. Since then, I’ve had to pull myself away from the TV a couple of times, just so I don’t veg out enjoying the spectacle of a complete ass being hauled off by the feds for making a complete ass of himself ON TAPE, within the past six weeks, about trying to leverage the vacant Senate seat for his own gain.
It’s a present the whole state can enjoy.
At first I thought, “It’s about time!” This “reform” governor has been about nothing but money and his own future since he unpacked his bags in Springfield. But maybe this is just about the right moment. If it had happened any earlier, his sleaze and stupid hubris would’ve reflected badly on Barack Obama and maybe cost him the election. Any later, and the douchebag would’ve already appointed our new senator (or appointed himself) and we’d be stuck with that stain for who knows how long?
Will this shitstorm in any way effect Obama? Hard to say right now. The TV talking heads were saying this morning that Blago reached out to Rahm Emmanuel for a lifeline, but was cut off. Then US Attorney Fitzgerald decided to haul Blago in before he could do anything stupider than he’s already done. Which, if his past record of bonehead brazen moves is any indication, would have been a doozy.
And all this legal action is related only to his appointment of a new senator, as well as pressuring the Tribune to quit being so mean to him in print. It has nothing to do with all the years of investigations about everyday pay-to-play corruption that Fitzgerald’s been conducting. Astounding! Evil! Audacious!
With the thickness of that head and skin, and the brassiness of his balls, there HAS to be a way to turn his “gifts” for the forces of goodness and not evil. If life were like a Marvel comic, he’d be the stupid weightlifter type who joins the Avengers, then sells out to the Masters of Evil, then back again, and again…..
But this is the real world, and this monkey’s going to Disneyland. He shore has a purty mouth.
The Fitzgerald press conference is just starting! Gotta go pop the popcorn!
Last night in Chicago it was about 15 degrees, with a bitter, brittle cold that usually looks best through a picture window. But I was outside gettin’ my “ho-ho-ho” on, selling wreaths and Christmas trees at the local parish. The parish I don’t even belong to, though Number One Son still goes to school there. And I had so much fun, I’m going to go back a couple more times this season and do it again.
Why do I enjoy it so much, standing around in the cold and slipping on black ice? Don’t know. You can read what I wrote about the occasion for the Chicago Tribune last year. I still like this essay a lot, though it might be a little pat. People I know around the school liked it immensely when it was printed. It provided a nice balm after a clutch of deaths among parents of school-age kids last December. I was flattered when it was copied and posted and distributed around school.
(Two months later, unfortunately, all the camaraderie around the place was blasted away, as a group of parents tried to get a teacher fired, pitting neighbors against neighbors and long-time friends against friends. The demonstration of the dark side of parish life doesn’t invalidate the sentiments I wrote about in the Trib piece, but it goes to show that our human relationships are fragile things, and our motivations to pitch shit at each other can be switched all the way to 11 very quickly.)
Still unanswered is the question of why I like selling the trees. For one thing, your customers are always more happy than those who are shopping for caskets or colostomy bags. For another, it’s fun to joke around with strangers and wish them a sincere Merry Christmas. I’m a big enough grump the rest of the year that my sanity and physical health benefit from it. The school dads (inevitably with much younger kids than mine) are fun to BS with, about football and travel and families. Speakers blare out a weird mix of Christmas music from WLIT-FM, the all-yule channel, and in a kitschy way I enjoy the brandy-soaked voice of the female DJ who dispenses greeting-card advice to listeners about how to stay centered on important things during the holiday and not get in a fight with your parents again for never believing in your dreams as you limp into late middle age.
And ultimately, it’s nice to have an excuse to be out in the winter evening, the expansiveness of which (even stuck along the side of traffic-choked Western Avenue) evokes more mystery than my imagination will ever be able to exhaust.
I hope you all have fun decorating your houses this weekend. And remember the guys hanging around the tree lots. Those of us who don’t do it to make a living are having a good time.
YIKES!! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!! ALIEN SAUCERS!!!
THEY MAY BE SMALL, BUT THEY’RE DEADLY!!!
Ha ha. Had you going, didn’t I? Actually, this is just a stray prop from Halloween that I left hanging in the bushes for conversation’s sake. It was part of a bigger scene of an Alien Happy Hour, which had lots of glow sticks, strobe lights, and a dozen or so mini-spaceships hung in the Rose of Sharon. The spaceships were bowls of green and clear plastic that we hot-glued together and hung with fishing line. Crap, do I need a job or what?
Please note, the sign on the railing says, “Aliens with Ladies Drink Free.” We’ve often used the Alien Head in Hazmat Suit figure, so much that he’s falling apart a little. This was the first year, though, that people actually stopped and had their pictures taken behind the bar with him. He must be some kind of friendly face.
A headline at Huffington Post this morning got me very excited. I always get excited to discover things about me that are going on behind my back:
GN’R Album…Osment’s Bad B’way Debut…Garner’s Stalker….Affleck in Congo….
Wow, really? I’ve got a stalker? That’s so flattering (maybe I’ve been extra lonely lately).
But after clicking through, I realize that it’s really that camera-hound JENNIFER GARNER who’s got the stalking problem. Can she ever get enough attention? She says she’s reached her limit and had to file a restraining order, but I wonder about that. The limit, I mean.
Actually, I did have some weird goings on with a fan about 10 years ago. When my book Apocalypse Wow! came out in 1997, I expected to get a little hate mail or extra arguments on radio shows because of my mockery of religious millennial thinking. A little bit came, but (unfortunately for sales) not much. What did come in the mail, at roughly two-week intervals, were manila envelopes from a fan who read the book and realized that it was Destiny that she and I be together. My own marriage notwithstanding, this woman said that our union (probably more sexual than, say, intellectual) would bring about a new era of peace, growth and devil-worship. The notes got kind of scary and overwrought, and included things like pages torn out of bridal magazines and size charts for wedding rings. All around the envelope were the kind of angular printing and crystal-ball drawings that you might expect in your basic Breakfast Club.
Thankfully the letters were sent to my publisher, so the woman (whose name currently escapes me, though I could look it up, b/c I saved the envelopes, naturally) never figured out my address. Things devolved from spooky to pathetic after eight or nine envelopes, however. She said she wanted to come to Chicago and find me, but couldn’t raise the bus fare from Cleveland. She was also trying to find money for dental work, which was hard because she’d been out of work so long. (Really, what kind of dowry is that to attract a harbinger of the devil’s reign? Hmphh.) So our little one-way obsession was ended with no closure. I hope she found the money for that dental work, and also another fella with whom to herald the coming of the anti-Christ. I was obviously a false prophet.
Ryan Dempster signed a four-year, $52 million contract with the Cubs on Tuesday, even though he probably could’ve gotten a lot more money on the free agent market. His line of thinking, according to the Tribune:
His love of Chicago — and the Cubs chances of winning a world championship [emphasis added] — factored into the decision, and Dempster didn’t want to wait and see if he could make more money elsewhere.
“Given as close as we’ve been the last two years, I thought, ‘This is where I want to be,’ ” he said.
Actually, despite his obvious mental handicap, I think the world of Ryan Dempster. How could you help but love a pitcher who bikes to work, barbecues with his neighbors a half-mile from the stadium, and practices magic tricks for fun? He couldn’t be any more authentic if he moved into the Hotel Carlos.
On election night last week, the family was scattered around the living room, paying as much attention as they could to history being made. My kids (aged 10 and 13) surprised me by how much they enjoyed watching the talking heads stall for time and play with their big Etch-a-Sketches of the USA–but they also surprised me with how much they new about the electoral college, Congress and the rest of the arcana of our grand old land. They certainly knew more than me at that age.
Killing time as we waited for the polls on the West Coast to close and Obama named the winner, Number One Son grabbed a piece of newspaper and quickly sketched the caricatures of the four candidates shown below. He said he’d been working on them in school for a week or so, to amuse his classmates, and had perfected a few but not all. Looks like he could be on his way to being the first manga-inspired editorial cartoonist (but I can’t tell whether Joe Biden at the bottom is answering questions or summoning the mystic energies of a long-dead sorcerer to channel through his lapel flag pin).
A reference to Obama’s home state.
Not quite crotchety enough.
Price tags a nice touch.
It used to be I felt really old when I read the birthdates of the Playboy Playmates and saw they were younger than me (and how much they hated “war and phony people”).
Then I noticed some of my favorite baseball players were younger.
Then it was the rock starts, the movie stars, the comedians, and more Playmates (in the name of further reasearch).
Now the President of the United States is younger than me.
Oh well. At least I can still count on the pope.
One of my worst memories of the 2004 election–the second worst, actually, and by a very wide margin–was everyone on the web who started apologizing to Europe and the rest of the world for electing Bush again. All those po’ faced students in their dorm rooms, holding up hand-scrawled notes of apology to the rest of mankind, just because the election didn’t go like it “should” have. “We’re Sorry, Europe! Don’t hate us!” Apparently they even published a book with these little solicitations, perfect for passive-aggressive Francophiles everywhere. I’m sure the foreign image of the rugged American spirit was vastly improved by such whimperings.
I didn’t have long to wait for a web-based, grass-roots show of mealymouthed pussitude to emerge in 2008. Even though the Democratic candidate won, there had to be some way for leftists to show that they really can be clueless and masochistic. This morning, I found it.
At the website of one zefrank, progressive and otherwise slaphappy viewers are invited to submit pictures of themselves with notes to those in the Red States, offering hands of friendship and uplifting civic attitudes. “From52to48” messages include “We’re not that Different, You and I”, “We need one another”, “We can only do it together,” and “Dear 48, You Complete Me, Love 52.”
Gawd, please STFU. (That’s not an acronym I use often or lightly, but since we’re being all webby here…)
People, listen. The election is less than 48 hours from being finished. It was a close one, and an expensive one, but history was made. It was hard fought and hard earned. Don’t take it lightly, or assume it means an era of enlightenment for us all.
For the past two months, the right has called Obama everything from a baby-eater to a Marxist to an evil hypnotist to a Muslim sleeper agent. They’ve touted the idea that his wife runs around talking to third-world journalists and freely uses the word “Whitey” with them. They’ve said Obama hates his country, even as he engaged in and triumphed in the process that makes this a unique place on earth. Do you think all that hate was just “politics as usual”? Do you think that now, with McCain reverting to the “real” McCain and Palin off to smoke the year’s moose jerky, they’ll want to lick their wounds and their embarrassment alongside you in your little latte-powered salon? That everyone is as reasonable and open-minded as you obviously think you are? Do you think it’s time to break out with the Kumbaya?
Holy shit, people, get a grip. As Mr Dooley once said, “Politics ain’t beanbag.” I’m not for excessive partisanship, but I don’t believe in rolling over like a fat puppy either, just because I want everyone to like each other. Progressives won, and that’s been rare enough that we should savor the victory. To start reaching out for warm hugs the very next day? Nauseating. Fey. Childish. Everything that fills the caricature that talk-radio hosts paint of you.
Now THAT was an entertaining 22 months. And that ending? Perfect. Sublime. Couldn’t ask for anything more, short of a Cubs rally in the same park. After months of hearing accusations that Obama is a sleeper agent for the Muslim baby-eaters (how in the world did he control himself on Halloween, with all that tender meat on the hoof?), the clamor died down and the best candidate (and let’s hope the best office holder) won the day. My kids stayed up up to watch the returns. Liam showed us the political caricatures he’s been practicing all week (he might become the world’s first manga-style political cartoonist), and we all practiced new iterations of Obama’s name that will soon enter the lexicon: Obamanomics, Obamapathy, Obamaplomacy, Obamanoia….it’s a growth industry.
I gotta admit, it felt good to be on the winning side again, although still a little bewildering that my side had been losing so often to the incompetent, the hateful and the backward. For the bigger picture of racial equality, one of my first thoughts after 10 pm was, “Well, it’s about TIME.” but my impatience couldn’t dilute the warm fuzzies I felt that this nation finally lived up to what it says it stands for. And to win Obama didn’t have to change his cool, elegant, intellectual style. How insanely great to have a powerful rhetorical speaker up there again, especially when he brings in the cadences of the black church to his speeches. It’s like a living slice of American heritage up there, showing the rest of the world how it’s done on the South Side of Chicago, every Sunday morning and evening.
People will have to remember, of course, that Obama’s a politician, and he does everything with a calculation in mind. A good friend of mine in Illinois politics found that out when running for office and discovering Obama’s endorsement wasn’t going to come, despite their serving very closely in the state senate together. He doesn’t give away his chits lightly, sometimes not at all. So he’s not going to waste time banning hate radio or interfering with union elections, like Fred Barnes was sputtering about on Fox last night. (I wanted to watch Fox most of all last night, but it was so dreary and browbeaten and the tech gaffes so frequent that I gave up. It was like a public access show hosted by people who just got fired. Which, come to think of it, is pretty close to the truth.)
I think he’ll do a damn fine job as president, if the economy rights itself soon. But beyond that, I agree with what he said last night that it “wasn’t about him.” It truly wasn’t. It’s terrific that a smart guy who knows the Constitution is actually going to lead the country. It’s great that the racial barrier to the White House has been broken, and we can tell our children–in the BEST and non-ironic way–that anyone can grow up to be president. It’s heartening to have a role model for black kids, especially young boys, who is sober, hard-working, smart and classy. It’ll be good to have Michelle Obama and her girls in the White House (can you imagine that Nieman Marcus mannequin Cindy McCain or that braying ignoramus Palin being our ambassador to the world? Just when you thought Bush was the worst it could be…)
But I think what I like best about this whole day is that the adults are back in charge. The best parts of what our country has stood for have been validated. And the people that I meet everyday have taken the country back from slobbering, reactionary loonies. We want to move on. We don’t want to fight the wars of the 50s, 60s and 80s again. The world needs our energy and intelligence if it’s going to survive and prosper. Let’s get on with things, for criminy’s sake. It’s time to live in the 21st century at last.
Cool image from Patrick Moberg.
Here on the north side of Chicago, we’ve been living in kind of a bubble this election season. No one has bothered to phone us, pamphlet us, persuade us one way or another. We’ve been considered a slam dunk for Obama since probably May or June. On top of that, our incumbent senator, US reps and state reps are all expected to cruise to easy victory. It gives me a skewed vision of what is going on in the rest of the country. People in other reliably crimson or indigo districts probably feel the same neglect, with a mixture of relief and longing.
I’ve spent most of the morning reading reports of huge lines for voting in other parts of the country. Here, I went to the VFW Post on Western Avenue at 10, was checked in and given a ballot right away, met about four neighbors, and was out of there in 10 minutes. The hardest part about the experience was the dank smell of spilled Budweiser, old cigars and Sansabelt slacks that every VFW Post probably has. (For some reason I always feel obliged to vote at that station. Maybe because it’s the only time I’ll ever go into such a place, and it may be an endangered species around here. A slice of life that I can’t participate in.) I’m still not used to the humongous paper ballot we’re given in Cook County. It’s literally 18 inches by 30 inches, with a privacy envelope that’s even bigger. It reminds me of a large prop a magician might use for a card trick. Holding it makes me feel foolish, a little clowny. After completing arrows next to names with a marker, the voter feeds it into a big optical reader and the ballot lands in a sealed cardboard crate. For all I can tell, there might be a couple midgets in the box reading my ballot and phoning the results downtown. There’s room enough for them.
In this country business is so consolidated that consumers can choose between two brands of razor, three brands of potato chips, maybe four types of gas station. Why then do we seem to have umpteen different ways to vote–between punch cards, scanners, touchscreens, paper ballots, and all the rest? This is the ONLY area of modern life where I’d prefer to see some standardization.
Anyway, it’s a beautiful Indian Summer morning here, with red and yellow leaves still hanging on the trees and tinting the sunlight. It’s a marvelous day to be making some history. My prediction is that Obama will win decisively (don’t know about a landslide, but that would be marvelous to see). The real entertainment this evening will be watching how it happened. Does Obama take Virginia? North Carolina? Georgia? (Some people are predicting that last one, but that seems like a longshot. Still, wouldn’t I love to be proved wrong.) As someone else has recommended, I might watch the results on Fox News, just to watch whether commentators can exist on TV running on nothing but fumes of bile. It will also be fun to watch the acceptance speech being delivered right here in the Windy City. I’m not going to bother heading downtown. Crowds bug me lately, but it will be terrific fun to watch them go bananas.
I can’t say much more about this election and its place in history. Too many billions of words have been typed already. I will say this: Regardless of the candidate’s race, I never thought I’d see Democrats run such a disciplined, organized, thoughtful national campaign AND come out on top. I give immense amounts of credit to Howard Dean and his 50-State Initiative, for showing people that there were liberals worth courting deep in the heart of “red” areas, and conservatives who would listen to new ideas if given a chance. Thankfully Obama raised enough money to be able to campaign in places a Democrat wouldn’t have bothered visiting in years past, and was so thoughtful, stirring and all-in-all TOGETHER out on the campaign trail. It will be good to see the adults back in charge in Washington.
I’ve tried to stay rational about this election, maybe even skeptical, hiding my hopes and concerns behind a big mask of snark. But it’s hard to keep that mask up after reading the accounts of people spending hours in line to vote, of black people (stories about 90 year old grannies just kill me) voting for president with tears in their eyes, of record turnout everywhere. I’m happiest to be able to kick out the Republican scumsuckers who’ve wrecked this country, its Constitution, economy, security and hopes for the future during the past eight years. Tack onto that the fact that we’re about to elect an African-American to the highest office, and it blows my little mind. I don’t subscribe to the doctrine of American exceptionalism, but this can be one exceptionally surprising country. I love it.
Last Saturday night, I settled in to watch a very old-school horror movie, all by myself. “Son of Frankenstein” is not fancy in its storytelling, or even very coherent. Somehow the monster had been struck by lightning and fell into a coma, yet while in that coma Igor had sent the monster off to murder the burgomeisters who’d condemned him to the gallows. Now the son of the original doctor revives the monster, filled with excitement yet horrified by what he’s done. The police chief, who’s arm had been wrenched out of his body as a child by the monster, suspects the doctor but protects him from the mob. In the end, in a presaging of the end of “Terminator 2”, the monster is pushed into an 800-degree liquid sulphur pit and burned alive.
Yeah, how can anything go wrong when your laboratory is built over the bubbling miasma of an 800-degree liquid sulphur pit?
So, not as creepy as the original, and not as stylized and surprising as “Bride of Frankenstein.” But Boris Karloff gets to wear the fur vest later made popular by Sonny Bono, and many scenes inspired terrific material in Mel Brooks’ “Young Frankenstein”. More like a Transylvanian pot roast than a fancy meal, yet, it satisfies. Every Halloween, I promise myself to watch an old Universal horror film, for old times’ sake–where would Halloween be without those characters? Sometimes the kids will join me, but this year the movie scared my 10-year-old, and my 13-year-old was too busy with parties.
Watching old, mediocre horror movies is not just an exercise in nostalgia (though don’t knock that–it’s the only exercise I get). There’s something enjoyable about watching bad movies with outlandish sets and dialog, something ephemeral yet instructive. In the age of Netflix and cable TV and Tivo, we could watch quality programming any time we flip on the boob tube. Yet we don’t. We save and watch episodes of America’s Top Model and Jim Belushi sitcoms and everything the vast wasteland offers. Perhaps it’s a fear that too much quality can kill a person, or at least turn him into an NPR host.
I watch old movies looking for surprises, like strange interior architecture (lots of suspended staircases in “Son of Frankenstein”, for some reason), stilted dialog, and actors who may have been given all of 30 seconds of screen time in their lives. I also use them to slow myself down, to get away from clips and fast-forwards and every other time convenience that has speeded up our lives so much. (Why does it feel that we are saving time yet always short of it? Is it another manifestation of human greed? Can you ever have enough time, especially when the time you save is spent on learning new ways to save time?) It used to be that entertainment on television was limited and started and stopped at certain times. Now that offerings are “on-demand” more and more, there’s a certain pressure to suck more of it up.
A familiar scenario: It’s 11:30 and I should be in bed, but I’ve saved “Seven Samurai”, “The Hustler” and a bunch of NatGeo specials on Tivo. I ask myself, “Shouldn’t I watch at least some of each of them, just as a signal that I’ll get to them eventually?” And an unsatisfying hour is spent managing the TV workload, depriving me of the sleep I need the next day. Shouldn’t entertainment be relaxing and not an exercise in multitasking and time-wrangling? Maybe I like mediocre movies just for the fact that, if I don’t make it to the end, I don’t have to feel guilty about not finishing it.
This email has probably made the rounds already, but I still find it funny and appropriate:
An open letter from the Blue States to the Red States:
Dear Red States:
If you manage to steal this election too we’ve decided we’re leaving. We intend to form our own country, and we’re taking the other Blue States with us. That includes California, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois and all the Northeast. We believe this split will be beneficial to the nation, and especially to the people of the new country of New California.
To sum up briefly: You get Texas, Oklahoma and all the slave states.
We get stem cell research and the best beaches. We get the Statue of Liberty. You get Dollywood.
We get Intel and Microsoft. You get WorldCom.
We get Harvard. You get Ole’ Miss.
We get 85% of America’s venture capital and entrepreneurs. You get Alabama.
We get two-thirds of the tax revenue, you get to make the red states pay their fair share.
Since our aggregate divorce rate is 22% lower than the Christian Coalition’s, we get a bunch of happy families. You get a bunch of single moms.
Please be aware that Nuevo California will be pro-choice and anti-war, and we’re going to want all our citizens back from Iraq at once. If you need people to fight, ask your evangelicals. They have kids they’re apparently willing to send to their deaths for no purpose, and they don’t care if you don’t show pictures of their children’s caskets coming home. We do wish you success in Iraq, and hope that the WMDs do turn up, but we’re not willing to spend our resources in Bush’s Quagmire.
With the Blue States in hand, we will have firm control of 80% of the country’s fresh water, more than 90% of the pineapple and lettuce, 92% of the nation’s fresh fruit, 95% of America’s quality wines, 90% of all cheese, 90% of the high tech industry, 95% of the corn and soybeans (thanks Iowa!), most of the U.S. low-sulfur coal, all living redwoods, sequoias and condors, all the Ivy and Seven Sister schools plus Stanford, Cal Tech and MIT.
With the Red States, on the other hand, you will have to cope with 88% of all obese Americans (and their projected health care costs), 92% of all U.S. mosquitoes, nearly 100% of the tornadoes, 90% of the hurricanes, 99% of all Southern Baptists, virtually 100% of all televangelists, Rush Limbaugh, Bob Jones University, Clemson and the University of Georgia. We get Hollywood and Yosemite, thank you.
38% of those in the Red states believe the earth is only 6,000 years old and Jonah was actually swallowed by a whale; 62% believe life is sacred unless we’re discussing the war, the death penalty or gun laws; 44% say that evolution is only a theory; 53% that Saddam was involved in 9/11, and 61% of you crazy bastards believe you are people with higher morals than us lefties.
Finally, we’re taking the good pot, too. You can have that dirt weed they grow in Mexico.
Peace out,
–the Blue States
Our front step guardians for this Halloween season:
Liam’s at left is a giant Manga-style eye, though the back of the pumpkin being visible makes this picture rather weird. Liesel’s is in the middle, with chocolate marshmallows for eyes. I especially chose my raw material (at right) because of the big scar running across the surface. My first idea for it actually became my final choice, though I don’t know if I pulled it off: everyone’s favorite zombie-fighting comic anti-hero, The Goon!
The cap wasn’t very easy to recreate, as you can tell.
Last week Larry David and other commentators on the Huffington Post lamented how long this campaign was taking, and how they wanted the election over with. I’m sympathetic to the adverse health effects that anxiety, anticipation and Sarah Palin’s voice may be having on people. I can also commiserate that my own work output has been reduced to a trickle trying to keep up with the latest news and polls. The productivity gains the internet has given us, the internet shall taketh away.
But do I want this campaign over next week? Hell no. Have you taken a moment to consider how much free entertainment has been contained in the daily news cycle since the end of August? Do you realize that just last week, from Monday through Friday, we got enjoy stories about:
• Minnesota’s Senator Bachman trying to explain away her out-of-body channeling of Joe McCarthy;
• Sarah Palin’s $150,000 shopping spree, which was only revealed last Wednesday (think how far that kind of money would go in a consignment shop!)
• Ashley Todd’s self-assault at the ATM (Oh, how much longer the lie could’ve been strung along if she’d only learned how to write backwards!)
That’s just from the everyday news. It doesn’t include the backbiting and Dr. Scholl salads that the conservative talking heads endured on the cable chat shows. That has been entertainment of a rare caliber. As fewer and fewer commentators will defend the McCain-Palin campaign, the news shows have had to move further and further down the pecking order for Republican “strategists” and “observers” to interview. If this campaign went on for another month, we’d get to see a tattoo-parlor owner from Idaho wired up and telling “Fox & Friends” all he knows about socialism.
If these stories give a person too much agita, I suggest they cowboy up and deal with it. Take to drinking if you have to. Because these developments are necessary, vital, even healthful. The Republican Party has spent the past 25 years getting elected by mixing race, religion and class consciousness into a fear cocktail to keep their faithful out and voting. While the Republicans have spouted about lower taxes, smaller government, and a “humble” foreign policy stance, they’ve done their best to ignore all three. Now they are reaping the results of the lies they’ve sown and the stupid ideas they’ve espoused. Such a process takes time.
Maybe I’m ODing on the schadenfreude, but I say, keep it coming. A couple more months, at least, so that we can see every hypocrisy and dirty deal exposed in the open air. I want to hear more filth about everything: John McCain’s secret deals with al-Qaeda, Sarah Palin’s plastic surgeries (which she will promise to undo or auction to charity later), Todd Palin’s clandestine Inuit love igloo that he visited on long snow-machine races.
I want to see Nancy Pfotenhauer snap on camera and take a bite out of someone’s neck. I want to watch William Kristol melt into a puddle of blame-dodging ooze. I want to learn about a Robo-call accusing Obama of laughing in the past at Flip Wilson’s “Rev. Leroy and the Church of What’s Happenin’ Now” routine. I want to hear Limbaugh actually use a phrase like “Hide your women” or “the sanctity of our precious bodily fluids”.
I want to see all of this for the same reason Van Helsing wanted to be the one to drive the stake through Dracula’s heart, because it’s the only way I’ll be certain that the reputations of these people and the policies of unbridled conservatism are dead. Deader than dead. Dead and buried under Yucca Mountain with radioactive garlic strung around their necks dead.
Because you know when this is over, the news for at least the next ten weeks is going to be about plant closings, foreclosures, and how no one will be able to afford to buy holiday presents this year. That’s the harsh truth, beyond any paranoid fantasies about October surprises or the GOP stealing the election again.
