CURE FOR THE COMMON CODE

¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨

EVERY campaign, we hear the same buzzwords over and over again. And most Americans fall for them all, over and over again.

Barack Obama and John McCain and their respective posses are tossing out these buzzwords as fast as we can gobble them up. “Flip-flopper,” “elitist,” “establishment” — these words trigger gut reactions, but what do they even mean any more? Glad I asked…

Flip-Flopper

At some point in our history, changing your mind became a bad thing, a sign of weakness. But our president hasn’t changed his mind on anything in eight years and where has that gotten us?

I have great respect for someone who can admit he was wrong when presented with new information. If that’s flip-flopping, so be it. It’s the pandering that disgusts me — when a candidate cynically and conveniently changes his stance or “moves to the middle” based on opinion polls and the mood of the voters. And everyone’s doing that in this race.

Elitist

Um, you’re running for president of the United States. Is any job in the free world more elite? Don’t you want the smartest people around you if you get the gig?

Republicans crack me up when they try to paint Obama as an elitist, ’cause it ain’t easy for a black or biracial person to get into the elite in this country — that Obama did seems to indicate he’s got some balls and some smarts and that he won’t be denied. But that just might be the problem — when they call Obama an elitist, it seems to me like they’re really saying “he’s a smart black guy and we need to put him back in his place.”

Small-Town Values

Republican shorthand for “guns are a God-given right, and when an intruder breaks in and tries to rape your daughter, you can send him to Kingdom Come. But if your girl gets pregnant, she’ll have to have the baby.”

I grew up in a small town, and yeah, they’re nice and all, but you don’t see a lot of black people or Jews or foreigners or other such “undesirables,” and the people who live there can be pretty close-minded and sheltered, even if they can see Russia from their porch.

Turns out there are parts of this country where lots of people live. And guess what? They’re not so bad! Yet some Republicans wave the flag and profess their great love of country while spitting out the names of places like Massachusetts, Chicago and San Francisco as if they were Sodom and Gomorrah.

Our country is not simply a small town on a grand scale, and it can’t be governed like one. Anyway, can you really tout small-town values when you have enough houses to actually create your own small town?

Change

That’s about all the money we’ll have left if someone doesn’t fix things fast.

There’s no need to keep bringing “change” up, guys — we get it, things suck now and you’re gonna make everything better. Now if you would just tell us how …

Celebrity

The Republicans have painted Obama as an attention whore, lumping him in with Britney and Paris. Why, because he is hugely popular and draws big crowds and is good-looking and is “celebrated”? Sour grapes, anyone? I’ve seen McCain doing his shtick on “The Daily Show” about a dozen more times than Obama, and it was McCain’s wife’s $313,000 outfit that Vanity Vair dissected after the conventions. Sorry, but running for president puts you in the spotlight — to lash out if your opponent upstages you is childish.

Career Politician

Can we all just let this one go? By the time they get around to running for president, they’ve pretty much made a career out of politics. Would you rather we had a dentist in the White House, or an actor? Uh, never mind.

Advertisement

QUE SERA SARAH

¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨

I’m not laboring on Labor Day, so my sister Joan has stepped in today to tackle John McCain‘s choice for the VP spot via an open letter to Mr. Maverick. (Personally, I think he picked Sarah Palin because he mistakenly believes “running mate” means they actually get to mate.)

By Joan Beal

Note to John McCain:

Hillary supporters want you to know that there was more to our support of Hil than a sex organ.  How could you possibly think that we’d fall for Sarah Palin? A gun-toting, anti-choice, ANWR-drilling, lactating, hockey-Mom beauty queen. Like we wouldn’t notice the difference?

We know that all women are basically the same to you, Mr. McCain. Women are super-foxy, perennially made up, well-coiffed, and a source of beer money. And if they aren’t, you just divorce ’em.

But we females happen to be a bit more discerning. No offense, Mr. McCain, but you are really, really old, and have had several bouts with melanoma. There’s a good chance we might see a Palin presidency.

Future-President Palin has barely traveled outside our country. She became governor of Alaska via a winning stint on the PTA. She fought “big oil” (Exxon/Mobil) because her husband works for BP, and she’s all for giving BP the leases to drill. To drill in ANWR and kill more polar bears. She’s got five kids, one with Down syndrome, and has fabulous Christian values (she even wants Creationism taught in public schools!) … yet you expect she’ll toss it all to the side to lead our country? She home-schooled her kids … ya think she’s going to let someone else look after them while she’s meeting with foreign dignitaries? She’s still pumping her breast milk for her littlest angel. What if she and her super-sperminating husband receive more blessings from the Almighty? What then, Mr. McCain?

It was just announced that Palin’s 17-year-old daughter is five months’ pregnant and unmarried. Mr. and Mrs. Palin are “proud, and excited to become grandparents! Life happens!” I’m sorry, but were none of Warren Jeffs’ wives available to run as VP? Is that why McCain is foisting Palin upon America … to send us back to “Little House on the Prairie” days?  Is birth control too “sciency” for Americans? I’m 46 years old, and I do not want to be a grandparent until I reach my late 50s. Is that elitist?

The term “maverick” comes from the Texas lawyer, Colonel Samuel Maverick. He purchased a herd of cattle and failed to brand them. Cattlemen in the American West took the view that they had the right to possess any unbranded “mavericks” they found on the open range.  Let me suggest a branding for McCain/Palin … “WTF?”

Joan Beal is a singer, wife and mother in the Los Angeles area. And she’d make a great U.S. Secretary of State.

Holy shit

I don’t care that Barack Obama had a fiery pastor who, if you go by the sound bites, hates Mom and apple pie and thinks the government gave everyone the mumps. What pisses me off is that I even know Obama had a pastor.

Like Obama, John McCain has had to distance himself from a pesky preacher, John Hagee of Texas, and he says he’s never even been to Hagee’s church — he just “won” his endorsement.

I know it’s hard to tell politicians apart, but can’t the media find anything more substantive than this? In a country where we at least pretend to separate church and state, we sure are obsessed with the candidates’ religious backgrounds. That’s because the candidates’ faith and the religious company they keep are a quick way for us to judge them. There’s no need to get to know the candidates’ goals for the country when there’s an easier way to whittle down your list: His pastor’s a kook! He thinks the Rapture’s coming! Hillary’s part-Jewish! Dismissed!

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright could go on a multi-state killing spree and it wouldn’t change my opinion of Obama. Why should the behavior of someone’s pastor reflect poorly on him? I mean, my church had two priests with a thing for little boys (guess what thing) and another who told us — during Christmas Mass, no less — that AIDS was God’s punishment for being gay. So, does that mean I can’t run for office?

But this is what religion does — it divides us, makes us afraid of one another, and blinds us to what’s really at stake in this election. And that’s a thousand times scarier that anything Wright or Hagee has to say.