After reading the Hunter S. Thompson classic, “Fear and Loathing on Campaign Trail ’72,” South Dakota Senator George McGovern (the Democratic candidate that year for those of you too young or too ignorant to remember) described the book as “the least factual but most truthful piece ever written about a political campaign.” I didn’t fact check this quote and heard it from a medical doctor friend of mine in the Bronx so it may not actually have been McGovern who said it but someone else from his organization and it is at best paraphrased but the sentiment remains honest.
George McGovern and Hunter Thompson are two of my lifelong heroes. McGovern is still alive and kicking and made a terrifically funny guest on NPR’s “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me,” a month or two back. Very sadly, Doctor Thompson is not with us to help guide America through Election 2008 and the absolutely bizarre events surrounding it.
If you, my loyal readers hadn’t noticed, I have spent a lot of my life diving into the weird and weirder. This election, the cable channels, the events and nearly everything surrounding it makes me feel like I’ve been on a serious acid binge since this year started. Is the shit we hear on Fox, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, PBS, ESPN actually true? Could it possibly be true?
Back in the spring of this year, we Floridians learned that we had elected half delegates to the Democratic convention and no one quite knew what the Republicans had decided to do with the sunset state. This god forsaken sandbar had found itself in the limbo of democracy’s purgatory when it generally cares much more about limbo dancing than current events. We knew the recount disaster in 2000 had tossed us into permanent ridicule but what exactly is a half delegate? Did we send midgets or did we slice them vertically?
Has the McCain campaign selected “God Dress America” as its new campaign song? I enjoy shopping with my girlfriends as much as the next metrosexual and probably could figure out how to spend $150,000 of someone else’s money on clothing in a couple of months if I fell into an espresso driven manic buying binge but did the RNC think they could turn around our entire economy by injecting such a pile of cash into the retail sector?
On a serious note, the ADA Restoration Act came to a vote in the US Congress. Senators Obama, McCain and Biden neglected to show up to vote on it. Governor Palin probably never heard of it.
Maybe hanging out with domestic terrorists gives Obama a leg up on dealing with those abroad as he probably used the experience to learn how such people think. Also, can anyone tell me that Senator McCain and the sexy Alaskan governor aren’t being supported by those who blow up abortion clinics and hang around with the KKK? I’m not asserting that right wing nutcases are any more messed up than a bunch of college kids who blew as many of themselves up as they did their targets but the seriously fucked up span the political spectrum in this great nation.
Where are the Hell’s Angels on all of this?
Did anyone else realize that the last time the Republicans won a presidential election without a member of the Bush family or Nixon on the ticket was in 1928 the lead in year to the last great depression?
How much chronic had Alan Greenspan smoked before testifying this week? Did he sound stoned or was it just me?
Where do real Americans live? Based upon the comments of various political operatives, I want to avoid these places at all costs.
I really need old Raoul Duke to sort all of this out for me.
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