Sitcom Nation

Well, so much for the funeral. Because it’s now a high school prom! And guess who’s the queen?

Sarah Palin, come on down, don the crown, get that nose wrinkle thing going and kick the living shit out of Obama. Yikes. Anyone else want to dance? I didn’t think so.

As you all know by now, I don’t play nicely with either major party. I’m old school. And for the 20-plus years I’ve been writing I’ve had two quotes hanging near my writing space. The first is from George Orwell: “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” And, the second, is from Joseph Pulitzer: “Newspapers should have no friends.” Ah, mission accomplished.

But I do have readers. So let me tell you want you don’t want to hear: The Democrats and the Republicans are taking all of us for fools. They’re co-conspirators in a grotesque fleecing of a nation, where the goal is to dumb-down the political process to the point of irrelevancy. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s not a democracy. It’s a fucking sitcom.

The people talking issues were kicked to the side a long, long time ago. Worse, they were treated like lepers. You do, in fact, remember Dennis Kucinich, Ron Paul, and Ralph Nader, don’t you? Silly men. They thought this was about ideas, ideals, proposals, vision and – sit down for this one – follow through and commitment.

Nope. Not in the sitcom nation.

Because the script for this election has already been submitted. And it goes like this: Obama equals hope. McCain equals security. Biden equals change (huh? Oh yeah, he took the train home every night). And Palin equals Hillary. Now shut up and debate those names and those terms only. Or else we’ll condemn you to a lifetime of snarky blogging.

But if it’s a sitcom they want, let’s analyze it like a sitcom.

Sarah Palin kicked ass last night. Yep, kicked ass. She single-handedly resuscitated the dying elephant in the room and did what every liberal pundit had convinced themselves she couldn’t do: deliver a speech. Better yet (for the Republicans), she largely avoided the issues, keeping the soft-focused lens on her family and her verbal Uzi trained on Obama more effectively than anyone else this campaign season.

Imagine, for example, if Hillary Clinton came out swinging like that against Obama? But she can’t, because she’s bound by the unspoken code of political correctness that, interestingly enough, forbids such discourse. Instead of putting a spotlight on Obama’s inexperience and stadium-sized sense of entitlement like Palin effectively did, Hillary played her own politically correct card – yeah, the one with two “x” chromosomes. Oh, the liberal dilemma!

It is amazing that Obama has been flirting with and outright running for the presidency for almost four solid years and yet this is the first time that I can remember that an opponent undressed and exposed his flimsy resume. And the sitcom crowd roared at the irony that it was finally being done by the woman with the flimsy resume. Oh please, will you two get a room and show each other your resumes and settle this once and for all.

And I love it how the Dem faithful are now demanding that we talk about the issues. Well, now that the helium balloons from their halcyon convention have floated away. But let’s take them up on it for a second. The war? Well, what’s the difference between McCain voting to fund the war and Obama voting to fund the war? Oh yeah, Obama did it while holding his nose. The economy? Well, what’s the difference between Biden bending over backwards for the credit card thugs and McCain bending over for the same? The environment? Well, what’s the difference between Obama’s support of nuclear power and McCain’s support of nuclear power? You get my point.

Hang in there America, because this sitcom ends on November 4th. Or, better yet, tune into candidates like Nader, Paul and McKinney who are actually saying something – and meaning it.