Tough Titty said the Kitty, the Milk Tastes Good...

Stately, plump Robbie Jackson passed the tub of his grandmother’s fried chicken round as we sat around our picnic blanket on the lawn outside Independence Hall on the afternoon of the Fifth. Margaret, in her signature yellow suit, was mixing relieving cocktails of bourbon with chamomile tea (which Robbie took iced, no bourbon). Frank Belloc, combat psychologist, had procured some fantastic, pink-ribboned brisket from Lucy’s. No one talked about politics.

I spent the morning making cipaille, the famed layered meat pie from my homeland, and, how could it be otherwise, poutine. Yeah! Fried potatoes and cheese curds, with brown gravy! Seriously!

Margaret and I exchanged knowing glances; Podesta and Emanuel. The Beanpole Elect was still making the sharp, incisive decisions.

We supped and lolled. The weather was a touch cooler, the skies a little grey, but there was a human electricity that could not be denied; between us friends, between each and every passerby, a connection, and understanding. I was jealous. Even as I was accepted that day, in this moment, for the first time in my adult life I wished I could be a proud American! Nom Dieu!

Bertie Ernesto appeared, coming round the hall from Chestnut Street, striding across the great lawn with a contagious spirit, two giant thugs behind him, between them all sacks of Geno’s cheesesteaks, which they handed out to any and all comers. There were still plenty by the time they got to us.

So much work to be done. But for today…

Election Day Brunch, eleven am. Twelve hours, at least, to go...

“I hope this is the last goddamn election where I have to vote for a Democrat,” said my old friend and former producer, Robbie Jackson told me at brunch this morning, twirling his tall glass of ubiquitous iced tea with his large, sturdy fingers. I knew he didn’t mean he was looking for the next best Republican.

Margaret is sleeping in this historic day, having voted ‘absentee’ back in New York. I hadn’t seen Frank Belloc yet. Bertie Ernesto had not reappeared since his abduction by right wing Italian American Goombas a few nights ago. I was massaging my skull with my hands and nursing the hangover with a Bloody Caesar, which took some doing getting the clamato out of them.

“I want to see the goddamn Republicans shatter,” said Jackson, never one to mince his militant black, libertarian words. “And then for that to carry over into the Democrats. In two years, after Pelosi steers that ship into the rocks like Nancy Fucking Hazelwood, I want to see the remnants of the GOP come nipping at the heels of Congress in 2010 and for the Dems to fold like down syndrome origami. Then, and I don’t mean to come down on my brother, Barack, but then we get to really dig into the change I want to believe in.”

“Election reform, third party system, addressing the death penalty, our reliance on corporate hegemony, education reform,” I say. It’s going to be a long day.

You can be Frigthened, It's Ok.

“Her it is,” slurred Frank Belloc, combat psychologist, in the corner of the bar on Sansom Street, wiping his hand down against his beer after Margaret had gone off to stupored sleep, as though he was brushing off the bottle its own tears. “They’ll say, ‘we meant this’, if they lose. They’ll pose it in these terms, they’ll say, ‘hey, we knew we’d never get there, only that we’d let you run and let you win, but didn’t we give you a show!”

“Nom Dieu!” I stammered, watching the bar, the apathetic tender, the slowly streaming in regulars on a Saturday night at this downtown watering hole. “And they try and say there is a pendulum, a way of the left and the right swinging back.”

“Fuck them,” Belloc told me, and I knew who he spoke of; the hundreds, perhaps the thousands who said, who said in ’04, who say in ’08, that these things just come and they go, they turn and they pivot according to some arrhythmic pulse none of us are ever privy to. "Those who have whistled past the graveyard, who won’t get it, if Obama wins. It’s a battle. That’s why we are sitting here right now; this whole fucking thing could go landslide, it could go too-close-to-call and get stolen away. We have no way of freaking knowing.”

“It comes down to 10:15 to 10:45, with the panic point at eleven,” I slurred myself, dreaming of my cheapish bed rented a block away. “We watch the early exit polls start to merge with the returns, we look to Pennsylvania as the stronghold, hope for Ohio, pray for Florida, but if we miss, then, ok, take PA, take the tri-state, get early and good things from Colorado, and then it’s all good, no? Nothing but the sunny west coast coming through?”

Belloc rinsed his face in his own hand’s sweat.

“And if Virginia falls? The trifecta of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida? Then it gets, suddenly, a little tight. What will Missouri do? North Carolina? Then, every single fucking state makes a terrible difference!”

I was surprised to hear this kind of talk from my old and very composed friend; the man who calmed the thrill out of Chris Matthew’s leg, who talked Olbermann down from the ledge when he was removed as anchor.

I went to bed that night, draped in the empty down warmth of foreign covers, the flat screen of my room’s TV riveted to news, deeply conflicted, wondering, half hoping against the odds that this one time… the argument was finally going to work.

Volunteers in Pennsylvania...

Margaret and I stood at the end of a prodigious, snaking line wrapping around the carnival fury of Geno’s, in South Philly, beneath the flashing, colored neon lights, our hunger for cheesesteak only slightly muted by the constricting polls. Ohio. Massive calls for volunteers here in PA. Margaret tried, vainly, to instruct me in the proper method for ordering the sandwich.

“You just say, I’ll take a ‘whiz, wit’, that’s all you have to do.”

“And where may I order a side of broccoli rabe? I have the feeling this steak sandwich with the fried onions and the unnatural cheese sauce will require a little of the ‘gastro-scouring’, no?”

“I’ll just order,” she barked as we shuffled beneath the pantheon of celebrity photography that lined the eaves of the building. “For the both of us.”
“I’m going to need a drink after this,” she said. “I will not feel safe or in the clear at least until the very early hours of Wednesday. Pierre, it comes down to education, look at the numbers. Education and prejudice. It’s not racism; racism is the implementation of policy promoting a racist agenda. You can talk about the institutionalized racism woven in the very fabric of our social infrastructure all you want; these people in Youngstown, Ohio, in Johnston, Pennsylvania, they are acting on lifelong prejudices fostered by sub-par educations and cultures of low expectations. This entire election is coming right down to it again, not red states or blue, but red people, blue people. And race is an issue, maybe the issue. And I can’t believe that we are saying it again, that this election is going to finally be the one that is driven by record turnout; record turnout by the youth and Black Americans.”

“Yes, ma puce,” I told her. “But isn’t there every reason to believe it now?”
“That’s what we’ve been hearing since 1972. I’ll believe it when I see it.”
There was a commotion up at the corner, about ten feet ahead of us. For the first time we noticed there was a table set out right in front of the order window, piled high with McCain/Palin paraphernalia and manned by thick necked, how you say? ‘Goombas’? And there was Bertie Ernesto, my half-brother, rattling his vocal saber at them.

“Two weeks ago, the Obama Campaign Headquarters in South Philly had to be evacuated! What is that about? Threatening letters? Mysterious substances? What is going on here?”

“Don’t say anything,” I cautioned Margaret quietly.

“But he’s your brother,” she said.

“Half-brother,” I reminded her. “I am too hungry to let his antics stand in the way of this cheesesteak.”

The ‘meatheads’ began to poke Bertie firmly in the chest, emphatically iterating the old clichéd tag lines about islam, socialism, domestic terrorism.

“Domestic terrorism?! You don’t hear a thing I’m talking about, do you?”

Margaret fished out her purse at the window as the older, pony-tailed woman waited. “Two whiz, wit.”

Shortly, a man on the line produced two, foot long heros, wrapped in paper.

“Pierre! What are you doing?!” Bertie called out to me. “You can’t eat here! These people are facists! Hate mongers!”

“Don’t look back,” I admonished Margaret. “Just move on. Where is this hot sauce you speak of?”

“Pierre! Brother! Do you hear me? You cannot commerce with these thugs!”
We walked along, down past picnic tables of young white youths, sating themselves with fried ribeye. I allowed a brief glimpse back in time to see Bertie grappled round the chest by some progeny of Rocky.

“Don’t forget what I told you about this sauce. It’s an absolute killer,” Margaret said, dabbing her sandwich with tiny drops of it, like a dainty woman applying perfume. I shrugged her off and gave it a few good presses over the steaming cheese sauce and chopped steak and onion .

We walked away from South Philly and I discovered the very grave wrong I’d committed in not listening to Margaret, w/r/t the sauce chaude. The unholy burn attacked from six different angles, tears running, nose clearing, throat stripping. My entire face was aflame.

“I just want to go back to the hotel,” she said, “sidle up to the bar and wake up Wednesday morning, good news or bad. Another part of me want to strap into return coverage, booze-less; cold and rational, and watch what this country is truly capable of. Watch it panic and fret, take the advice of its divisive preachers, turn from reason, turn from logic and settle into the scrotum crunching safety of the fear culture.”

“Sacre’Poutine! Nom Dieu! I’m dying, ma puce! I’m dying! This is one of the greatest sandwiches I’ve ever had and it’s killing me!”

Margaret ignored me as we turned north on Broad Street.

“On the other hand, I walk through most of this town, through most of the blue states and a good number of the red, and I can see there’s a chance. I can see a morning where that sick fuck, Sarah Palin, sits dejected in her hotel room, a moose taco half eaten in her lap and not even the toothless grin of little Piper can revive her. A country ready to start again.”

I nodded, tears streaming down my face, mouth afire, wondering if Tuesday night held such delicious horrors as this cheesesteak had.

And Counting...

Sacre'Poutine! Lord above, I'm sitting in a merde Starbucks in Pennsylvania, exclusively for the wi-fi, my ears bleeding from the droning music, my tongue deadened by the oil sludge coffee, but I was told this is where the story is and so here I am.

My half-brother, Bertie Ernesto, has been feverishly working the phone banks from Bucks County to Wilkes-Barre bothering old ladies and invalids about their commitment to change and do they know where their polling places are, and do they need a ride on Tuesday? I have never had the propensity for the 'cold call' and, though I wish I could help, can merely wait on the sideline, straddle the bar and wait as the news cycles roll over one another like a Katrina tide.

Philadelphia is an interesting model for the USA of the Post Racial Electorate, no? Every time I'm here I see a congeniality in the street interactions of whites and blacks missing from other American cities. In New York, of course, ANY interaction between ANYONE is predicated on 'what are you trying to take from me?' and 'are you going to harm me?' And places like Portland, OR, or San Francisco where whites are performing obscene yoga postures to demonstrate their liberality before their African-American brethren; here you always get the sense, politics aside, that this is their city (all of theirs) and there is no big deal about all that.

In fact, to sit at a bar on Chestnut Street, you'd be hard pressed to realize you are in a 'battleground' state at all. The bartender shrugs that he doesn't have the money to get out to Arizona to help, the patrons laugh about Palin's latest antics. Bertie Ernesto assures me in measured panic that their is much to be concerned about, but you just aren't seeing it here.

I have determined the panic marker for Tuesday night. At ten-fifteen, I estimate, we will have seen a good hour plus of exit polling before the returns begin to pop and flash across the eastern seaboard; they have to be in line with each other right away, for me, in order to Quell the FEAR. I predict it will be a night of AT LEAST medium panic well into the morning of the Fifth. Nothing is certain.

Margaret facilitates from cynicism to pure despair. She's meeting me tonight for a cheesesteak at Geno's. Poor puce, I fear for her sometimes. More from the road.

If Obama Wins...

The fear of violence following an election is a currency traded in places like Belarus, Togo, or Zimbabwe. U.S. fear mongers are apt to describe a nasty scenario wherein a McCain victory could very definitely lead to riots and unrest in America’s urban centers, but that’s unlikely. The cops in this country, how shall I say this, have long demonstrated an aptitude for tidying up even the biggest, blackest messes that have come down the pike. Nom Dieu! It’s the crackers that I’m afraid of and what’s going to happen in the south, in Wyoming, and western PA when, or if, Obama cracks the old Two-Seven-Zero.

Seriously, the poo-slinging Nazi orangutans that came out for the Palin rallies are the Well-Mannered and Bright side of the Whack Job Electorate. Yesterday, at a school in Jacksonville, Florida (Why, Lord, why?) scribbling on the bathroom wall read “If Obama is Elected, the new KKK will blow up the school”. It doesn’t take much to extrapolate what that kid's parents might be thinking. For all the douche bags that have moved to Manhattan in the last fifteen years, it is a very safe place for me to be this coming Wednesday.

On the other hand, it is without anxious anticipation that I await the Liberal Rapture; the gooey-faced, blissed out baboons roaming the streets asking me if I can feel it, feel the change. Nom Merde! Sweet Lord, you know it’s coming (and, again, I mean hopefully), and I hope I’m able to stomach it.

Six days and counting. I might have to pop out to PA.

If Obama Loses...

“I’m exhausted,” I told Frank Belloc, combat psychologist and good friend, “I’ve flown some forty-two hours in the last week, from the States to Europe, to the Middle East and back and, yet, my half-brother, who’s been detained by the U.S. military for the last two weeks and was subjected to everything short of waterboarding, has already bolted for Pennsylvania, desperate to help shore up the lead for Obama.”

“Can you understand the panic?” asked my good friend. Franks’ business had sunk a bit of late, what with Barack’s numbers so high, reporters un-moved any longer, was looking at the contest rather neutrally. “Any dip into the single digits signal a potential hi-jacking. This is the most important election, and I know how dumb that sounds, but it’s true, since the demise of the Democrats in 1968. If Obama loses this thing, by hook or by crook, what happens? A thin thread of life is given to the GOP; the Dems don’t fracture, but what about the electorate? Black Americans? Can you say Rodney? The youth vote? Please. Who wouldn’t try everything in their power to try and push this thing?”

“You don’t think the Palin Creature is already posturing for the loss?” I asked him. “The rogue is making signals to her base?”

“For chrissakes,” said Frank, “The Republicans will fracture completely with a loss. I don’t even want to tell you what I think is going to happen to them with an Obama win. That’s not relevant. Thing is, nobody ought to whistle past the graveyard right now. They’re close, but they’re not there yet.”

Obama is not above 50% in Key Battleground States

I was able to get ESPN on my Blackberry from the waiting room at Victory Base in Baghdad. Rains and even snow continue to fall in the Philadelphia area, delaying the suspended game five. Beware, Phillies, the caprices of the baseball gods and 3-1 leads when nature gets involved.

Bertie Ernesto had lost none of his vim, after getting worked over by the 1st Cavalry Security.

“Let’s go, eh? We’ve got to get back to the States! There’s only a week to go!”
“So, you’re done with Track?”
My half-brother had come to Iraq last month, dedicated to the preservation of life and limb of the GOPVEEP candidate’s oldest son.

“Palin is a shitbird! They’re cosseting him here like he was a Bush child! He’s playing cards with generals! Come on, let’s go!”

“Back to Nader?”
Bertie had been a fervent supporter of Nader’s Ticket, a saber-rattling truth seeker against corporate hegemony and the two-party system.

“If I’ve said it once, Pierre, I’ve said it a thousand times! The greatest thing Bush ever did for the Democrats was steal the 2000 election! Everybody wants the illusion of change and, I say, let’s get it to them the sooner the better! Our fight has not yet begun, and if we don’t high tail our Nuck Butts back Stateside, those goddamn republicans might just steal another one!”

“Nom Dieu, mon frere, what can two Canadians do? Besides, I’m Qubecer.”

“Regardless, you dirty frog, I’m going taking it to the battlegrounds! Are you coming or not?”

The Sons of Ayn and Greenspan...

Sacre’Blu! I took a minute between my flight from Ankara to Baghdad to do a little research. I’ll admit I wrote off Ayn Rand years ago, after a cursory review of that god-awful propagandist film adaptation of ‘The Fountainhead’ (screenplay by Rand, herself), thinking, surely, that ‘up-by-your-own-bootstraps’ drivel couldn’t survive outside of the mind-soil of your average twenty-two year old. But, it turns out, I was quite the naïve waif! Alan ‘I found a Flaw’ Greenspan has, apparently until very recently, continued to suckle at the teat of Objectivism and I’d like to know, WHAT OTHER SECRET CULTS ARE RUNNING THIS FUCKING COUNTRY!

Seriously! Nom Dieu! You thought we’d learned a lesson after the last untalented artist with messianic ambitions turned his nation into a facist nutbag paradise, and you’d be right! Just that our nutbags psychos learned to be better at keeping quiet about it.

Which begs the question, what competing secret cabal is behind the absolute slap in the Laissez-faire face of capitalism? This billion dollar bailout? I fear to say, it was the sad children of the church of Rand, themselves. You see, these pigs are operating this economy like it were a home version of Galaga, simply hitting ‘play again’ when the last spaceship is destroyed by aliens. New Game.

As I arrive in Baghdad, in the dead of night, the air is a desert chilly seventy-two Fahrenheit. Obama is keeping above fifty percent, but barely. He must maintain it, must keep a hard distance in the stretch to stave off the Howling Dogs, and the Bradley Voters. I’m being led by military escort to where my half-brother, Bertie Ernesto is being held. More on that tomorrow.

Greenspan Shocked!

With the stock market plunging, the 767 to Berlin took off, myself on board. I would change flights in Germany and fly to Ankara and from there to Baghdad, where my half brother, Bertie Ernesto was being held by the military police. He’d apparently collected thirty thousand dollars in online fund raising and was making good on his promise to deliver armor and security to Track Palin in Diyala. Only he hadn’t counted on the dim view the United States Military takes on Canadian interference. A dim view indeed.

Meanwhile, as I leave the States, it appears the media have misinterpreted the RNC and Sarah Palin’s $150,000 spending spree. Wasn’t that part of Paulsen’s stimulus package? I feel certain I saw legislation earmarking the dough for Nieman Marcus and Saks 5th Ave. Come on, David Shuster, take a powder, will ya?

Opening up a double digit lead on McCain, Obama is flying as well. The candidate is Hawaii bound to tend to his ailing grandmother and I wait, with nervous anticipation, for the GOP response. Every move McCain makes these days has the taste of reactionary, the echo of sore loser about it.

The Week in Review

Well, what can I say? There are more than a few bright points in the weeks past, perhaps none more inspiring than the sight of Clint Curtis at Tropicana Field as the Feisty Devil Rays vanquished the Satanic Red Sox. Mr. Curtis, you ADD-addled Americans must remember, is the former Yang Co. programmer who blew the whistle on bogus electronic voting machines and Fiendish Representative of the 24th District, Tom Feeney, the dirty, underhanded bastard behind Florida 2000. Although he lost the primary in his bid to unseat Feeney, this reporter is heartened that Florida will be playing with paper trail ballots which MAY help to subdue a SMALL amount of Republican Vote Counting Treachery this November.

As well, it would seem the tablespoons of socialism administered to the cosseted, man-child that is the U.S. economy has taken its effect and the Fake Economy has stabilized for the moment. Nom Dieu, doesn’t anyone else feel that these clowns from Fannie to Freddie to Lehman, et al amount to little more than Spaulding Smails and his yacht club buddies all grown up and crying for more hotdogs and cheeseburgers? Sacre’Poutine!

But is there anything in this godforsaken media landscape more depraved than the twenty-four hour news cycles of MSNBC, FOX, and CNN? Like some deranged addicts one the Violent Prowl, they cravenly devour stories like Palin’s Baby and Joe the Plumber without regard to content or substance? Watching Wolfe Blitzer try to describe John McCain’s debate performance as ‘throwing punches’ caused me to check the channel guide. Was I not watching ‘Intervention’? and wouldn’t some kind family please emerge from the shadows and scurry this poor, delusional bastard off to some gentle facility in sunny California?

I will say one last thing as we careen into the final two weeks of this two year long debacle. Wrong! I won’t say a thing. Roger D. Hodge, of Harper’s magazine has articulated it so much better than I, a poor and simple Canadian ever could. With regard to this dismal performance of the Democratic Party in past and current election cycles:

After eight years of catastrophic Republican misrule- in the midst of economic crisis and rising unemployment, in a nation plagued by ruinous energy costs and inflation, bank failures, and staggering public and private corruption- an eloquent, charismatic, intelligent Democratic candidate was locked in a statistical tie with a doddering old hack whose primary argument for his claim to the most powerful office on earth is that he was shot down over Vietnam and tortured for five years. Indeed, this remained the case even after McCain demonstrated beyond all doubt, in his impetuous selection of a ludicrously unsuitable vice-presidential candidate, that he lacked the good judgment that is the primary qualification for the job. If the Democratic Party loses this election, then it should forever concede the presidency.

Et vous pret?

How Certain Are You?

Let’s call it a nervous optimism, shall we?
I don’t pretend to be non-partisan; for the love of God, I’m Canadian; just a simple Quebecer reporter raised on the simple, homespun values of the Gaspe Peninsula: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. No Quarter.

So, yeah, Sacre’Poutine, I’m for Obama! And, damn you all, I’ve learned what this country is capable of and there is still time to run afoul! Ready the Long Knives! This is the final stretch!

Certainly, the Curmudgeon from the Dungeon is piss poor in the polls, his running mate decreed to have abused her power as governor of the *&$%&^$%# State of Alaska, the economy is in the shit can and we all know who’s to blame and who can’t fix it, their rallies have denigrated into casserole pot-lucks for crack pots, and the best of the conservative pundits are reeling like drunkards telephoning ex-girlfriends in the deep night, offering inchoate explanations for how things could work out between us, but I’ve seen this country robbed of its vote more than once, watched it wring its hands, and wet its pants as cowboys and corporate raiders howled like goddamned gorillas all over the trampoline of Decency and I know what’s still possible. Disaster Awaits!

Hysterical? Have you seen Uncounted: The New Math of American Elections? Ask yourself what makes you confident Obama’s lead is enough to gain victory? Polls? Remember Kerry in ’04? Exit polls showed him leading by margins mathematically impossible, according to the ‘recorded results’. What’s that mean? Lie, Scandal, Calumny! That’s what! Obama is going to take advantage of record numbers streaming to the ballot box? Who? Black Americans? The same African-Americans purged, disenfranchised, locked out of urban, black communities in Ohio, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and California? All of this and more happened in 2000, 2004, and you may be surprised to hear that even in the Democrats overtaking congress in 2006, vote-flipping occurred through the use of un-auditable electronic voting.

Nothing is Assured. If the numbers slip, even within five points, there are Sinister Forces well oiled and Ready to steal this one from you as well. Be Vigilant! And, nom dieu, don’t take it this time!

See the movie, sharpen your knives, watch the debate!

A Modest Proposal...

Oh, hello, bonjour! I just got up this morning and… sacre’poutine! Solved the goddmaned financial crisis, don’t mind if I do! Or, at least part of it, anyway. Look, what if I were to offer you an instant EIGHT BILLION dollars a year on a product you could tax an estimable 6.2 BILLION more all the while shedding something like 5.3 BILLION in legal costs on a statewide level and 2.4 more YOU KNOW HOW MUCH on the federal? What would you do? Why wouldn’t you take it? You know what I’m talking about.

Listen, it won’t do much to quell the financial markets, but not only would the legalization of marijuana give a gigantic boost to our current cash flow problem, it sure as hell would go a long way to quell our national anxiety right now. In fact, I would go so far as to suggest mandatory bong hits for every man and woman on the stock exchange floor right now. E-Traders, ready your ‘enter’ keys, stocks set to Entenmanns!

Listen, I’m not hearing any better suggestions out there right now from these campaigns. McPain is out there staggering like a bull moose with a couple of 30 odd six rounds lodged in its trachea, and, frankly, and I don’t mean this in a bad way, but every second this market tips closer to the shit can of Depression, the better Obama’s chances are looking. I just hope he’s made some clandestine deal with the markets (ala Reagan and the Iranians) and this fucking mess improves after the election!

In the meantime, I am recommending some serious spliff time for every man, woman, and child in America. Our economy depends on it.

My Follow Up Question: WTF?

First of all, I’d like to thank Allen, Oliver, Teresa, Fiora, Langdon, Ingrid, Lindsay, Steve, Katie, and Zenned out Peggy. Your milquetoasty, bland, and probably heavily vetted questions kept the fun out of one more debate, one more time. Not even that old codger, McCain, could sit still for the whole thing without wandering around the room like he’d lost his keys.

“Those of you at home, are not so constrained,” said Tom Brokaw, referring to the television audience’s freedom to howl like goddamned monkeys, if they liked, at the proceedings. Just there was nothing to howl about. Obama got to run, pretty smoothly, through a calm rehash of stump speeches and the Curmudgeon from the Dungeon rattled off the names of a bunch of old fogies he used to pal around with, like Reagan, Tip O’Neil, and Russ Feingold.

It’s no wonder that it’s more fun to follow the Palin side of the campaign. Keeping up with that hillbilly woman’s syntax is like an addiction to Sudoku puzzles, and add to it the fact that her rallies are starting more and more to look like thinly veiled Klan meetings, this the one to watch. At a rally this week, supporters shouted ‘Kill him’ after Palin made comments linking Obama to terrorist activities. An African American AV Tech was menaced, as were reporters of the mainstream media. This is good old fashioned politics!

The Republicans are fading in the polls like an old pair of jeans and you had best be Very Nervous and Wary they don’t try something desperate before the seat gets blown out. These Sinister Hoodlums are capable of anything and not for a moment held back by Conciousness or Civil Liberty. God protect Track Palin is what I’ve got to say. Sacre’Poutine! That’s not good enough! You’ve got to contribute to the Bertie Ernesto(*) “Chasing Track” fund! He’s raising money to buy personal armor and a plane ticket to Diyala in order to keep that piece of Political Canon Fodder safe and sound! I predict something terrible before the next debate if nothing is done!

* Bertie is, apparently, raising funds through treasurer Thomas Foster. Don't ask me why, he's from Manitoba, go figure.

The Great State of my Ass...

It was eight years ago that your country answered the question, “Are we stupid enough and are we complacent enough?” In the resounding consumer quiet of ‘You bet we are’, the forces of religious and corporate mania and greed went to work like hard, pipe hittin thugs on this democrazy of yours. This election isn’t a question for the American people, it’s a big stick poking in your sides, wielded by the Rovian Forces behind the McPain Campaign, just making sure you are still asleep.

Nom Dieu! I suppose we chalk it up to civil discourse that there was no direct confrontation in last night’s debate, no scoffing, sighing, or slinging, but to watch it was like flipping the channels between CSPAN and some Bravo reality show. It’s a good goddamned thing I live in New York and the chances of some rooter tooter telling me that beauty pageant questionnaire Palin orally filled out was a winner debate performance are as slim as me getting a latte in Wasilla. I might resort to violence!

Gwen Ifill was pathetic in asking follow up questions, allowing the Barracuda ample opportunity to wink at the camera and barrage her base with folksy nutbaggery. Biden was capable and competent, but, sacre’poutine!, he was a little too indulgent of Palin; he should have taken a bigger bite.

Obama is up in the polls in almost all of the battleground states, except Missouri, by as much as four-plus points, but if the gloves don’t come off soon, it will be too close. Let’s remember that the question has already been answered for us and that close elections in this country rarely go to the polite and tolerant.

Chasing Track

“Nom Dieu, boy! Calm down! Aren’t you supposed to be with the Nader campaign somewhere?”

My half-brother, Bertie Ernesto, had just crashed into my office, breathless and covered in sweat.

“Forget Nader! Christ man, the fate of the Nation is at stake! I need money!”

“Which Nation, bra? We’re Canadians, remember?”

“By God, you don’t believe that makes a difference, do you? I’ve got to get to Iraq! Diyala, specifically! Man, cut me a check, will you?!”

I sighed, readjusted my crossed feet over the corner of my desk at the New York office. The Chassid has been here recently, but apparently not keeping office hours since the end of the Conventions.
“Sit down, chere frere, and tell me calmly.”

He sat for a moment, but as he began to speak, he was overcome by passion and soon was careening from one end of the room to another.

“They’ve released that Track Palin, son of the GOP VEEP, is being deployed to Diyala, in Iraq! 1st Stryker Brigade! Land mines! Tree cover that prevents Air Support! It’s the most dangerous zone in the country right now and they’re going to send the oldest son of the vice presidential candidate right straight into it! Think of the hostage situations! Think of what might happen if he lost his life, or, God Forbid, lost his legs! This ugly thing has got to be stopped!”

“Surely that kind of information couldn’t be leaked; it’s against OPSEC regulations. Charges could be brought,” I teased open the right desk drawer where I kept my good Canadian Rye.

“You call yourself a journalist?! You Gaspian piece of shit! Check the blogs! Every right-winger from here to Wasilla is fouling their keyboards in spumescent tugs over the news that their boy is going in harm’s way!”

Bertie was actually hunched in the window sill, some thirty floors above 34th Street.

“Twelve points for the big word, Bertie,” I said, snapping open the plastic cap of the flask bottle, “But your boy is going to be doing some cake duty, driving trucks and protecting the big brass; they’ll never see harm’s way if they can help it. On the other hand, I see today that Ron Paul has issued a blanket endorsement of everybody but the Chosen or the Doddering One; he’s encouraged his people to go Barr, Nader, McKinney, and Baldwin. Big deal among the independents.”
“You ass! You scat munching scoundrel! I said give me the money! I’ve got to get to Diyala immediately. This is too important to wait! This boy has to be kept alive; alive and well! I deeply suspect Karl is already over there setting the Traps!”

“In all honesty, boy,” I said, now drinking generously. “I thought when they fired up the Large Haldron Collider this morning, we’d all get mulched into the next burst of Creationism. But it seems there are some kinks to be worked out. You want to go to Iraq? Raise the money yourself. If he ever gets deployed, and there is a great chance it’ll never happen, there are people who’ll help you. Set up a PayPal account, buy some armor. You’ll be just fine.”

Truth was, I was drunk already. The polls, even two months out, carried the reminder of what these Villains are capable of. What we can expect. I vaguely heard the lipstick on a pig coverage from the television hanging in the corner of the office as I slipped off the chair and onto the floor; drifting off into Horrible Visions of Pelosi as Second in Command.

Utter Rove...

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Rage Against the GO Palin...

I was crowd surfing down First Avenue outside the Target Center in Minneapolis after the RATM show when the texts started pouring in. I guess I was going to have to tune into the Palin speech after all. Margaret seemed to be in the throes of another scotch soaked bout with delusion. My little half brother, Bertie Ernesto, twisted in a Naderian Madness, was madly texting corrections to the filthy lies promulgated by the moose-dressing hockey mom. Even the poor, bent Heeb, Wild Bill, who I haven’t seen since he embedded himself in the McCain campaign, was a froth in reactionary bile; luridly swerving through Vaginal Christ Metaphoria and Reagan filmography.

“Sacre’Poutine, boys! I’ve got to go! Let me down! The business of Political Writing is at hand!”

My ears still ringing from tunitis, I made my way to my rooms at the Graves 601, and sat down with a half coffee, half rye to watch the youtube, to see what everyone was upset about.

Ah yes, I realized, the American reaction to the success of an enemy. The bowel shattering crunch of an opponent’s home run. An especially bad ache when mixed with politics, a bio-hazardous Petri dish of economics and moral values. This is a most unwelcome occurrence for the Democratic population, anxiety-ridden and just wanting all this to be over, wanting their team to win so they can stop this eight years of hand-wringing and get back to the Netflix queue where they belong.

There’s nothing the Democratic faithful wanted more than a nervous, flighty backwoods hickette up there on the stage, clutching a Gideon in one hand, a Glock in the other; what they got was a confident, self-assured, Rovian trained Veep Candidate. A bulldog. An attack force and one painted in a true blue collar small town patina. What can I say? I don’t like it any more that you. But getting the thongs in a hizzy, mi bras, ain’t going to do it.

The first thing Dems need to do is keep their heads about them. Nothing Palin said, her stinging barbs at Barack, Michelle, or Joe, the seizing of her personal narrative back from the grasps of the national media was meant for them (outside the schaudenfruede any good GOP wonk gets watching liberal monkeys start the poo flinging). If you must, visualize that there were hundreds upon thousands cringing as you oooed for fifty-six minutes last Thursday. Nothing you can do about that. It’s battle time and reacting to the reactions of a bunch of republicans is like kvetching that Baphomet isn’t getting fair airtime at St. Patrick’s on Sundays.

There’s plenty of time for Lil Sarah to fall down. The media really hasn’t had a chance at her yet and the sooner they drop the business of babies having babies the better. Stick to experience (she doesn’t have any), stick to values (hers are evangelical Christian; she can and will be caught here), and most of all, stick to John (not as good with the teleprompter) McCain. Take the battle to him and the Dems should be fine.

Palin got a chance last night to wrest control of her narrative and sell her story. She did it well, she did it for her people. Not all of it was true or accurate (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/04/ap-attacks-praise-stretch_n_123771.html) but that’s a little beside the point when you’re in the church of GOP.

Boring Baby Blues in the Twin Cities

Good Lord. No wonder the press is in New Orleans. Up here in Minneapolis-St. Paul it’s like the cast of F Troop running the show (seriously, no? Imagine GWB as Ken Berry accidentally sneezing himself into office! Nom dieu! Fred Thompson and Joe Lieberman as York and Agar). But really, the “Country First” and “Service” platitudes and the cornflower blue backdrops only dulled beside the droning and ridiculous speeches of America’s Top Old Farts.
So much more going on, I’m going to skip next door to see what Ron Paul’s up to, and then, tomorrow night I’ll have to choose between Rage Against the Machine and Palin.

It will be tough.

Alright, so that happened!

Sacre’Poutine! What's happened! That goddamn Tropical Douchebag Fay has kept me soaked to my Ray Bans, car-less, without credit cards, and a nasty, rum-soaked case of neural trauma, but you can watch all about that on Dateline sometime in the fall! In the meantime, nom dieu! I may have missed the Democratic Convention, but I sure didn’t miss my mark with McCain! Sarah Palin! I saw this coming in June, my little fleas!
Don’t question for one second the devious, insidious machinations of the Republican Party, true believers! Neither deceive yourselves as you watch that soccer mom delivery of her acceptance in Dayton! It is shrewd and calculated and all but Guarunteed to give Obama and Biden a run in the next 66 days! This was no cynical ploy to snap up disaffected Hill Chicks. Palin, herself, is the very embodiment of the Undecided Voter! Not the kind who’s pouring over the campaigns, scouring the RealClearPolitics, raising their voices in dingy bars; she IS the ultimate soccer mom, creeping to the polls between picking up Tommy at hockey and dropping off Sally to pick out a dress for her Daddy-date later that night, not about to get bogged down by the tainted bore of Policy while pulling the lever for family values! She's got tremendous appeal for the type of Voter who believes watching Kevin Costner's 'Swing Vote'counts for getting informed.
And working class white males?! Hell’s balls, this is a former beauty queen, lifetime NRA member, pro-life gal who’s been married to a union card carrying steelworker who was her high school sweetheart and with her is raising a veritable brood of like minded DNA vessels! Short of picking one of the Matco Tools calendar models, could there be a better salve for the poor crackers clinging to guns and god?
It’s a risk, though. Though you can see the sharpened nails of Darth Rove slipping into the hand puppet that is an energized McCain, crashing news cycles like the Joker in The Dark Knight, it seems pretty clear the Democrats are making a better claim than they have in almost a decade to doing what it takes this time. I must admit that my faith in Obama was overly influenced by his Mad Hatters (Haters?) and feared the Worst (Sebelius, Kaine, Edwards (John or Chet), or Bayh), but he has really come through. Biden cracks the ridiculous, unnamable code of change and brings the campaign working class respectability, foreign policy cajones, and a whole lot of teeth. He will chew Palin up like the soft underbelly of an antelope (barring her presentation of a loaded assault weapon at the debate).
I see they let Kerry speak in Denver. That was nice of them.
Alright, fuck it, I’m back. Somebody book a flight for Minnesota. I’m not going to miss this one!

The O Files: They want to Believe...

Margaret’s drinking had come down a bit since the demise of the HRC campaign. She’d also stopped wearing so much yellow, but that’s another issue altogether. When she appeared at my hotel room door at three am, Famous Grouse on her breath, a Marriot tumbler pinched in her right hand, I knew something was up.
“I was attacked!”
“Ma puce!”
“By a Canadian.”
“Then it could not have been that bad, mon cheri. Come in.”
“It was unreal,” she said as she splayed herself over my sleep-tussled sheets as I cracked the mini-bar. “A law professor from McGill. I was minding my own business, downstairs, having a nightcap after a seminar on the Founder’s Constitutional Intentions with regard to War Powers. He approached me at the bar, innocently enough, over a comment I had made about Nixon’s attempted veto of the War Powers Res. Blah, blah, blah, by the time we got to the campaign it was pretty clear where he stood, and frankly, Pierre, where I stand, too. So, I felt comfortable telling him what I’m telling everyone one: ‘I’m for him, but I don’t adore him.’
“That was all it took. It was like his eyes rolled into the back of his head and he was in some inner-psyche warfare, battling the demons at Armageddon.”
“Was the race card pulled?” I asked, handing her a cold scotch rocks.
“It was.”
“They should print an actual card; one with two sides, each stipulating the advantages to be gained by its appearance depending which side you are on. If it is not produced, it cannot be deduced!”
“These people are madmen, sweetie; this swarthy FC maniac was enraged that Republicans would suggest that He pulled it with the Dead Presidents thing and then flip around, with a finger in the air and say that the Clinton people were at work, coaching the McCain staff on dirty little tricks. They’re still mad at the Clintons! It was inchoate madness! I was scared to ask what he thought about Paris and Britney.”
“I thought once the primaries were over,” I said with a giant sigh, cracking the seal on my own mini-gin, “they would turn and focus. But with McCain fumbling the are like Caged Animals, these Obamaniacs, on a strict diet of Raw Red Meat laced with Methamphetamines, their only instinct is to fight and kill in the name of the Holy One. They are Bashi-Bazooks!”
“My dear, Froggy Nuck friend, it was so emotional. It was like he wasn’t even talking to me; he was coming from a place deep inside him. He kept saying how Barack has tried to be white his whole life, asking me if I knew what that was like. If I knew his pain.” Margaret hoisted herself onto her side, sipped of the drink. “There is something inside these men’s psyches, and it is men, mostly, that want to believe in something again. They want Camelot back, the world is not good enough the way it is. And this a Canadian! Jesus, Pierre, will it end after the election?”

Sickness falls over the Diamond!

Sacre’Poutine! The Dread is settling in! Indeed, now with only three wins separating the Yanks from first place and teetering on the precipice of a sweet and delicious sweep of the infernal Sox, I face the malevolent evil that is Jon Miller and ESPN Sunday Night Baseball! Nom Dieu, that man hides Nothing of his contempt for America’s Champion and his dirty, oral love of the Sox of Boston! Nonetheless, and though I have sworn I would not watch the coverage of the battle of Armageddon if Miller was doing the play by play, I will endure tonight because this, my friends, is the turning point; the moment we can all look back to and say the high tide of evil has begun to recede!
It is worthy to note that, since Barry Goldwater took the stage and swore allegiance to Satan and all his works back in 1964, donning the mauve, bengaline cassock of modern conservatism, the Yankees have failed to win a World Series ring during a Republican Administration. You think that’s coincidence? Fatto putain! Now, with the dawn of Obama, the presumptive national leader, it will be that the real champs will return the Universe to order.
Another curious note: the maddening success of the Batman! Is the nation’s embrace of Ledger’s amoral, capricious force of nature somehow at odds with the fierce adoration of the Presumptive Democrat? Are we just hungry for charisma, never mind the message? Are we really that banal, or is it that somewhere, just below the skin of our modern psyche we understand that all is Lost and there is nothing that we can do about it?

Get it? Do you get it? I don't get it. Oh, wait, I think I get it.

Satire? In a word? Yes. In two words? Absolutely yes. Nom’d’fucking ‘Dieu! It’s the New Yorker! You put a truncheon in some of these people’s hands and we’ve got the SS up and running again, you liberal scoundrels! Thought police! You bastards! This was not the cover of the New Republic or the Drudge Report home page! As New Yorker founder Harold Ross put it to his investors, it [the magazine, you dolts!] was not edited for ‘the little old lady from Dubuque.’

And it would never have found its way into her clammy little hands, and those in the filthy sties of the impressionable Right, were it not for the lefto-Facists in the Holy One’s camp, screaming up and down the cathedral arcade about offense and bad taste. Were these same primrose goose-steppers in Code Orange over any of covers the NYr has done with Bush over the last eight years?

Sacre’Poutine! I am glad at least that Remnick has the perspicacity to defend the cover. “The cover takes a lot of distortions, lies, and misconceptions about the Obamas and puts a mirror up to them to show them for what they are…The idea that we would publish a cover saying these things literally, I think, is just not in the vocabulary of what we do and who we are... We've run many many satirical political covers. Ask the Bush administration how many.”

From Voltaire to Heller and beyond, the destruction, inversion, subversion of Sacred Cows is what’s separated us from the demagogues and the fundamentalists; it is what keeps us from those same reactionary impulses to stymie and suppress the freedoms of others. Remember when the Monkey One once said ‘There ought to be limits to Freedom’? I get the feeling, you know, that it is the same impulse that drives these NeoLibs to Shush and Knuckle Rap.

Why not take offense, not at the content of a Bernie Mac joke as he warmed a $2,300 a plate Obama crowd, but at the fact the joke was CLEARLY unoriginal and OLD? Let’s be real here.

And when will the O Campaign stop constantly stopping to explain itself?

No Joke, people, you cats have got to stop taking yourselves so seriously.

The Other Side of the Knife

“So, apparently, alas, it works both ways,” I moaned to my colleague Frank Belloc, combat psychologist.

“Yep,” he told me, “and that’s where I’m getting most of my work now, now that Obama has pretty much cinched the nomination. Most pundits and journalists have either leveled off or come to terms with what we’re calling ‘Leg Thrilling’ in the business.”

Leg Thrilling, or a newsman’s nervy inability to contain him/herself in the throes of an Obama speech; it had been Frank’s big job to talk them down since Iowa. But now he was working the flip side and, oy, my dear, supple readers, I was in need of it.

“Whereas the sort of blank slate of Obama rhetoric, the amorphous references to change and hope provide a lot of people in this country with a sort of screen on which to project their own best desires and hopes there is another reaction when they come to face anyone who challenges those perceptions and what people are doing then is to project their worst fears and enmities on to them; whomever that might be.”

Indeed. Sacre’Poutine! An old friend, Mugsy Seidel, and I sat down for an innocent glass of wine the other night, ostensibly to discuss the return of foie gras to the menus of his native Chicago. Mugsy runs a number of online poker sites and I’ve always considered him shrewd and savvy; the guy that knows the score, you know? A numbers man, un-inclined to the messy table of emotional politics. Before I knew it, as the second bottle of Vermentino was opened, he lashed out at me. The details too embarrassing to recount, I will say I was galled by his ferocity and his willingness to repaint his conception of me as a race hating, sycophant of women. Moi? Nom de Dieu!

“It’s a harder road to slog through,” Frank told me. “Because you can’t talk to them. Certain people’s beliefs about the Democratic Nominee have turned the subject of him into the new taboo; it’s like abortion meets dad’s affair. You just don’t bring it up. For people like you, I have to say, avoidance is the best deterrent. Just let it lie until after the election. When he becomes President, the hope is that a need will have been satisfied and they will return to normal. There’s also another theory that I think plays into the post election psyche of the country as well; the things that we’ve projected as our core beliefs about Bush are going to come home to roost. I think a lot of people in this country have indulged their lesser natures on the account that as long as he was in charge, it was ok. That’s a whole other ball of wax to contend with.”

Winner! ?

Sacre’Poutine! Is it over? It can’t be over, can it? Of course it isn’t, but for now we are in the wash of the ‘clinch’. The junior Senator is the presumptive nominee and Margaret will just have to deal with that. Whether she will find the satisfaction of a joint ticket, it remains to be seen. Right now, too look at it, Barack Obama could walk into the White House unassisted; if you are watching the major non-Fox press, history has not only been made, this election is history. CNN and MSNBC have had their coronation, Olbermann has spat, perhaps, his last screed against HRC, Matthews giddily rubbed off his penultimate nut and it is all smiles in Blitzerland.

I don’t know, you know, so much time, so little attention to span for you, the Americans. Certainly, McCain is proving equally as poor a speaker as… well… I won’t mention it. But there is talk about the governor of Alaska, the extraordinarily popular Sarah Palin, a fiscally conservative, right to life, lifetime NRA member and former beauty queen who still has the good looks of a sexy librarian in a film I ha… ahem.

The race is long and not yet half over. Many members of the press and friends have emailed and called to express their exhaustion and happiness to see this settled, but I wonder if it had gone to the convention, still as inevitable a conclusion as was achieved this week, the wash of the ‘clinch’ might have borne more weight.

How Soon is Now?

Let’s get it over with already, no? Perhaps just maybe once this is settled the Obamaniacs can cease their inane chatter. Sacre Poutine! They remind me of apologists for x-tian rock when they insist and ceaselessly insist that their campaign is cleaner than HRC’s, their tactics the noble strides of holy warriors against the X chromosome chicanery of the infidel; let us be clear, what is passing for a ‘new’ kind of politics is the politics of the inexperienced and the naïve. Perhaps, again, when all the dust here settles we will begin to see it for what it is; once the Republicans have their attack ready and rolling.

Obama isn’t going to like it, Michele definitely isn’t going to like it, and these Obamazoids would rather drink hemlock than admit it, much less consume the requisite crow required to get behind it, but this rarified campaign is going to need the grit of a Clinton to win this election and that’s the end of it. When they have extinguished the empty calorie diet of femo-bashing and find themselves again with a policy-less, indefinable concept of change and little more than an elite guard of over-educated, wide eyed liberal, plastic saber waving monkeys to get them to the White House, what is to say then? This is not to include the ninety percent of black Americans voting Democratic in these primaries and caucuses thus far; as a group always an important segment of the party’s voting base and, it appears obvious, showing more strongly than ever before. They certainly form a backbone that can not be forgotten in this race; but where they could not be ignored in the past (in far fewer numbers, the others disenfranchised and uninterested in the democratic process (in 2006 29% of black Americans expressed no confidence in the country’s election system and that they did not believe their vote would be counted accurately), nor can another, larger segment: the white, working class voter. Alay, I know, I know, I know what that is supposed to sound like! Nom Dieu! All of a sudden we are paying attention to the voice of the, how you call it, cracker? It is hardly romantic politic, in the Thomas Paine style, I know, but what can you say? These are different times and we cannot define them by ourselves. Is Jim Webb going to bring a unity to the party? Bill Richardson? And don’t begin to say the name of Edwards! In the parlance of your football, this is like giving the ball to the quarterback of interceptions! You may as well put Kerry, or Gore, back in the game with ten minutes remaining. I don’t think I need to remind you of the season record. The Republicans have won seven contests to the Democrat’s three since Nixon first won the presidency in 1968. Available on the sidelines right now are members of two of those winning teams. But no, it’s ok, I completely understand… it would not be right, I’m sure you have all that you need to blame her later with… after a war hero with a hot wife wins the moms of soccer in the final minutes of the game. You will feel noble in the defeat.

This is politics. Like rock and roll it can not be half assed, watered down, or explained. Madonna or Amy Grant? Metallica or Seventh Day Slumber? Ronnie James Dio or Michael W. Smith? Let’s go, Americans! Get with it!

Obama, Save Me From Your Followers!

As much as I love, you know, to see nuns get their comeuppance, I have to ask: were the twelve nuns who were denied the opportunity to vote in the Indiana primary a very small part of a larger attempt by the Obama campaign to stymie the Catholic vote, which did not show well for him in Pennsylvania?

Alay, the howling for Clinton’s inevitable dropout increased in decibel level this week and it still sounds the same as it has since February; an activist media conjoined with a blind, faith-based fever squad of followers at once angry and frightened that someone, a woman, is keeping from them what they’ve perceived is theirs by divine right. I am reminded of the documentary Capturing the Friedmans in the scene where television reporters have descended on the pedophile’s home for the first time and the family is in the yard, one son donning his own tighty-whiteys over his head and yelling delirously in order to distract from the horrible discovery. And no, mes bon amis, I am not linking the Senator to some exotic child porn ring; rather it is the followers, the pundits, and certain terrified Democratic Party leaders who shriek and cry for fear it might be discovered that the party’s primary system is as decrepit and unsafe as a loose-bolt roller coaster. Their multi-grain blend of caucuses, primaries, and superdelegates is some Montessori nightmare game where everybody gets to tally their own points and cry when they aren’t declared the winner after all.

Though late in the game, I suppose it was I who was naïve when I encountered a music writer and friend of artist Shepard Fairey and ran against that still dumb and twinkly eyed glow which perceived me as, not being a native, working class white person (I am, as you know, a stunning Quebecour and standard bearer of tangy journalism and Canadian Hip-Hop!), surely in the Obama camp. He blissfully regaled me of the beauty of the impending change would only the monster leave the room, and my queries as to what that actually meant, policy-wise were met with ranting about crossing of the aisle. When I suggested that Obama had really yet to demonstrate the ability to cross party lines, he looked at me like I was an out of order ATM, withdrew his card and walked away.

I, for one, will be happy to know that at the very least, an Obama presidency would change the way millions of children think with regard to the wells of possibility from which they may draw in their lifetime, but am mortified that the road upon which that is laid is so populated by reeling fanatics unable to grasp the political realities of backing an unseasoned candidate.

Not worth a fart...

“Where’s Margaret?”

“Indiana. Flown back to the campaign like a, how you say, a slot-addict with a fresh roll of quarters,” I told Frank Belloc, combat psychologist as we hot tubbed in the North Carolina hotel with my old producer, Robbie Jackson. “I will be honest with you, I am glad for the quietude.

“She’s taking over HRC’s Microtargeting Efforts in Indiana,” I told the boys wearily, nibbling Fig Newtons from a tray on the side of the tub.

“Microtargeting?” asked Robbie, shaking the dwindling cubes in his iced tea glass for the pool girl to attend to.

“Narrowcasting,” said Frank, “is another term for it. Minute slicing of the electorate based on ancillary polling. Basically, it’s finding out what McCain people like, what Obama people are prone to spend money on; how Clinton people act as consumers. Then when it’s discovered that Obamaniacs show a predilection for granola and lattes, direct mailing campaigns can be effectuated directly at those markets.”

“What the fuck you talking about, cracker?”

“It’s the commodification of the voter,” I said, reaching for my glass of chardonnay, a good Chassagne Montrachet, “aligning the consumer’s tastes with her political leanings. The more we can know about the voter, the more the candidate appears to identify.”

“Goddamn, I have never heard anything so motherfucking ignorant in all my motherfucking life,” said Robbie, flinging his unfilled tea glass into a stack of towels. “Where in name of Shaft does it end? We don’t need to know all that to get through an election! Hell no. Man, that’s the problem with everything else that’s gone fucked up in this world. Too much goddamn knowledge and too little wisdom! That ain’t worth shit. Remember your Milton:

Knowledge is as food, and needs no less

Her temperance over appetite, to know

In measure what the mind may well contain;

Oppresses else with surfeit, and soon turns

Wisdom to folly, as nourishment to wind.

That’s my boy, Milton. Book VII, Paradise Motherfucking Lost.”

We all nodded in reverie. The wine had a good, yeasty nose; notes of apple and pear.

Tuesday, Sheraton Society Hill Hotel...

Margaret was quiet and still in the hotel room rattling her fingernails over the writing table; a tap-tapping of polish on shellac. The lights were dim, though it was sunny outside and the weather quite pleasant, and the curtains pulled shut. I could see her eyes pendulate from the blank screen of the television to the locked mini-bar.

“I want to see it,” she said flatly.

“Ma puce,” I told her from where I stood at the wardrobe, ironing shirts, “There is nothing to see. Not yet. The returns, they don’t begin until six. It is hardly past noon.”

“I want a drink.”

“We said ‘nothing’ until at least ten precincts reporting, ma cherie,” I sighed. I had called Frank Belloc, combat pyschologist, and retained his private audience this evening, in case of the worst. Only he could talk poor Margaret down, in the case the junior senator lost by less than five percent.

“Tell me again,” she said, the words like tired coal cars creaking from the mouth, “What do we need to win?”

“Oh, now I don’t know,” I said, spritzing my white dress shirt with sizing, which sizzled under the hot metal. “I think eight percent is more than just a mandate to move on, no? Ten percent margin or better and the delegate leader will have to make serious considerations for a joint ticket; certainly the superdelegates will see the inevitability of it.”

There was a sigh and the continued rapping of fingernails over the wood of the table.

Speaking of bitter...

“The problem with the brother is he thinks he can talk to anybody,” said my old producer and friend, Robbie Jackson, who now runs his own record label out of Philadelphia, “You got him in Texas, talking ‘bout the Popeye’s chicken in a nigga’s fridge and he can do that, ain’t nobody in the black community going to do nothing but laugh and say, ‘that’s right.’ But this brother, Obama, he’s the kind who thinks he can turn it around, head up to San Francisco, whiffing chardonnay with the Zuni set and make an insightful, off hand comment about crackers out the steel mills in W. PA. Now, I can say that cause I ain’t running for shit, but that here is the crux of the matter.”

It is a little cool to be sitting poolside here at Robbie’s home in Wynnewood, an affluent suburb, but the sun was out, you know, and my man, he has got a thing about his pineal glands after the wintertime. “Got to work out the melatonin,” he says to me, offering iced tea which I longed to doctor.

“That’s why everybody was right with the Ferraro business,” he said, his right hand over his passion fruit tea in its highball glass, a thick finger bisecting the circumference. “She’s right for one; ain’t no way some white dude name Barry Smith, a one term Senator outta no Experienceville going to get ninety percent of the black vote just for ringing the doorbell. That’s just a fact, P-fitty [his affectionate name for me; an artifact of my days in Canadian Hip Hop]. But this craggy old honky broad, she don’t get to say it on the national goddamn TV and not expect to get her chips cashed. That’s just the way it is.

“Now, I hear the brother is confused, he don’t understand that shit like that can’t fall into the hands of the public, especially not with a general motherfucking election in front of you,” Bernie says with his left hand splayed wide and rising and falling in spasmodic chops. “That is just the kind of shit that is going to sink him if he ain’t ten motherfucking points ahead come 11/4! I’ll tell you right now, PBL, if that creaky old McCain is still standing in this fight come November, none of this has been anything but an exercise in noble futility. History has shown, you just look at the last two election cycles that, left to the undecided voter in this country, and you know who I’m talking bout; these 'bitter' comments, the stuff with his wackadoo pastor is, whatever color fear is being coded in, are just what it takes to put the Republicans back in the White House.”

“You speak of the Moms of Soccer, no?”

“And now he’s just waiting on Philadelphia, you see?” Robbie tossed his iced tea into the pool behind him in order to gesture with both hands. “He’s dipped below ten points and it might get worse than that. He was hoping for something close so he wouldn’t have to do what it is that he’s gonna have to do after Hillary whips him.”

“Ahhhhh, you are not the first to suggest this…”

“What’s he going to do? Brother has never faced the general. That shit ain’t simple; sure as hell he won’t get so lucky as he did in the state senate back in the Ill. Do you see Mac getting caught running his wife through swinger clubs? What the brother is going to need to get through the Republican Swift Boat machine is an instant impact player. He’s not going to help himself by bringing out somebody he’s got to reintroduce to the country, maybe Wes Clark, but can you see that lil white dude standing next to Obama? Anyway, I digress… Obama’s going to get the nom, but without PA; that means unless he can get Al Gore on the back end of the ticket, he’s got little in the way of choice. Dean? I think motherfucking not. He’s got to go Hillary. Watch it happen.”

Nom du Christ! So… I hate to admit it, you know, I somehow had lost my press pass; maybe Margaret had stolen it from my suit coat that morning, whatever, I don’t know, but I was forced to get in line last week in Bloomington to hear the former president speak at the University of Indiana. It was good at first, out there with the youth, you know? The nascent, tumescent minds awash with the promise of democratic possibility, engaged in the process, getting involved. And then came the shout.

“Yo brah, they’re giving away free Dave Matthews tickets down at the Obama HQ in town!”

The skinny, dreadlocked white kid had called out to his brethren. The line blew away from the Assembly Hall like a sneeze, kids near racing down the hill for the nineties top concert draw, while I was left to slip into hear the nineties top president speak to a far less than capacity crowd.

What connerie! I mean, the cheap political tactic… what John Stewart called “kind of a dick move”, that is, whatever, immaterial. That America’s youth are chugging down hillsides for the music for the frat boy and the dental hygienist… Sacre’Poutine! What is the world coming to?

Dave Matthews? What happened to the music with balls? Where is Dylan, Hendrix, Joplin, and Young? That is the music for the change, no? Reagan, Thatcher, Apartied, and Bush One gave us U2, and Rage, and Public Enemy, Ani goddamn DiFranco! Has the MTV brain been so cooked down to a sickly sweet gastrique? Don’t even get me started on that Black Eyed Peas ‘Yes We Can’ disaster! The ghost of Arlo Guthrie spins in the grave to see the New Century Hootie and the Blowfish trotting out America’s Top ‘B’ List Entertainers (and yes, ma cherie, Scarlett, you make one more The Island and that’s just what you’ll be) to self-importantly preen and croon over Obama’s speech in grainy black and white. Where is Kanye West? Zack De La Rocha?

Oh, Sacre’Merde! That was a mistake! I have just watched the new Will.I.am Obama video and feel like I have to wash my ears! Je suis désolé, but the group that bestowed the world with ‘My Humps’ has a lot to answer for before a nation ought to start listening to its political advice, no?!

Will this campaign ever rock?

Torch, Interrupted...

Nom Dieu! Je suis désolé, you know? It could not be helped. I have been away. My headstrong half brother, Bernie Ernesto, had bolted from the Nader campaign and was arrested in Paris trying to micturate on the Olympic torch from a rooftop along the Seine and I was forced to fly from the Clinton campaign in Oregon last week to see to his release, a difficult proposition considering that when he saw me he began to howl about the two party system in United States; the candidates’ milquetoast stand on human rights.

It did not end well in Harrisburg, either, I am afraid to say. It turns out that in these smaller metropolitan enclaves the hiring of professional bar staff is prohibitive and the grad student bartender, apparently pursuing a Masters in Social Work at Temple, took great umbrage at Margaret’s comments w/r/t Senator Obama. Both were removed from the bar by local police, each still howling at the either for the definition of ‘change.’

I have rejoined the campaigns. Et vous prêt?

The Only Thing We Have to Believe is Belief Itself...

Frank Belloc, combat psychologist; he counsels reporters and pundits, cameramen and crew covering Barack Obama; he brings them down from the dizzying highs and swoons in the post speech moments so their coverage looks and feels more fair and balanced.

“I don’t get a lot of work from Fox,” he tells me over bottles of Belgian beer at the Abbey Bar in Harrisburg, “Sometimes I gotta come in and calm down the hue/sat mixer; but that’s something completely different.

“Same goes for MSNBC; except I do get more crew work from them, so the cameras aren’t shaking, but the talking heads there don’t care what they sound like. Olbermann is openly hostile to the suggestion he could use help moderating his commentary.

“But CNN is good work. The news heads are concerned that they don’t get too worked up. Tony Harris is a handful, believe me; but he’s just like that.”

“But, Frank,” I said, “What can you say of the candidates? Their psychological states? Have you had any insights?”

I sip deeply of my Brasserie des Rocs Grand Cru. I can feel Margaret Safire, sitting with us, constitutional law professor at Cornell and former member of the Clinton campaign, drinking whisky for she will have non of the beer that is the spécialité of the place, stiffen noticeably. She is like to have been shell-shocked herself by the imagined Tuzla sniper fire, it is a shame to say.

“Obama, for all intents and purposes, is an only child and decidedly a child of divorce,” Frank said, wiping the sweat from his fluted tripel glass. “And therein comes a sense of entitlement; a feeling of individual empowerment. This is reinforced by the break-up of the parent’s marriage; mother’s and father’s often feel a need to overcompensate for the feelings of loss and the child of divorce, especially one as bright as Obama, grows up with a strong conviction that they are going to fix things; make it all right. This candidate has that in spades; he truly believes he is the answer; he has the answers.”

“He just does not have the policies,” grunted Margaret, “or his zombie’s are completely unable to articulate them.”

“Ma cherie,” I gently pat her skirted lap.

“No, Ms. Safire has a point,” Frank said. “This climate of charisma, the Obama phenomenon, is real. People are able to suspend their ordinary disbelief by the way this candidate is able to speak to them. Whether they consider it the greater good, a higher purpose; somebody like Obama is able to transcend policy specifics. In fact, a great deal of his supporters can’t fathom what it is you mean when you say he’s not transparent about exactly what it is he intends to do. They’ve projected their hopes and dreams in their place. They could no more question his platform than they could their own, and in their opinion, better nature.”

“Next stop, Halle-Bopp,” Margaret sneered.

To be continued…