Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Sunshine Up Yours

It's a ways to go before Super PoliDork-o-Rama Tuesday, and I'm running out of stomach lining. This is the first election of my lifetime in which an incumbent President or VP isn't on either ticket, and even though my pills and I agreed to step off, I cannot. I'm still holding to my vow to not opinion-hurl in this space, but that doesn't mean I don't have a very serious conversation about immigration policy with the hash brown casserole.

One of the reasons I chose not to apply my degree in political science to the actual practice of political science is that politics brings out the very worst of human nature. It is sixth grade writ large. I would be in office four seconds before openly taunting the weak and demanding that those of who I am jealous never appear on my slumber party invitations.

Only politics can give us pictures like these. This is from last night at the SOTU (that's the State Of the Union address, for those of you with lives), and... how awesome is this? The very tableau of it! It's epic! At the bottom right is--remember him?-- John Kerry: "I'M STILL HERE AND MY PINK TIE AND I HAVE MAINTAINED PISSEDNESS AT ALL OF YOU." About four inches behind him is Hillary Clinton, and in a few seconds she's about to run up to Nancy Pelosi on the rostrum all, "OMG, Barak and Ted were totally talking about me. Are they still looking? OMG! Don't look, don't look!" And in the meantime, Barak and Ted sat together for the second SOTU in a row, which confirms that they are total BFF's now, and I have these visions of Obama getting to the chamber way, way early so that he could save a seat for Ted, and then he spread his suitcoat over it, and then he sat there for 45 minutes saying firmly to the Senators who are often picked last for the kickball team, the ones who are in the Math Club, "No... taken.... this is saved...Ted's sitting here." And Vice President Big Time sat there facing it all, cleaning his gun and glowering at people, watching the President deliver a sentence mentioning nuclear power, which, I am sure, he directed the speechwriter to insert just so he could say "nook-ular," just so he could piss everybody off. How can you not be entertained by this? IT'S AWESOME.

Tonight is especially enjoyable, since Florida voted today and I am treated to a TV news tour of not only my former state, but my former section of my former state. People are throwing down "I-4 Corridor"'s like Jello shots. It's a Russert-driven scrapbook of the past five years: "Seminole County, wicked! I've gotten lost there tons of times! And Boynton Beach, I did this horrible endless design-build bid at the Evil Horrible Boring Day Job for Boynton Beach!"

The returns have barely started, and I just whizzed past Shepard Smith attempting to explain, with many hand-waves, where Putnam County is: "It's north of Lake Okeechobee? And east of Gainesville? And west of Flagler Beach? And south of Greenland? You know...? There?" Dear Shep: There's this thing? On the internet? And you're on TV, in a multimillion dollar studio? Maybe you could-- I don't know-- put those two together, and point to where it is?

Just awesome.

brevard, orange, and volusia county shoutout at: mbe@drinktothelasses.com

4 comments:

The Spencers said...

This made me literally laugh out loud. Oh gosh, I needed that!

I thoroughly enjoyed watching the endless hours of coverage on how Obama turned when Hilary extended her hand. As in, "Eew, I don't want cooties!" Is there really nothing else going on in the world. Didn't Britney do something else tragic today that we could focus on? Come on, now!

Starnarcosis said...

Now that I can think of this entire election thing as sixth grade, I think I can watch news for the next 11 months!

Meredith said...

Hi MB!

Well said! As a former resident, I also watched the coverage last night while remembering warmer times (I hate January in Illinois!)and laughing at the geographical mistakes. Let's just hope there will be no more talk of hanging chads and the like. I had enough of that to last a lifetime!

WiserlemmingAZ said...

MB.....

If you think national politics is bad, you should see it at the local level. My dad is a county commissioner back home in Indiana. The population of the entire county hovers around 28,000 people. As a retired teacher, my dad had most of his constituents as students at some point in the past. And yet, now that he's a commissioner, you should hear the talk. The whole process does indeed put me in mind of sixth grade. Whole groups of people are no longer friends because the county now has stoplights. When Wal-Mart came to town, you would have thought the world was going to end. There were those who were adamantly opposed because they thought the crime rate would go up.
My parents are supposed to come visit me here in Arizona in a bout six weeks. My dad has decided that he will have to FLY BACK TO INDIANA for ONE meeting because otherwise, and I am quoting directly here, "People will talk."
Oh yes, I'm sure they will. My parents, who are so staunchly religious that neither of them drink or smoke, let alone dance, might be the source of the latest gossip to come down the grapevine just because they are out west visiting their daughter the schoolteacher.
If that isn't enough, my parents also live on a gravel road. That road won't be paved as long as my dad is a commissioner because, yet again, "People might talk."
But it's an election year. Need I say more?

I'm just glad to know that someone else also recognizes the immaturity that accompanies politics.

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