Occasionally someone will attempt to engage me in a conversation about the U.S. presidential election, an endeavor that inevitably ends in failure and disappointment. The attempted conversation, I mean, although the description fits the election process equally well.
Here's the thing: I used to be a political junkie. I used to watch Bill O'Reilly and
Hardball and
Hannity and Skeletor. I was up on where John Kerry celebrated Christmas in 1968 and how many hours George W. Bush spent flying F-102s in the Texas Air National Guard. I was, by the media's definition anyway, an informed voter. And in 2004 I voted for Bush. For the
second time.
A few months ago a liberal friend started gushing at me about Barack Obama, which is what liberals do these days. She and I agreed that Hilary Clinton had no business running for president; I remember telling her that I thought Hilary was qualified to be president in the same way that Stedman was qualified to host the Oprah Winfrey show. But then she started talking about some controversy that I knew virtually nothing about. It may have been the thing about Obama's pastor saying nutty things about 9/11, or the thing about Obama's dog rolling over when he was supposed to sit, or the thing about Obama's chiropractor blaming the housing collapse on "subluxations of the spine." I don't remember the details. So I basically stood there, going, "Uh, yeah, I don't really know anything about that."
She tried to convince me that I had an obligation to be an informed voter. "Yeah," I said. "I tried that. And I ended up voting for Bush.
Twice. So don't you think maybe I should sit this one out and think about what I've done?"
She started up a couple more times, but finally sputtered to a halt. "You know, I can't really argue with you on that," she said.
Now don't get me wrong; I'm not convinced John Kerry or Al Gore would have been much better, and if I'm going to have to watch some someone fail to fix the health care system, the advance of Islamofascism, the ailing economy and illegal immigration, I'd prefer that it be an affable Texan rather than a pedantic Washington twit (a phrase which conveniently describes most serious Democratic contenders in recent memory).
Still, the fact is that being an "informed voter" didn't help me much, because mostly what I was informed about was stupid crap that didn't have anything to do with who was best qualified to be president. I knew about swift boats and suspicious lumps in George W. Bush's jacket and Dick Cheney's lesbian daughter and John Edward's wife's cancer.
Today's menu, of course, is different. Today we get Sarah Palin's daughter's pregnancy and Barack Obama's pastor, and probably three dozen other nontroversies that I would have heard about
ad nauseum if I could be troubled to turn on The News(TM). My favorite is the question of whether a candidate is "patriotic enough" to be president.
My foreign readers will have to confirm this for me, but I suspect this is a peculiarly American obsession. Do Canadian presidential candidates have to prove their patriotism? How about Brazilians or Poles?
Just how patriotic do you have to be to qualify for the presidency anyway? To my way of thinking, anyone willing to forgo a cushy high paying job on some corporate board so that they can work their ass off for two years to beg for the chance to risk assassination next to an American flag most likely possesses patriotism bordering on psychosis. To quote the ever-applicable Douglas Adams, "Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made president should on no account be allowed to do the job."
And what are the supposed catastrophic results of electing an insufficiently patriotic president? Will we maybe find out, three years into a McCain presidency, that he's not actually so keen on this whole "America" thing? Or perhaps we'll discover that Obama's been betting on Canadian baseball teams to beat the Americans,
a la Pete Rose.
Et tu, Barack?
In any case, I'm guessing that even if you're not super-patriotic when you're elected, you'll probably come around after a few $500 haircuts on
YOUR OWN PRIVATE RED, WHITE & BLUE 747.
Do Fortune 500 companies pick CEOs this way? Did the Google guys grill Eric Schmidt on whether he ever used Yahoo! to find his porn? And then did they dig up sermons by Eric Schmidt's pastor about how Google was to blame for getting Schmidt's lesbian daughter pregnant with a downs syndrome baby? Somehow I doubt it. I think maybe the Google guys just looked for the best CEO they could find.
Then there are the vague and often contradictory notions about what kind of person is "right" to be president. Hilary Clinton clearly wanted to be president too badly. Fred Thompson didn't want it enough. Obama's entire life was scripted by the DNC, except for that part where he associated with an anti-American pastor for 20 years. McCain is shamefully pandering to the people, with whom he is completely out of touch.
So who am I going to vote for? I don't know. I really might just sit this one out. Or maybe I'll vote Libertarian. Those guys are crazy, but they're crazy in the right direction.
And if you tell me I'm "throwing my vote away," I will hunt you down and punch you right in the chads. Votes are
supposed to be thrown away. That's what you
do with them. What do you want me to do, hoard all my votes under the mattress? Here's a little newsflash for you: Unless you're living in Kevin Costner's retarded fantasy world, your vote is not going to be the one that determines the fate of the free world. In fact, even if you and ten thousand of your friends move to Florida and all vote for Saint Obama, you don't have a snowball's chance in Palm Beach County of making a difference in the election.
"Throwing your vote away" generally means voting for someone who isn't going to win. The less likely your candidate is to win, the theory goes, the more certain it is that you are throwing your vote away. By this logic, one should always vote for the candidate who is most likely to win. I should, therefore, always vote for the person that I think most other people are going to vote for. Of course, if I'm wrong, then I've still thrown my vote away. And if I'm right, then my candidate didn't need my vote, because he was going to win anyway.
Logically, then,
there is no reason for me to vote.Unless, of course, I'm voting just to make a statement. In that case, freed from the burden of actually having any possible effect on the outcome of the election, I can vote for
whomever I choose. No longer are my options constrained by the superficial obsessions of the media, an antiquated, arbitrary primary system or a political landscape that forces voters to distill their entire political philosophy into one of two colors. For that matter, I'm not even constrained by reality. I can vote for Abraham Lincoln or Matlock if I feel like it. In fact, I think I just might.
Wow, maybe I won't sit this one out after all. I'm kind of excited about what a Lincoln/Matlock ticket might accomplish. President and vice-president by day, and crime-fighting duo by night! And just maybe, in those magic moments when the night's crime-fighting is done but the day's governing has not yet begun -- lovers.
I did a Google search for "Matlock" just now, because I wasn't sure how many t's it had, and as you might expect, I ran across the
Laser Vaginal Rejuvenation Institute of Los Angeles. (Evidently the institute is run by one Dr. David Matlock.) The site promises that:
Laser Vaginal Rejuvenation® (LVR®) will effectively enhance the vaginal muscle tone, strength, and control. It will effectively decrease the internal and external vaginal diameters as well as build up and strengthen the perineal body (the area immediately outside the vagina and above the anus). Sexual gratification for the female is directly related to the amount of frictional forces generated. We can accomplish this with LVR®.
I think that this is definitely something that should be added to the Lincoln/Matlock platform. We hear a lot about penis enlargement these days, but we almost never hear about vaginal ensmallment. Why hasn't anybody thought of this before? This is the kind of outside-the-box, but also inside-the-box thinking that we need in Washington.
The only real concern I have about vaginal rejuvenation is the possibility that they might accidentally rejuvenate a middle aged woman's vagina below the age of consent. You think you're hooking up with some skanky MILF, and then next thing you know, you're in jail for statutory rape! "But officer, her driver's license said she was 47!" "Yes, but her vagina is only 14, you sick bastard!"
I think the Lincoln/Matlock platform should include forcing women to carry proof of their Real Vagina Age (RVA), to prevent this sort of thing from happening. I'm sure we could sneak something like that into another Patriot Act.
Anyway, you get the point, which I don't fully recall but which I think I made about eight paragraphs back. Don't throw your vote away on candidates who promise cheap gas, independence from foreign oil, and larger penises. Throw it away on candidates who promise cheap gas, independence from foreign oil, and smaller vaginas.
Man, I can feel this race tightening up already.
Update 7:27 - I've sunk to an ignoble 6th place at
Humor-Blogs.com, so I'd be much obliged if you'd click on the smiley guy down below. Thanks!
Labels: Politics