DUMB LIKE A FOX

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I HAVE to wave the white flag of surrender and admit that Sarah Palin showed last night why she’s going to become our next vice president in January.

Americans eat up all the things she did in last night’s debate — that doggone folksy talk, the 247 “maverick” references, the shrewd “I’m not gonna answer the questions the way you want” disclaimer. She gave the people exactly what they want, and managed to make Joe Biden look a little old and confused along the way.

Half the time, I couldn’t tell who Biden was talking about — “John” or Obama — and he even mixed up their names at least once. (And did he have to say he “loves” McCain — twice?) He came off like Gore and Kerry in previous debates — just another stiff, know-it-all statistician, the kind of person Americans don’t want to watch on their bigass TV screens.

Tina Fey may do a pitch-perfect portrayal of Palin, but Palin herself is playing a character — and she’s nailing it too. This is a former beauty pageant contestant/TV newscaster we’re talking about — she knows how to make herself likable to judges and demographic groups.

I believe she’s been coached to answer questions as anti-intellectually as possible. I think if she had told Katie Couric she reads the Wall Street Journal and U.S. News & World Report, it would have cost her votes. I think she’s been instructed to pronounce it “noo-ku-lar.” I really believe she’s playing us, in both meanings of that phrase.

All Biden had to say was that our country has been hijacked by politicians in over their heads, that our nation has hit rock bottom and needs people of substance and experience to save it from the very real possibility of collapse. That we have to swallow our pride and vote for people who are better than us and not for drinking buddies.

Unfortunately, smarts are a liability in these debates — long, fact-filled answers don’t play well on TV, and they haven’t for a while. Americans would rather see the smart guy get knocked down a peg or two by a quick quip. And by playing to the hilt this character of the fiesty hockey mom with more moxie than brains, Palin is proving she’s the smartest one of all.

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SEARCH AND DESTROY

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IT’S weird that search engines lead people to my blog, as if the crap I write holds the answers to their questions. Here’s just a sampling of some of the things they’re searching for: “how our party system started,” “do saggy balls mean prostate,” “turntable needle damage by old records?” and my favorite, “is there god.”

I’m honored that someone would visit my blog as part of a spiritual quest (and, yes, there is a god, and when we die we all get — wait, just look for my original post for all the details). But it scares me that people think they can find the answers to all their questions in this mess of opinion, bullshit and porn we call the Web.

Unfortunately, with newspapers surrendering to bloggers and withering away, “the truth” these days is nothing more than what turns up on the first few pages of a Google search.

Early in July, when I did a Google News search for info on freshly dead Jesse Helms, the results were mostly diatribes posted by bloggers who despised the man and were delighted that he had met his maker (that god I was just telling you about.) There were a few pieces defending Helms too, but I couldn’t find any news articles about the man — no biography, no history, no list of accomplishments, no facts, no real obituary.

Not to sound all elitey, but I was looking for the work of a professional writer, not some dipshit with a keyboard suggesting that the senator was being anally raped in hell. But there you go.

It makes me wonder if what I write can become “the truth.” I mean, I could lie my ass off here, and it just might turn up in a Google search. Let’s test my theory and see if the following bullshit leads anyone to my blog. (I’m using popular subjects and keywords to increase the odds.)

• Sarah Palin had an abortion backstage at a 1984 beauty pageant before heading out to perform her tuba solo.
• Muslim candidate Barack Obama was only a community follower, but he was lead vocalist of Chicago before a more soulful Peter Cetera took over.
• MTV revealed this week that “The Hills”’ Lauren Conrad is a fictional, CGI character based on the movements of a drunk monkey in a motion-capture suit.
• George W. Bush and John McCain once swapped spouses for a “POW (Pleasure Our Wives) weekend” vacation at Sandals in Antigua.
• Redskin Chris Cooley this week accidentally posted a blog photo of his playbook shoved inside Kat Deluna‘s mouth.
• On the upcoming season of “The Biggest Loser,” one contestant eats another.
• Troubled insurer AIG has been bought out by the Stuckey’s Corp.
• Actress/Mensa member Megan Fox has created the world’s first perpetual motion machine, but it only works when she’s naked.

Come and get it! Megan Fox naked. Sarah Palin abortion beauty pageant. Bush John McCain POW. AIG buyout. The Biggest Loser. Redskins Chris Cooley blog photo. Kat Deluna national anthem. Lauren Conrad. The Hills. Barack Obama community leader.

SORE SUBJECTS

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Infinite Jester

WE lost an amazing writer over the weekend. No, I never read “Infinite Jest” either, but I loved David Foster Wallace‘s nonfiction (check out “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again” and “Consider the Lobster,” two great compendiums of essays and magazine articles.)

Wallace was a genius, a prick and a prankster all in one. Sometimes it seemed like he wrote stuff just to piss off the reader, or at least the magazine editor who hired him, and his endless tangles of footnotes — as amusing as they were — could test anyone’s patience. But there was never a dull moment in his essays, even when he was writing about life’s dull moments. All you have to do is read his hilarious and kinda sad piece about the Caribbean cruise he took — the “supposedly fun thing” — and you can tell that he didn’t really fit into this world he wrote about. It’s just too bad that writing about his alienation apparently wasn’t answer enough for him.

Eye Carumba

When ABC’s Charlie Gibson asked Sarah Palin in last week’s interview if she could look Americans in the eye and tell them that she has the experience to be vice president and perhaps president, she actually says “I do” with her eyes closed! (Later, ironically, she says we “must not blink” when dealing with terrorists.) And is it just me or does Gibson seem completely exasperated midway through the interview?

Dickiest Quote Of The Week

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, trying to convince Texans that Hurricane Ike was no joke, offered this bon mot when asked to address “hurricane fatigue,” the media-coined term used to describe the weariness of those who have had to pack up their lives and loved ones and evacuate their homes over and over again these past few years:

“Well, unless you’re fatigued with living, I suggest that you ought to take very seriously a storm of this size and scale.”

I think I’ve got asshole fatigue.

IT’S A TWO-PARTY SYSTEM AND I’LL CRY IF I WANT TO

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RED SOX fans hate the Yankees, and Yankees fans hate the Red Sox. It’s been that way for over a century, and it looks like it always will be.

For a lot of fans, their hatred of the other team is as great or greater than their love of their own team. And it’s that hatred that sells tickets and creates lifelong supporters. These two teams need each other to survive — it’s almost as if each team’s reason for being is to serve as the other’s archenemy.

I remember going to an outdoor concert in Massachusetts a few years ago, and as the crowd filed back to their cars after the show, they started an impromptu chant of “Yankees Suck! Yankees Suck!” Huh? What does that have to do with Tom Petty (or whoever we just saw)? And why not chant “Red Sox Rule”? Why did they have to go negative?

I can’t be the only one who sees little difference between this red-blue rivalry and our two-party political system. This manufactured left wing/right wing dichotomy has led a lot of Americans to pick a side, and their crazed fandom has fostered an unreasonable hatred of the other side. Worse, it’s made for lazy politicking, which is obvious after two weeks of party conventions.

Our campaigning politicians never have to say who they are or what they’ll do. They simply have to not be the other side. Barack Obama has gotten a lot of mileage, naturally, out of not being President Bush. But the Democrats’ claims that a John McCain presidency will be another four years of Bush/Cheney are crap — McCain and Bush aren’t even in the same book, let alone on the same page.

But guess whose picture is on the front page of the Democratic Party’s website.  If you said Obama, you’re wrong. It’s John McCain hugging Bush alongside the words “More of the Same.” And the link for “Meet John McCain” is actually higher up than the link for “Meet Barack Obama” (and there are half a dozen other links criticizing McCain.)

If you really want to get the scoop on Obama, you’ll have to click on the big “Meet Barack Obama” link on the front page of — yep, you guessed it — the Republican Party’s website. Damn, that site devotes shitloads of space to the horror that is Barack Obama.

GOP VP candidate Sarah Palin devoted a good chunk of her speech Wednesday night to this “Yankees Suck” kinda stuff. (Hers was the only speech I listened to over the past two weeks — she was the wild card, the X Factor, the only person whose speech I couldn’t predict beforehand. So I felt I should listen.) Yes, she talked about her family and McCain’s “guts,” but she spent more time taking potshots at Obama than she did talking about herself. The biggest eruptions of applause during her speech came at his expense.

The crowd went nuts when she talked about the people who are “always proud of America,” but those words didn’t have anything to do with national pride — they were a jab at Michelle Obama, and the crowd knew it. She referenced Obama’s “bitterly clinging to religion and guns” quote, and spit out the words “establishment,” “media,” “San Francisco,” “read ’em their rights” and “personal discovery” with disgust.

Belittle Obama’s experience as a community organizer once, if you must. But twice? It’s amazing how she managed to make community service sound like a dirty word. And that gibe about Obama’s styrofoam Greek columns? It’s a great line — for Jay Leno.

But here’s the bit that really upset me: Palin quoted Democrat Harry Reid “of the ‘do-nothing Senate. He said, quote ‘I can’t stand John McCain.’ Ladies and gentlemen, perhaps no accolade we hear this week is better proof that we’ve chosen the right man.” So, the enemy of my enemy is my presidential nominee?

And that’s why the two-party system sucks. Hatred of and from the other side seems to be endorsement and qualification enough. It’s certainly enough to win our votes. And because these two rival parties have split our nation somewhat evenly, they’ve ensured that our hatred of the other will keep them both in power for a long time to come.

And the Red Sox will still suck the whole time.