Infirmative Action

They keep telling us that race isn't gonna matter as much in this campaign. But they keep feeling the need to tell us. Meanwhile, I hear people on NPR, like the lifelong Democrat who won't vote for Obama because "he's going to put them first, and not us," and I'm ashamed of this country.

This race is the Democrats' to lose at this point. McCain has his ugly 25% and some idealogues who just won't ever leave the Republican fold. And he has his racists, the ones yelling epithets at the rallies. But those people can't give him the presidency.

The only people now who can hand the reins of this country over to Grandpa McCain and his batshit snake-handling VP are the -- what are we calling them this week? "Rural middle-class voters"? "Reagan Democrats." "Joe Sixpack." What we're talking about, of course, are the white people out here in flyoverland. Union guys, housewives, relatively insular small-town people who know in their hearts that a McCain administration is going to continue the slow, corrosive decay of their way of life, but who -- when they get in that booth and it's just them and their conscience -- can't pull the switch for a black guy.

Well, let me shoot a little straight talk your way, my fellow Ohioans, my fellow small-town progeny, my fellow lowbrow domestic-beer-drinking, video-game-playing yokels.

Keep your little-dick ooga-booga darkie paranoia bullshit offa my country, will you?

We don't have time for this shit.

If you're so opposed to an "affirmative action" president, as a few right-wing dimbulbs have posited, why are you going to vote for a guy solely because of his race? Can you really sleep at night, Mr. and Mrs. Edwards-to-Hillary-to-I-was-never-voting-party-anyway?

Don't be a dick. Don't let this year, your year, go down in the history books as proof that we still weren't ready yet to acknowledge a good portion of the human race as worthy of the title. Vote for the guy who you agree with. Close your eyes if you have to. And if you won't do it to save your own soul from the muck of the past, do it for my kids, will you? I don't feel like explaining to them that the grown-ups could willingly, deliberately, get it so wrong.

What the fuck's wrong with Cindy McCain?

Besides the obvious fact, of course, that the trophy racehorse she put her money on thirty years ago has turned out to be a bad bet in the home stretch.

After she and John get called out on dishonest campaign ads on "The View," she warbles that "they picked our bones clean."

(That's not the most pretty image to call up when you look like a mannequin that's been left out in the sun too long, incidentally.)

In the midst of resurrecting the long-shelved Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright and secret-Muslim bogeymen, Cindy tells a crowd that Barack Obama has run the "dirtiest campaign in history."

You can't blame her entirely, of course. Has anyone ever picked on her, like, ever? She developed a pill habit over the third-hand splashback of the Keating Five affair -- this is not a woman made for the rigors of the campaign trail.

We all saw John's contemptuous dodge of Obama's handshake after Tuesday's debate, and his deflection to Cindy, who was forced to touch "That One." Given her penchant for hysterical exaggeration, I look forward to hearing "Barack Obama raped me" by the weekend.

Michelle Obama, on the Daily Show tonight, blew off the whole "That One" fiasco and described Cindy as "cordial," claiming they'd already greeted each other backstage. She was cool, diplomatic, polite, and gracious. Can you imagine Cindy McCain, were she to deign to perch her bony ass on Jon Stewart's chair, showing that kind of poise? Hell, Michelle looks more presidential than John these days.

And Cindy's looking... well... a little brittle. It's too bad she doesn't still have unfettered access to Keating's private jet to the Bahamas, because that's one desperate housewife who's gonna need a little rehab R & R when John's done losing this thing.