Interlude: Isto at the Sidewalk Cafe

Hey, look, Fishbulb figured out how to get images working! It's a Halloween miracle!

People often ask me, "Fishbulb, how come it says at the top of the page that this blog is about 'politics, entertainment, and current events,' but all you ever talk about is politics, which happen to be current events?" Well, I casually respond, you should just consider yourself lucky. This was originally going to be a food blog! But still, I understand the point, and so this afternoon I'd like to take a break from the various foul deed afoot along the campaign trail and tell you a little story.

A long time ago there was an infamous knot, known as the Gordian Knot, that no one could untie. People came from miles around to give it a shot, but no one could even come close to untying it, which was a real pain for poor Gordias, who just wanted to be able to walk around town without his shoes tied together. Then, Alexander the Great showed up, saw the knot that supposedly could not be untied, and sliced that friggin' knot in half with his sword. Bam! Knot untied. A totally inventive approach that was recognizable as a solution to the problem, yet was still totally unlike anything anybody else had thought to try. When you see an Isto show, you are the Gordian Knot, and he is Istoxander the Great. You'll come away from it totally split apart, able to tell others in recognizable terms that you saw a concert, but unable to fully describe what just happened.

Isto, A.K.A. Chris White, is a musician who at once seems like he has stepped out of another era, and yet is uniquely suited to our own. Upon first appearance, he looks like any other big, goofy guy with an acoustic guitar, the sort that can be found on any college campus, or at least any college campus worth visiting. But Isto is no mere strummer, hacking his way through Grateful Dead covers - although he does possess an encyclopedia knowledge of classic and folk rock and has been known to cover a wide range of songs, converting them all into his own inimitable creations - he is highly trained and unquestionably gifted. Isto's voice is that of a crooner, like Bing Crosby, tinged with a robustness and an easy vibrato carried over from his years of training as an opera singer. As a guitarist, he is capable of beautiful classical and jazz pieces, but most often he keeps to familiar, jaunty chord progressions that underscore, but never overshadow, his lyrics.

And what lyrics! Influenced by the likes of Arlo Guthrie (whose 17+ minute epic "Alice's Restaurant" Isto once performed in a hair under twelve), Isto can provide moments of sly, and sometimes not-so-sly political humor when the mood strikes him. In other moments, he'll tug your heartstrings with the sweetest romantic phrases you've ever heard, drawn from a seemingly infinite well of sweet-natured longing ("Baby Leave a Candle Burning for Me" never fails to elicit a few tears). Other times he'll make you spray your drink all over the people in front of you with a sudden burst of gleefully juvenile gross-out humor. The brilliance of his performance is that he can complement each of these vastly different styles with appropriate tunes on the guitar, meaning he is free to mix and match lyrics and music however he pleases. You always have to pay attention, because a bittersweet ballad can change into a foul-mouthed exercise in the creative range of profanity available to the English language without any perceived change in either the wistfulness of his vocal tone or the dreamy tune of his guitar. And we're talking seriously depraved stuff, here. At last night's show at Manhattan's Sidewalk Cafe (94 Avenue A at 6th St.), Isto drew big laughs when several measures of frankly beautiful guitar playing led into a refrain of "I want to give the Mona Lisa a Dirty Sanchez." If you're unclear on just what that entails, just rest assured that the nice folks at the Louvre would not approve.

Add into this unexpected mix of surprises (both touching and hilariously terrifying) a healthy dose of scat riffs (of the "doo be doo" variety, not the scatological... well, okay, both) that would impress Cab Calloway, and you've got an Isto show in one neat little nutshell that still, of course, completely fails to grasp the experience. See, I didn't mention that those same scat riffs often devolve into the sounds of agitated barnyard animals, formless screaming, or the two intertwined. And even knowing all of that, there is no way to be adequately prepared. An Isto show is always full of surprises. In this particular instance, he was joined on stage by a flannel-clad oboist, who mostly stood off to the side, silently bobbing along before marking the end of each song off with "Shave and a Haircut," and who purchased a beer midway through the show with a coupon. And then there was the violinist (violist? Hard to tell) who joined Isto onstage at various intervals throughout the hour-long performance, joining in as freely and skillfully as if she had been playing these tunes with him for years, which, given that it was an evening of all entirely new material, she hadn't. And any deft musical instruction that Isto may have passed her along the way (like you see in movies, i.e., one guy says "in the neighborhood of B," and suddenly everyone knows the song) can be summarized by his whispered direction to her before one song, "Make noises."

For Isto, the standard contract of "artist plays guitar and sings, audience sits and listens" is only a loose set of guidelines. Last night's show saw him repeatedly sitting on the keys of a piano that happened to be onstage, chanting "Vote Nader" as a song unto itself (Nader is often referenced in Isto's political works, such as my in personal favorite, "The Banana Song," written for the 2004 election season), and repeatedly wishing the audience a heartfelt merry Christmas. As with so many parts of his performance, these antics are pulled off with such a straight face that the audience is left wondering if they're really getting the joke, or if they're part of the punchline.

So, suffice it to say that any Isto show is an experience, one that most people would be better off for having. But here's the cool part: you don't have to take my word for it! Check out his website (www.lumberjackisto.com) for videos and clips. Plus, sign up for the mailing list for the inside scoop on where he'll be appearing next in all his bearded glory. I believe he'll be sticking around the New York area for the foreseeable future, having just returned from a tour of the Midwest where, I presume, he blew their minds. So, if you're in New York, and you're looking for an evening of laughs, love, and quite possibly other words beginning with L, be sure to keep your eyes open for Isto.

We'll be back to political ranting soon, folks. Until then, Happy Halloween!

A Call to Arms

With every electoral season, it becomes clearer that same-sex marriage is the civil rights issue of our generation. Frankly, it would have been nice to go a generation or so without a civil rights issue, so we could take the time to settle into the changes brought about by this country's last few civil rights issues. You know, maybe try giving women equal pay and treating people of color like human beings, see how that works out. But progress does not stop just because we're still being dicks to one another. If anything, progress simply brings us new groups of people to whom we can be dicks. In this case, the people getting dicked, and not in the method that that they enjoy, are gay people, who have the nerve to want to legally bind themselves to one another as a celebration of their love and devotion. What assholes.

No, I'm sorry, the real assholes here are the ones who are trying to stop gay people from getting married. And there are a lot of them. You may have heard of California's controversial Prop 8, which will be on the ballot this Tuesday. Prop 8, which seeks to officially eliminate the rights of same-sex couples to wed, has been in the news a lot for a variety of different reasons. There have been stories about how the language set to appear on the ballot is intentionally confusing, so that some people may end up casting their vote the wrong way. There have been stories about how Californians are split 50-50 on the issue. There have been stories about how a growing majority of Californians are now saying they're opposed to gay marriage. These are all newsworthy items because California was one of the first states to welcome gay marriage, immediately followed by becoming one of the first states to go, "Psych!" and take all those marriages back. That made Massachusetts the new leader in allowing gay marriage, and when a state like California lets a state like Massachusetts become the leader in any arena, it's news. Massachusetts isn't supposed to be ahead of the curve in anything other than chowder and tea-scented bodies of water.

So there's been a lot of talk about Prop 8, and that's a good thing. Prop 8 is a bigoted, hateful, small-minded piece of legislation. If you can vote in California, vote "No" on Prop 8. No question about that.

But all the news about Prop 8 is masking the fact that California isn't the only state trying to legally dictate who is, and who is not allowed to marry. Arizona has Prop 102. Florida has Prop 2. Both of these call for the elimination of the rights of same-sex couples to get married. Arizona and Florida both have existing statutes that say precisely the same thing, but people in those states are so terrified that gay people might accidentally trip and get married there that they evidently feel the need to upgrade to a law. Florida's Prop 2 is particularly heinous because it would not only ban gay marriage, it would make that ruling impossible to overturn. That's right, the law actually includes a "no takesies backsies" clause. Even more heinous, the language that will be appearing on the ballot makes no mention of that little clause, so anyone who is not familiar with the full language of the proposed law may not realize that they are voting for something that cannot be changed. This is an important distinction, as Massachusetts's decision to allow same-sex couples to marry came after a judge specifically overturned a previously held statute in the state. So Florida is essentially saying, "let's get this one on the books and keep it there. We don't want to end up like Massachusetts. Hell, we all moved here to get away from Massachusetts!"

(There has been a lot of ragging on Massachusetts so far in this post. Understand, I kid because I love. I actually grew up there before moving to New York, and it's a wonderful state. I like to think back to my summers as a kid, when I'd go down to Cape Cod for fried clams, or head into Boston to take in a museum, or maybe just hang out around town and get gay married to a few of my friends. Ah, to be young.)

The issue of gay marriage is one that is near and dear to my heart. It may not affect me directly, although I do have many gay friends who I'm sure would like to be able to marry someone at some point in the future, but it strikes a familiar chord. See, I'm getting married in June. As it so happens, my fiancee is Asian, whereas I am whiter than a bottle of liquid paper in a snowstorm. Of course, this does not pose a problem for us. Sure, there are some culture barriers that our families are going to have to work through, and sure, we get the occassional dirty look when we walk down the street together, but we content ourselves with the knowledge that our kids are going to be friggin' gorgeous. From a legal standpoint, though, there is no barrier preventing us from getting married. But there was, and not too long ago, either.

Until 1967, there was no federal law allowing the marriage of interracial couples, and like any issue that is not mandated by federal law, it was left up to the states. Many states didn't care for white people marrying non-white people. Non-white people could marry each other all they like, regardless of what kind of non-white they happened to be, and they were free to produce all sorts of multicolored babies. But the dilution of the white race was a hot button issue for a lot of people. Only in freaky-deaky liberal states like Massachusetts could a white person and a non-white person tie the knot. Thankfully, Richard and Mildred Loving - a white man and a black woman - had the courage to fight for the freedom to love one another, even when the state of Virginia told them they couldn't. They took their case to the Supreme Court, and in 1967, a decision was reached that overturned all bans on interracial marriage across the country. Flash forward forty years, I get to get married to the girl that I love. So that's cool. As an added bonus, if you go around today saying that you believe the dilution of the white race should be illegal, people look at you like you're a racist asshole, which you are. Forty years from now, how do you think we're going to look at people who say same-sex couples shouldn't marry?

See, I don't get the arguments against same-sex marriage. People say it will devalue the concept of marriage. That it will take the meaning away from that union. Um, what? Roughly two-thirds of marriages end in divorce these days. When two people who are really, truly, over-the-top in love with one another get hitched, people say, "those two really have a chance." A chance. As in, "even though they clearly love each other and are hopelessly, senselessly devoted to making one another happy, there is still only a chance that they will manage to die before getting divorced." Everyone else, everyone not so deliriously happy, they don't even have that chance. That is taking the meaning away from marriage. Shows like Bridezilla, which might as well be called Bitter Divorce: The Early Years, where couples treat each other like utter crap right up to, and often through, the day of their wedding, they take the value away from marriage. Shows like A Shot at Love, where men and women alike drink shots of vinegar and put chocolate pudding down their bathing suits for the prize of a serious relationship with a bisexual almost-celebrity, they devalue marriage. But it's not because some of the competitors are gay. It's because everyone on that show is a whore.

Gay people getting married doesn't take the value away from marriage. If anything, it does the very opposite. Allowing gay people to marry just means that more couples - and we're talking about thousands upon thousands of people, here - would be getting hitched. And you damn sure know they wouldn't just be getting hitched because someone got pregnant. Couples who have been together for ten, twenty, thirty, forty years would be getting married. Couples who have literally been waiting most of their lives. These are people who genuinely want it. They want to celebrate their love. They want to make that commitment. They want it. There's no parental pressure. There's no feeling of, "well, I don't wanna break up, so I guess I'd better..." We're talking about people who want to be married so bad they can taste it, all so they can grow old together and spend the rest of their lives with the person who makes them happy without anyone asking them why they don't have a ring on their finger. If that doesn't increase the value of marriage, than either I have a really skewed idea of what marriage is all about, or a lot of angry bigots do. I know they have the numbers on their side, but I'm leaning toward it being the angry bigots who are in the wrong on this one.

People who want to sound like they don't have a problem with gay people, they just don't want them getting married, like to fob off this conversation by saying, "well, they can have commitment ceremonies." If you've been reading this blog regularly, you know that I am a fan of Barack Obama. Also, I look forward to marrying you in June. Yes, it's true, I like Obama. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that he clinches it on November 4th, and I weep for this country if he doesn't. But there's one area where he kind of pisses me off, and it's gay marriage. He refuses to support it openly. As Joe Biden spelled out quite clearly and eloquently in the Vice Presidential debate (which was a nice change of pace, even if what he was saying annoyed the crap out of me), the Obama/Biden platform believes that commited gay couples should have all the same rights as married couples, aside from the right to call themselves "married." They can have visitation rights in hospitals - God, how horrific is it that same-sex couples that may have been together for thirty years can't visit each other in the freaking hospital? - they can get tax breaks, they can have all the benefits, but they just can't get married. They can have commitment ceremonies. It's just as good! I'm sorry, but to me that sounds an awful lot like, "Well, you can't have the land you've been living on for a thousand years, but if you still want to keep worshipping some kooky spirits and drinking firewater, you can have this patch of land we've set aside for you. It's just as good!"

So, I'm not impressed with the stance that Obama and Biden have taken on this issue so far, but I understand it. Unlike may other hot button issues, gay marriage is not as clearly divided down party lines as you might imagine. Sure, Democrats are more likely to be liberal, and thus more likely to support gay marriage - in theory. Bring it up, and suddenly a lot of people who are very open-minded about all sorts of other issues start to clam up. It would be wonderful to have a candidate, a legitimate candidate, that is, come out and say that same-sex couples should absolutely be able to get married. But in a close election, and an important one, sometimes you have to play to the crowd. If Obama said he believes gay people should be able to get married as they please, he would not be ahead in the polls right now. That's a sad fact, but a fact all the same. Likewise, he has not made a big deal over his position - which he made public in the days long before this campaign truly began - that marijuana should be decriminalized. Sure, in the midst of this massive economic crisis, it might make sense to promote the country's largest cash crop, the legalization of which would create thousands of new jobs and billions of dollars in tax revenue while simultaneously easing the tax burden that we all pay to keep hundreds of thousands of nonviolent offenders in prison, but he can't come out and say all that and still expect to win. Sorry, got off on a tangent there. The point is, sometimes in politics, you have to say certain things if you want to have a shot. After all, you can't govern if you're not in office. So I understand. I don't like it, but I understand.

What I don't understand is people just straight up don't like gay people. Because it's one thing to say same-sex marriages would devalue the concept of marriage, which is already a load of horse shit, but it's another thing entirely to just not like gay people just because they're gay. And let's not kid ourselves into thinking that a huge percentage of the people who are going to be supporting Prop 8, Prop 2, and Prop 102 on Tuesday aren't just homophobes, pure and simple. Okay, I'm overlooking the people who say that same-sex marriages devalue marriage because God says gay people are wrong. But people who take that stance are the kinds of people who like to say that doing anything in any way other than the way set forth by their particular religion are going to Hell. So, technically, those people should probably also think that Jewish people shouldn't get married, since we sure don't do it right. And maybe they think just that. I don't know. I'm not talking about them. I'm talking about people who just hate gay people.

Now, I'm not going to try and feed you a line about how my liberal brethren and I live wholly without prejudice. That's crap. Everybody has their prejudices. I certainly do. I recognize it in myself, and I get mad at myself for it. But in recognizing it, I try to make sure that it is not affecting the way I live my life, and certainly not affecting the way anybody else lives theirs. For instance, let's pick a random group. Say, circus clowns. I wouldn't say that I'm actually prejudiced against circus clowns - a little scared, maybe, but not prejudiced - but let's work with that example. I might give an involuntary glance over my shoulder if I think a circus clown is walking behind me. I might avert my eyes while walking past a pack of circus clowns. But come Election Day, I'm not going to go into the voting booth and vote for legislation that strips rights away from circus clowns. I recognize my prejudice, and I recognize that it's my problem, not theirs. They shouldn't be penalized just because I get the willies whenever I see a rainbow wig.

So I don't get it when people who hate gay people, and are perfectly aware of the fact that they hate gay people, vote to strip rights from gay people. I guess it's because they think that they're right to hate gay people. But that's just idiotic. Hating someone for doing something that doesn't affect you in any way whatsoever is never okay. It's okay to hate terrorists for being terrorists. By virtue of them being terrorists, they try to kill you. That affects you in a fairly serious way. It's not okay to hate Muslims. They just want to live their lives and practice their religion freely, which is one of those pesky things our country was created for. If a gay person blows up your house, it's okay to hate that person, but you're really hating people who blow up houses. It's not okay to hate someone for being gay. That has nothing to do with you.

Still, if you're determined to hate gay people, even though their lifestyle has absolutely nothing to do with you, and they would probably like to avoid your company just as much as you would like to avoid theirs, then why wouldn't you be in favor of gay marriage? I mean, the big fear about gay people is that they are going to constantly hit on you and try to sodomize you any time you turn around, right? That they just roam the streets, looking for some unwilling mangina to pillage like Vikings with better hair? If that's your fear, why wouldn't you want them pairing off? It seems to me that the more gay people marry, the less they theoretically prowl around looking for action. The fear can't be that they'll give birth to legions of gay kids, because, well, durf. And it can't be that they'll adopt kids and turn them gay, because they can already adopt kids without being married. And I think everyone can agree that you don't have to be gay to be a terrible parent. In fact, I'd have to wager that being gay actually may improve parenting, because gay parents tend to know that the eyes of society are watching them, waiting for them to screw up their kids so they can use that as an excuse to persecute gay people some more. so, if you hate gay people and want them out of your hair ("hair," here taken to mean "anus"), vote "No" on Prop 8, Prop 2, and Prop 102. Get them off the streets and into committed marriages!

All kidding aside, this is a serious issue. Obama is ahead in the polls right now, and that's great, but the election is still days away, and at this point, every day counts. Every speech, every casual remark caught on tape, every affiliation, and every accident can make or break this election. Plus, polls only mean so much. By that I mean, I have never been polled, nor has anyone that I know. So it's not like every single eligible American has been asked how they plan on voting. This is still anybody's game.

With that in mind, understand that Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin, who has openly declared her intentions of expanding the powers of the office, and whose running mate is perhaps more death-prone than most, has stated a number of times that she would support an amendmant to the United States Consititution that officially prohibits same-sex couples from marrying. This has been a historic election, but that would truly be historic. The Constitution has been amended twenty-seven times, and never before have any of those amendments stripped civil rights from a targeted group of people. In fact, they have only granted civil rights to targeted groups. I'm talking about rights like citizenship, voting, and the right to not be a slave; and I'm talking about groups like black people and women. Never before has the Consitution been amended in any way, shape, or form that affects the legal definition of marriage, nor has it ever mentioned homosexual people or homosexuality. So that would be a first. Just so you know what's at stake, here.

A big part of this election is the notion that we have to restore our nation's credibility to the world. President Bush has done immense damage to our reputation as a nation of peacemakers and leaders in the arena of human rights. Over the last fifty to sixty years, we've established ourselves as the world leaders in seeing places in the world where people are persecuted unjustly and putting a stop to that persecution. We're supposed to be the crazy country where people go to practice ways of life that would have gotten them killed elsewhere, and to pursue happiness in whatever form their personal happiness may take, so long as it does not inflict harm upon others. We're supposed to be setting an example for every other nation on the planet when it comes to granting fair and equal rights to people of all stripe. And now we have a woman who is dangerously close to the White House who believes that the Consititution - the supreme law of the land over which no other law has any sort of power - should be changed to say that gay people can't get married.

That's pretty scary. In case you haven't heard, she's also highly unqualified in a number of other areas, too.

So, what can you do about it? Well, vote for Obama/Biden, for starters. But more to the point, you can help prevent these vicious, mean-spirited, bigoted propositions from becoming laws and stripping basic rights from people who wholly deserve them. Twenty-six states already have laws banning same-sex marriage. Not statutes, laws. You can help stop three more from joining them.

If you live in California, vote "No" on Prop 8. If you know someone who lives in California, call them and tell them to vote "No" on Prop 8.

If you live in Arizona, vote "No" on Prop 102. If you know someone who lives in Arizona, call them and tell them to vote "No" on Prop 102.

If you live in Florida, vote "No" on Prop 2. If you know someone who lives in Florida, call them and tel them to vote "No" on Prop 2. Also, maybe tell them to demand that their legislators make it perfectly clear when a proposition includes a clause that would prevent it from ever being overturned.

If you would like to donate to the fight against these propositions, or you want to learn more, please visit noonprop8.com.

If you haven't seen it, you should also check out this Youtube video, which takes a highly inspirational excerpt from a speech by Harvey Milk and sets it to music and animation. Harvey Milk was the first openly gay American to be elected to a public office, sitting on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. He was shot to death at the age of 48, 10 and a half months after taking office. This is a terrific video, and I highly recommend checking it out.

Vote with your heart on Tuesday. Vote for sensible, intelligent leaders. Vote for freedom for all, not just for some. Vote for the right of all people to express their love, regardless of gender.

Countdown to Desperation

Voter fraud is a disgusting thing. In this country, which was founded on the basic principle of granting every citizen a voice, to see anyone from any party attempting to prevent American citizens from voting, or trying to manipulate votes to achieve different results is just revolting. And I think we all know that, which is why the McCain campaign's accusation that Obama has ties to the grassroots group ACORN, and that ACORN is attempting to hijack the election, has been taken so seriously. Which is to say that it has been taken seriously at all. If we, as a nation, did not have a deeply ingrained aversion to voter fraud, we would have simply laughed McCain and his entire campaign clear out of the race. After all, for a group like ACORN to pull off that sort of massive vote tampering, they would have to either exponentially increase their numbers and funding virtually overnight, or move their efforts to a smaller country, like Tobago. But McCain's accusation was deemed newsworthy, which proves that Americans hate voter fraud.

That's why it is so infuriating to come across stories like this. A phony flier claiming to be from the Virginia Board of Elections has been distributed around the area of Hampton Roads, VA. This flier states that, in order to deal with the massive number of people expected to vote in this election (something that American polling places have not had to deal with in a while), Republicans will be allowed to vote on November 4th, like normal Americans, and Democrats will kindly wait to vote until November 5th. This, of course, is a lie. It is a blatant attempt to purge voters - specifically Democratic voters. But then, it's always specifically Democratic voters.

If you think really hard, you may recall that back in 2000, the Presidential election had a bit of a, well, let's say snafu, in that it failed to elect a President. Fast forward to scandals and controversy, fast forward to the rest of the country getting pissed at Florida, fast forward to Secretary of State Katherine Harris becoming a household name (hey, a totally unqualified state politician rising to prominence by giving the Republican candidate a crucial boost... prescient, don't you think?), fast forward to eight years of economic decline, unjust wars, rising crime rates, and all around crappiness. Given the controversy that surrounded the days after the election, and the ransacking of the country that occurred in the years that followed, it has been all too easy to forget that lousy things happened before the 2000 election, too. Voter purging, for instance.

A flier was distributed in the days leading up to the 2000 election which read, "Come out to Vote November 6. Before you Come out to vote - Pay your parking tickets, motor vehicle tickets, your rent, and most important, ANY WARRANTS." It may be telling to point out that this flier was distributed in primarily black neighborhoods. It may also be telling to point out that black people tend to vote Democrat, as the Democratic party has a habit of not treating black people like shit, or at least, not as much as the GOP. It may be especially telling to remind you that the election in 2000 was on November 5th.

That was voter purging, using fear, lies, and a healthy dose of racism. A similar tactic appeared in key battleground states during the 2004 election. I can't comment on whether these heinous tactics made a big difference in 2004, since John Kerry was not exactly a rallying figure, but in 2000, when the election was decided on fewer than 600 votes, it can be fairly said that these repugnant tactics won the election for George W. Bush and the Republicans.

Of course, tactics like these only work if you let them. In a perfect world, people would see a sign that says that the Virginia Board of Elections has moved the election to November 5th for all Democrats and say to themselves, "Wait a minute! The Virginia Board of Elections doesn't have that kind of power! Why, this must be a fraud!" Particularly since the phony flier is filled with spelling and grammatical errors. ("Follwing" is not a word, though it may be a Pokemon). Likewise, in a perfect world, voters in 2000 would have seen the fliers and said, "Wait a minute! Elections are held by the government, so it's conceivable that they might have access to my parking ticket, motor vehicle ticket, and warrant information. But how the hell would they know anything about my rent? This must be a fraud." Of course, in a perfect world I suppose there wouldn't be fliers like these in the first place.

The point is, we don't live in a perfect world. We live in one where people don't always intuit the true purpose behind everything they see, and where people don't always read every sign closely. We live in a world where people can be intimidated through fear and threats. We live in a world where people get dates confused, and where people trust that any notice bearing the seal of a government office must have come from an actual government office. That's because we also live in a world where most people assume that other people would not try to mess with their right to vote, since, as we discussed earlier, voter fraud is not something that Americans take lightly.

Fliers like the one in Virginia are acts of desperation by people who would rather strip their fellow countrymen of their fundamental rights than see Barack Obama in the White House. And I hate to cast aspersions on any large group, but you never see fliers like this trying to tell rich white conservatives that the capital gains tax will double unless they show up to vote on November 5th. This sort of thing is always targetted at people who are likely to vote Democratic. And here it was targetted at Democrats in a state that has a chance of going to the Democrats for the first time in many years. Not exactly coincidental.

I know it is unlikely that we will ever find out who was behind the flier in Virginia. It's a shame, though, because I would love to see the person or persons responsible caught and punished for their crime. We can call it voter fraud, or vote tampering, or voter purging, but really, it's treason. It's betraying the fundemental values that make America America. I'm not talking about baseball or apple pie or being suspicious of Mexicans, I'm talking about one person, one vote. What happened in Virginia is not going to be the last scandal we hear about before this election is over. People who have every right to vote will be turned away on election day. People's votes will be lost, uncounted, or tallied for the wrong candidate. Wouldn't it be great if, just this once, every county election official, every crooked pollster, and every run-of-the-mill jackass who tried to stop people from exercising the right to cast a vote for the candidate they actually want to vote for was rounded up and convicted of treason? It would be quite a few years before anyone tried to mess with elections again, I can guarantee you that much. That wouldn't be a perfect world, but it might be a little bit closer.

Virginia Pharmacist Acts On Faith, Is Bad At Job

Here's another one.

A Virginia Pharmacy, Divine Mercy Care Pharmacy, has announced that it will not sell contraceptives of any kind, even if someone comes in with a prescription, due to the belief that they go against the teachings of the church. That includes condoms, as well as morning-after pills and birth control pills.

I could cite all sorts of statistics that show that anywhere contraceptives are not made available, teen pregnancies increase, or that teens in places where abstinence-only is the sole form of birth control taught in schools are just as likely, if not more likely to have sex before marriage as teens in places where condoms and other contraceptives are made available, and are dramatically less likely to use any form of protection when they do. I could talk all day about how separation of church and state is the foundation of our country, and any time that someone imposes their religious beliefs upon the life and liberty of other people, it results in a bad situation for everyone involved. I could marvel in slack-jawed wonder at the fact that in this time of war, economic disaster, and general uneasiness and unrest in this nation there is a Bishop, Bishop Paul S. Loverde, who thinks the best use of his time and influence is going around blessing pharmacies for not selling contraceptives. But I won't.

Instead, I'm going to talk about the one thing that stands out to me about this story. Isn't Divine Mercy Care Pharmacy manager Robert Semler just astoundingly bad at his job? I mean, can you believe just how wholly awful he is at performing his chosen occupation? Wow! It's really something!

I guess I always just thought that if you have a job that encompasses a series of tasks, and you one day decide that you're not going to do some of those tasks anymore, you got fired. It doesn't matter if your decision is based on faith or not. And let's not pretend that we're talking about just any faith, here. This is the Catholic Church. If Robert Semler said he wasn't going to sell contraceptives because his deity, the allmighty trout Finface, said that birth control gives power to the evil Salmon King, we'd call him crazy and take away his license. There is freedom of religion in this country, but only if you pick the right religion. But I'm getting away from my point. What I'm saying is, if you're a dentist, and your job is to clean teeth, and you one day announce that you will no longer be cleaning molars, you're probably going to have to find a new line of work.

Okay, granted, if you walk into a place called Divine Mercy Care Pharmacy, you might expect to see a few Jesus references hanging around. Maybe your pharmacist has a crucifix around his neck. Maybe there's a picture of the Virgin Mary on the wall. Whatever. That's fine. I live in Brooklyn. When I go down to my local pharmacy, everyone behind the counter has a Star of David around their neck. I don't mind, because it has absolutely no effect on my transactions there. But if I went in and they suddenly told me that I couldn't buy a bottle of Advil unless I said the Sh'ma five times, I'd probably take my business elsewhere. And doubly so if it wasn't Advil I was after, but a prescription medication.

When a doctor gives you a prescription, you take it to the pharmacy and expect that the pharmacist will use his crazy powers to read your doctor's handwriting and correctly interpret the proper medication. You further expect that the pharmacist will then give you the proper amount of the proper medication. That is the pharmacist's job. It is not to decide whether or not the doctor was correct in prescribing this medication, or whether you really have a condition that could be affected by this medication. It is certainly not to decide whether the doctor was morally correct to prescribe this medication, or whether you are morally sound to ask for it. That is not the pharmacist's job. Read slip, put pills in bottle. That is the pharmacist's job.

I apologize to any pharmacists out there if it seems like I'm oversimplifying your occupation. I realize there's more to it than that, but we're talking about the very basics here, because that's where Richard Semler really screwed the pooch, presumably without using any form of protection.

"I am grateful to be able to practice," Semler said, "where my conscience will never be violated and my faith does not have to be checked at the door each morning."

You know what? If the basic performance of your duties violates your conscience and forces you to abandon your faith, maybe you should look into another line of work. I'm not saying you have to join the clergy, although that is certainly an option. But if you are truly and deeply offended by people using birth control, maybe running a pharmacy, which is a place where people go to obtain birth control, is not right for you. You could run a stationary store. Nobody walks into a stationary store expecting to buy Trojans. Or maybe you could become a florist. No morning-after pills there.

The point is, if you have a strong moral objection to something, that's your personal issue. I reserve the right to disagree with your opinion, and I freely grant you the right to disagree with mine. But when you then put yourself in a position in society where your opinion adversely affects the freedoms and rights of other people, you're just being an asshole. I don't like guns. I don't think people should have them. It would, therefore, be pretty irresponsible of me to open a gun shop, since I would be forced into a position of either swallowing my strong personal viewpoint on a daily basis or failing to provide the basic service that my business claims to provide. Opening and maintaining a gun shop would be a pretty dickish move on my part. There is no way that I could do it without making somebody unhappy, either myself or my would-be customers. If your business venture is 100% guaranteed to make somebody unhappy, you should probably reconsider going ahead with it. That's just math. And then I would have to take into account the fact that people who really want guns are going to do whatever they have to do in order to get guns. If I won't sell them to them, they will go to my competitor. If there is no competitor within a convenient distance, they will turn to illegal means. Am I directly responsible, then, for promoting the illegal sale and acquisition of firearms? No, not directly. But I probably still could have done something about it, like, say, sold my gun shop to someone who doesn't have such a strong objection to people having guns.

So, Robert Semler, and the other pharmacists out there who have chosen not to sell contraceptives based on faith, I want you to think long and hard about what you're doing with your life. People who don't have access to contraceptives have sex anyway, and as a result they spread disease and they get pregnant before they are ready, willing, or capable to raise a child. People who don't have easy access to contraceptives but really, really want them will go elsewhere to get them. That means more time spent traveling, which is a drain on budgets and a detriment to the environment. And if more pharmacies follow your example, and contraceptives - which, I will remind you, are entirely legal in this country - become too difficult to obtain, people who really want them will find other, potentially unsafe ways to obtain them. Think also about the fact that your primary job is to fill prescriptions. If you refuse to do that, you are bad at your job. I just don't think there's any other way to say it.

I'm So Outraged, I'm Inraged

Can you ever just be "raged?" I think you can in Europe.

I've taken a little hiatus lately, and I have a lot of catching up to do as a result. The last two Presidential debates have come and gone, and I could expound upon them at great length before saying a single thing that hasn't already been said by some more timely pundit. That probably won't stop me, though. But today I'm not here to talk about the debates. I'm not here to talk about the election at all, or at least not directly. Today I want to talk about some things that have popped up in the news lately that make me want to scream until I vomit. Bear in mind that in this scenario, just because I would be vomiting does not mean I would stop screaming. I would continue to scream while vomiting, creating a horrible, strangled gurgling sound that, combined with the sight and stench of my partially-digested anger-puke, would be offensive to at least three senses simultaneously. I call it scromiting. These news items make me want to scromit. But since I only had a small breakfast, and I can't seem to muster the energy to summon it back up, I will scromit as writers do - upon the page!

The first story that caught my attention this morning comes from Clark County, Kentucky, courtesy of LEX18 News. The headline: "Student Arrested for Terroristic Threatening Says Incident A Misunderstanding."

My issue is not with the use of the word "terroristic," although I could make a pretty strong case about that one. But no, I'm aiming a little higher today. The story concerns an 18 year old student at George Rogers Clark High School, William Poole, who is currently in custody at the Clark County Detention Center. Given the headline of the story, with its mention of "terroristic threatening," you might assume that young Mr. Poole mentioned something about blowing up his school or some manner of federal building, and now he's saying it was all just talk, and he wasn't planning to do anything. You might go on to think that teenagers, and particularly teenage boys, say stupid things all the time, and it's a shame that this kid has to suffer for saying the wrong thing in earshot of the wrong people. You might be inclined to comment on how idle talk doesn't hurt anyone, but in this uncertain world in which we live, we cannot simply ignore even casual threats, particularly when the safety of our children is involved.

Geez, did you even read the article?

William Poole did not threaten to blow up his school, or any other building. Nor did he threaten a teacher or administrator or fellow student. Nor did he say "they'll all be sorry" or any other melodramatically menacing remark. What he did was keep a journal. A journal his grandparents found and read. And what do you think they saw? Schematics for a homemade pipe bomb? A hit list? Plans to obtain illegal firearms for a shooting spree? The phrase "Death to America" written over and over again? I mean, if there was a threat in there that could be considered "terroristic," it must have been pretty bad, right?

It was a short story about zombies. Zombies. Now, there was a high school in this story. It was a story about zombies attacking a high school. William's grandparents, who are evidently not big George Romero fans, decided this was the work of a truly dangerous mind, and rather than talk to their grandson about it, they turned him over to the police, who quickly locked him right up. Good thing, too. I'd hate to think what could have happened if he had acted upon the content of his story and wandered the halls of his school in search of brains.

So, kid writes story about zombies attacking a high school, grandparents find story and freak out, police arrest the kid for being a possible terrorist. Yikes. Now, I haven't read William's story, and the article doesn't go into great depth, but in situations like these, we have to assume the worst. We have to figure that the story featured graphic depictions of William's enemies being devoured alive. That teacher who flunked him in math ripped to shreds by the clamoring undead, the girl who turned him down for a date eaten piece by piece, the bully who gave him a swirly in eighth grade torn limb from limb. Right, William?

"'It didn't mention nobody who lives in Clark County, didn't mention (George Rogers Clark High School), didn't mention no principal or cops, nothing,' said Poole."

Oh. Well, that's more of a gray area then. But still, you wrote it of your own free will, totally out of desire to live out your hateful terrorist fantasies, didn't you?

[Poole] claims that what his grandparents found in his journal and turned into police was a short story he wrote for English class.

Oof. Okay, now, I don't know if the story really was for English class or not. Even if Poole's English teacher comes forward and says that there was a short story assignment in the works, I doubt that the assignment specifically asked students to write about zombies attacking a high school. So William might not get that much help, there. He's still the one who chose to write about what he chose to write about. But there are a few issues at work here.

First, what the hell is wrong with William's grandparents? They read through their grandson's journal, which is not typically a public forum - this was an actual journal, here, not a LiveJournal - found something they didn't like, and so they called the cops on him? Maybe I'm lucky, in that I don't think my any of my grandparents would have just read through my journal without asking first, but even if they did, and even if they saw something they didn't like, I feel pretty confident that their first move wouldn't be to call the cops!

Second, and more importantly, there is the issue of Kentucky police holding this poor kid in custody and charging him with terrorist threatening, a second-degree felony. Detective Steven Caudill says, "Anytime you make any threat or possess matter involving a school or function it's a felony in the state of Kentucky." Okay, well, we've established that Poole's story didn't threaten anyone at the school, or even anyone in the county, nor did it mention George Rogers Clark High. So that just leaves possessing matter. Yes, there was a school in the story. Yes, the story was in a journal. Yes, Poole possessed the journal. Yes, the journal was made of matter. This is a felony? Like, as in a felony? Poole is 18, that stays with him. If this charge sticks, anytime he applies for a job for the rest of his life, he'll have to check that box that says "Yes, I have committed a felony." That never goes away. All because he wrote a story about zombies, which, I feel compelled to point out, are not real.

The law is the law, and the police are required to enforce it, even when it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. The law says they have to hold this kid for writing a story about zombies, they hold the kid. I don't like it, and I feel pretty certain that William Poole doesn't like it, but hey, the police are just doing their job, right? It's not up to them. On the other hand, there have been a few people involved in this situation who did have a bit more say, and still decided to give ol' William the shaft. Sure, his grandparents for starters, but how about the prosecutor who requested that William's bail be raised from $1,000 to $5,000 because he is such a menace? Or the judge who agreed?

Terrorists are bad. You'll get no argument from me there. But look at the first part of that word - "terror." As in, "extreme fear." What was it we used to hear everyday in the aftermath of 9/11? "If you do X, the terrorists win?" Seems to me that the top contender for X in that equation would be "live in a climate of fear." If you live in a climate of fear, then the terror-ists win. Makes sense, doesn't it? We are living in a climate of fear if a high school student's short story about zombies is interpreted as a terrorist threat. We are living in a climate of fear if an 18 year old kid is imprisoned for working on a school assignment. We are living in a climate of fear if that kid is deemed such a threat by a prosecutor and a judge that they agree to quintuple his bail.

This is about privacy. This is about censorship. This is about Freedom of Expression. This is about understanding the line between fantasy and reality (hint: fantasy is the one with zombies in it). This is about the culture of intrusion, mistrust, and fear that has been fostered in this country under the Bush Administration. Yes, terrorists want to hurt us. This is a fact. But it is not new. It is not something that just started happening over the last eight years. Terrorists have wanted to hurt us for as long as we, as a country, have been trying to influence the way people in other countries live their lives, for better or for worse. They want to hurt us so that we will be frightened into changing the way we live. If we lock up kids for writing creative stories about imaginary monsters, where once we would have seen that same kid as potentially the next Stephen King or Clive Barker or George Romero - all celebrated creative artists who made their name by injecting horror into real world settings - then we have changed the way we live. The terrorists win.

Debate Round-Up, Pt. 2

Venting about the first Obama/McCain debate took longer than I anticipated, so Biden/Palin get their own post now. And before the diatribe begins, allow me to remind you all to watch Obama and McCain go at it again tonight. It's a Town Hall format, which is McCain's specialty, so everybody keep your fingers crossed and hope Obama is on his game.

So, Senator Joe Biden vs. Governor Sarah Palin. The Great White Gaffe vs. Dear God No. The Madman vs. The Equation.*

* Why is Sarah Palin "The Equation?" Simple: (Tina Fey - Humor) + Unrelenting Horror = Sarah Palin.

After Palin's catastrophically poor performance in her interview series with Katie Couric, who is not exactly known as the toughest interviewer in the world, expectations for Alaska's great shame were not high. As for Biden, he is an unceasingly passionate politician, which is my favorite kind. You can tell in an instant that he truly cares about the issues on which he speaks. The problem is, his mouth sometimes gets ahead of his brain, and although his intentions are good, his sound bites sometimes are not. So between the two of them, we were all expecting a pretty hilarious debate. The Daily Show has already done a thorough job of covering the nation's disappointment at a debate that was actually fairly free of blunders, so I won't try to cover the same territory. Instead, let's talk about what was at stake.

First of all, it was Biden's debate to lose. Expectations were so low for Sarah Palin that all she had to do was stay on the stage for the full length of the debate without passing out or wetting herself and her supporters would remain staunchly behind her. Biden, on the other hand, could actually show the country what he was made of, and really change some minds. But to do so, he had to rein himself in to keep himself from getting overexcited, which often leads to the sort of verbal slips we've seen from him in the past. And given that he had to listen to Palin all night, the irritation factor was pretty high. It took remarkable self restraint to not rip her to shreds. And thank God he didn't. If he had eviscerated her, if he had really put her on the spot and made her squirm, he would have looked like the mean old man beating up on the little girl. Because sexism works both ways.

I thought Biden was masterful. He knew his stuff, he answered questions, he didn't fly off the handle, and when he turned on the pressure, he directed it at John McCain, not at Sarah Palin. He went after McCain's record, McCain's policies, McCain's proposals, not Sarah Palin. Amazing, considering that after her pathetic performances in the press leading up to the debate, she basically had a bullseye painted right over her winkin' eye. I don't wear hats, because I look ridiculous in them, but if I had one, it would be off to Senator Biden. Although I think he missed a few opportunities to land some winning lines, he stayed on course and did a terrific job. He kept it professional - when Palin asked right at the start if she could call him "Joe," I worried that he might call her "Sarah" all night, but he kept the discourse elevated - and he brought his message to the people. Perhaps most importantly, he drew a clear line between himself and Dick Cheney by saying he was only looking to fulfill his Constitutional duties as VP, and he was not hungry for more power. Very nice.

Palin, on the other hand, basically admitted to being as power-hungry as we all feared she was. Giving credit where credit is due, she could have done a lot worse at this debate. She didn't stutter, she didn't stammer, she didn't say things that make no sense or aren't in English. She didn't mention her morning vigils as governor of Alaska, where she would pace the length and breadth of her yard with shotgun in hand, patrolling for Russians hiding in her azaleas. She didn't cry, faint, or run off the stage. Mission Accomplished. The media has been patting her on the back for this monumental performance ever since.

Of course, there were a few minor issues. Like how she was parroting rehearsed lines all night, or how she blatantly refused to answer questions and instead just went back to her script, or how when she was eventually forced to answer questions she gave vague answers that provided no substance whatsoever. And then there were the third graders. She took a moment out of the debate - the only debate in which she'll have to participate, mind you - to give a shout out to a class of third graders, and remind them that they would get extra credit for watching. To her fans, it no doubt seemed like a personal touch that went beyond just dropping names of everyday people and their everyday plight. To me, it seemed like another in a laundry list of stalling tactics, as well as wildly unprofessional. But I can't deny that it was folksy as hell.

It's no surprise that both Vice Presidential candidates repeatedly jammed their thumbs against the Folksy Button. Folksy sells. Folksy has always sold in this country. That's because our nation was founded by a bunch of farmers who were sick and tired of the mega-upper class, in this case an actual monarchy, telling them what to do. Seeing as they were working this whole "royalty is bad" angle, the founding fathers wisely went folksy, and we have been glorifying them as godlike statesmen ever since. And they were. Not godlike, necessarily, but they were great statesmen, because back then, you could be both. You could have folksy charm and still address the issues. Hell, you had to. There was no one else to do it. Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, Monroe, Hancock, Clay - all of these guys were known for their pithy remarks and homespun wit, but that was on top of the requirement that they also be really, really, really smart.

I don't know where smart and folksy split along the way, but today it seems like they can't occupy the same administration, let alone the same candidate. We berate candidates for being "professorial" and "intellectual." Jesus fucking Christ. Okay, I understand that people who are really smart without being charming can be a bore to listen to. I get that there's an appeal to the idea that our leaders are just like us. We are madly in love with the very American notion that anyone can be President (even if it takes the likely demise of their running mate). But here's the thing: just because anyone can be doesn't mean anyone should be.

Why on earth would we want a President or a VP who is just like us? People cry "elitist!" whenever Obama - or any Democrat, really - makes a statement that indicates they may have - gasp! - gone to college. But being able to use an extensive vocabulary or grasp the nuances of a complex issue is not elitist. It's goddamn necessary, and I'm terrified by any politician who can't.

I don't want a President who is just like me. I have a short temper. I can be judgemental. I'm disorganized. I'm bad with money. I have only a token understanding of how our economy works. I'm lousy at geography. I can only name a small handful of world leaders, and I think I may have made up some of them. I am too quick to accept anything I read in a paper or see on TV as the truth without doing my own research to see if there are other sides. I don't want a President who is like me. I want a President who is better.

Yes, in this great country, anybody can grow up to be President, and that's awesome. But the idea is not that anybody can just have that highest and most difficult of offices handed to them. The idea is that if you commit yourself to your education, if you work hard enough to become a well-rounded person, if you develop diplomatic skills and critical thinking, if you push yourself to learn all about the issues, if you work your ass off, then yes, you can become President. And the purpose of this nation is to provide those opportunities to each and every citizen so that anyone who has that dream can at least try to see it through. Of course, we don't provide those opportunities to everyone. I don't have to walk far from my front door to find neighborhoods where children can't get that kind of education. But we're trying. And by "we," I mean the Democrats.

But back to Palin. She didn't put in the hard work. Lord knows she didn't push herself to learn about the issues. She got the Vice Presidential candidacy handed to her because she was an attractive, female, conservative unknown. She had enough to gain by joining the ticket that she would, presumably, shut the hell up and do what she was told, smile for the cameras (when her handlers allowed any near her), and spout hardline conservative jargon to satisfy the ultra right-wingers who think that McCain is too liberal. But I hate to think that there's anyone out there who actually believes she was chosen for her legitimate qualifications. If Hillary Clinton had won the Democratic primary, John McCain would be running alongside a black VP. Not Condoleezza Rice or Colin Powell - they have ties to the Bush adminstration, plus too many people already know them - but they'd find some conservative black Republican holding some minor office somewhere, and suddenly he'd be shooting toward the Vice Presidency.

Palin rode that initial wave of interest like a pro, using her pro-gun, pro-life even in the case or rape or incest, pro-drilling stances to keep her afloat. The "pitbull with lipstick" line has become the biggest quote of the campaign so far, and with only a few weeks to go, it's doubtful that there will be another one to top it. And I'll give her credit, it's a good line. Just not for a Presidential campaign. "What's the difference between a hockey mom and a pitbull? Lipstick," she says. It's a great quip for the peewee hckey team's spaghetti luncheon. It's even a good one for running for president of the PTA. But for Vice President?

Has anyone taken the time to break that line down and look at what it's telling us? That she wants to be thought of as a pitbull with lipstick? I'll satisfy the dog lover in me by saying that pitbulls, like any other dog, are only as vicious as their owners make them. They are strong dogs, no doubt about that, but their reputation for horrific violence comes from a few specific incidents. There are a couple pitbulls in my building, and they couldn't be sweeter. One could suggest that Sarah Palin is an animal lover and was trying to make a point that pitbulls are just misunderstood and, like them, she looks tough but is actually a big softie. With lipstick. But that seems a little obtuse. I think it's safe to assume she was going for the stereotype of a pitbull. Because what we want in a Vice President, someone who spends most of their time on the job attending solemn diplomatic functions and going on peaceful trips to foreign nations in order to improve our relations, is a snarling, drooling, foul-smelling beast that becomes insanely violent with no provocation and has a penchant for maiming small children; a four-legged tornado of destruction with breath that stinks of its own crotch and a compulsion to pee and/or take a steaming, coiled dump on anything it wants to claim as its own, that humps maniacally and will gladly bite the throat out of anything that resists. With lipstick. Oh, and afterwards it makes the poor hump victim pay for its own hump kit.

Maybe she just meant that she's doggedly determined and she goes after the things she wants. Probably could have chosen a different breed for that.

Perhaps it isn't fair to examine Palin's quote that closely. After all, when you're in the public eye, sometimes you need to say things just because they sound good, even if the substance isn't there. If you take a fine-tooth comb to every quote, everyone looks bad. Like when Joe Biden said, "What is it exactly that the VP does every day." Wait, no, that was Palin. Okay, what about when Obama was asked what, specifically, he would do to spread democracy around the globe and he said, "Specifically, we will make every effort possible to help spread democracy for those who desire freedom, independence, tolerance, respect for equality," which, if you look closely, isn't specific at all! That Obama, what a piece of-- oh, wait, sorry, that was Palin again. I'm bad at this.

But we can't hold Palin accountable for the things she says, or the fact that sometimes words mean things. After all, it's all just gotcha journalism, a type of journalism that Palin (who majored in journalism and minored in politics) must have learned about while she was busy not reading any newspapers. This is one of the things that infuriates me the most about Sarah Palin. People say she's Bush with a bush, which is clever, but not quite accurate. Bush was a horrible President. One of, if not the worst in American history. But Palin is potentially worse. Under the Bush administration, the press corps was silenced, tricked, and dodged. Reporters who asked the wrong types of questions or wrote the wrong sort of articles were given misinformation or no information at all regarding press briefings with the President. Reporters learned quickly that they needed to be on board with the administration, or at least passively silent, or they wouldn't get anything to report on at all. Palin started with dodging the press, and now she has graduated to full-on attacking them, and she hasn't even been elected yet!

Palin had big daddy McCain come to her rescue with Katie Couric, and together they decried the evils of "gotcha journalism," which, as far as I can tell, is when journalists ask you questions and then record your answers. Presumably, they also steal your soul with their magic picture box. Look, I understand being taken out of context. I know how much that sucks. If I say, "Sarah Palin is very talented when it comes to lying her face off," and later someone says, "Even Fishbulb supports Sarah Palin, calling her 'very talented,'" it blows. Asking someone who is running for one of our nation's hghest offices to explain something they said isn't taking anything out of context, it's giving that person the opportunity to provide context. Quoting someone accurately isn't "gotcha journalism." It's just journalism. She has said she wanted the Katie Couric interview to be a chance to speak freely to the nation, and she screwed it up so badly because she was annoyed that she actually had to answer questions. This is something they should have taught her in school - interviews don't work that way. It's a question/answer format. So is a debate, although she ignored that as best she could. And the fact that she'd use being annoyed as an excuse is just frightening. She got annoyed by Katie Couric asking her questions? After signing up to do an interview with Katie Couric? Come on. It's not like Couric was trying to probe her colon. Presidents and Vice Presidents alike have to deal with much, much worse on a daily basis. They can't get annoyed and fall to pieces. It's pathetic. And then to continually blame her failures on Katie Couric's incredibly generous interview is really low. As a former journalism major, Sarah Palin should be fighting to uphold and protect the First Amendment. Instead, she's trying to rip it to shreds.

She hasn't let up for a second, either. Since regaining some desperately needed momentum after not completely flubbing her debate with Biden, Palin has been on a major offensive. A Washington Post column by Dana Milbank details how at a recent rally in Clearwater, Florida, Palin bashed the media, and Katie Couric in particular (as she has been doing for some time). Her supporters followed suit, "waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, 'Sit down, boy.'"

Now, a candidate cannot be held responsible for the words and actions of their supporters. I'm not trying to imply that Palin told one of the people in the crowd to use racial epithets toward any African American sound men who happen by (although sound guys are definintely the ones Palin has to watch out for). We cannot judge her by the actions of her fans. But we can absolutely judge her by her response to those actions. I'm willing to grant that she may not have been able to hear each individual slur being lobbed around from up on the stage. I don't know the acoustics of the setting. But I do know that a whole mob of people shouting at reporters who were just there doing their job, bringing Governor Palin's remarks to the country, as she has so often claimed to want, is plenty audible from any stage in the world. A decent person would have told the raging crowd to cut it out. A bad person would have done nothing. A mean person would have encouraged them. Which do you think Palin is?

Sarah Palin is not stupid. It's easy to dismiss her as dumb, but that's a dangerous move. She isn't dumb, she just appeared that way because she didn't have enough time to get herself together before she had to greet the world as McCain's running mate. She wasn't up on the issues, and so she got caught unawares time and time again, and the fact that she was being shielded from the press made it seem as though the McCain camp was ashamed of her. But she's not dumb. The nomination of a seemingly dimwitted unknown to the Vice Presidency by the Republicans might conjure up memories of Dan Quayle. He was dumb, but harmless, except to the image of the first Bush administration. Sarah Palin is not dumb, she's just out of her league. But she's catching up quickly. And now that she's had a taste of power, she's hungry for more, as she made perfectly clear at the debate, when she said she'd want to expand the role of the VP. It's a dangerous person who openly admits to wanting more power on national television. It's a dangerous person who repeatedly says that Barack Obama is friends with domestic terrorists. It's a dangerous person who stirs up a crowd into such anti-Obama fervor that one person was heard to shout, "Kill him!" It's a dangerous person who sics her supporters on members of the press. Maybe the pitbull metaphor was apt after all.

The official Constitutional duty of the Vice President is to break ties in the Senate. While ties may not occur often, that is still a powerful responsibility, and giving it to someone who believes that abortion should never be legal, someone who believes in a literal interpretation of the stories in the Bible, someone who will vote with the ultra-conservatives every time is a frightening prospect. But more importantly, when we consider Vice Presidential candidates, we must first and foremost consider the possibility that he or she might become President of the United States, and do so without having to go through another election. It has happened on nine occassions so far in our country's history. Not to get too morbid, but no matter who wins this election, their VP may have a pretty serious chance at becoming President the bad way. Like it or not, the fact is that the Republican party is home to both extremist bigots and people who love guns. There have already been death threats and thwarted assassination attempts against Barack Obama. If he is elected, his will likely be the hardest working Secret Service in history. John McCain may not have as much to fear from people who want to kill him simply for the color of his skin, but he is old, he has a history of serious medical conditions, and the Presidency puts more stress on a person than any other job on the planet. When we cast our votes in this election, we must take the VP candidate into consideration, as there is a greater chance than there has been in our lifetimes that the VP may have to assume the Presidency.

It's a shame that there's only one Vice Presidential debate this time around. Palin made it through this one without any major embarassments, but also without giving any real information. Now that she's more fired up than ever, and she seems determined to guide the momentum of the McCain/Palin ticket into a dark, hateful place, it would be interesting to see how she conducted herself in another face-to-face with Senator Biden. Part of me is sad we won't get to see that. A larger part of me is happy just to not have her clogging up my TV.

Debate Round-Up, Pt. 1

I've been pretty lax about posting lately, which is inexcusable, as there have been some world class hijinx going on along the campaign trail over the last week or so. Most notably, we've seen two debates - the first between Barack Obama and John McCain, and the only debate between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin.

I'm not going to spend much time on the first Obama vs. McCain ballyhoo, because I don't feel like there's all that much to say. McCain was smug, Obama stuttered a bit too much. None of this was in the least bit surprising. This was McCain's debate. It was a foreign policy night, and that's where John McCain is going to continue hammering Obama for being inexperienced. McCani's job was to keep the focus on Iraq in order to back Obama into a corner where he would have to admit that the Surge was a rollicking success. Frankly, I'm not too sold on that tactic, or strategy, or whatever McCain wants to call it. Yes, the Surge made a difference, and General Petraeus is to be commended for that, as are all of the incredibly brave and selfless men and women who put their lives on the line to make sure this risky move paid off. So I'll go on the record saying the Surge worked. But that doesn't make it a good idea. If I get in a car with you, and you're drunk behind the wheel, and we crash into a tree, I don't care if you have fantastic insurance that will cover all of the damage. I'd rather you didn't get behind the wheel when you're hammered. John McCain wanted Obama to admit that his insurance policy paid for the complete restoration of the car. But I'm with Obama. I'd rather have seen John McCain lay off the sauce in the first place.

A foreign policy debate was also where Obama was bound to slip a little. Obama was strongest when he was talking about the economic crisis, but many people think he could have hit McCain harder. Lord knows the old maverick deserves it. But really, Obama had to play it cool. If the economic talk had been at the end of the debate instead of the beginning, he could have come down hard, but that was never going to happen. It was bound to be the first topic of discussion, and Obama couldn't start out the night looking like a young hothead.

In a lot of ways, Obama and McCain are trying to occupy some difficult roles. Obama is a young guy trying to prove he has the wisdom and vision of a more experienced statesman. Although he is energizes young voters whenever he speaks to them, when he is addressing the entire nation, which, I'm told, includes Florida, he has to temper himself. But if he plays it too cool, he sounds like a doddering professor, and evidently the worst thing you can do if you want to lead this nation is sound like an erudite, intelligent, thoughtful person. America hates those.

John McCain, on the other hand, is a doddering old man trying to prove that he's still young, spry, and fiery. For the record, he is not. And if he is elected, we will learn that very quickly. Remember when Bill Clinton first took office? Remember how electrifying he was, at least in comparison to what we had been dealing with recently? Everyone was talking about his vitality, his energy, and his charisma, and only about half of that time were they actually talking about his penis. Now remember what he looked like four years later? Bill Clinton was gray going into the White House. At the end of his first term, he was white. By the end of his second term, he was legally dead. To his credit, Zombie Bill Clinton has still proven himself a much more charming and compelling leader since leaving the Oval Office than Bush ever did. Anyway, the point here is that John McCain might have been a great President, had he won in 2000, back when he still had a soul. Back when he could call himself a maverick without making thinking people everywhere want to claw their own eyes out. But McCain sold his soul to Karl Rove in exchange for the dark necromancy required to keep him alive and in politics for another eight years, long enough to campaign once again. Now, with a recent voting record that makes him look like George Bush III, and with Rove's fiendish juju fading in his veins, John McCain is trying to prove that he won't die in office. But the sad truth is, if elected, he probably will. Being President is the hardest job on the face of the planet. Making the wrong decision, particularly at this point in the world's shared history, could literally be the end of life as we know it. Most young, hearty people can't handle that kind of pressure. Put it on the shoulders of a 72 year old man with a history of serious health problems, and that will be that. And then we'll have President Palin. And then we'll all die. But I'll get to her in my next post.

One last word on John McCain before I move on to the VP debate (good thing I said I wasn't going to say much about McCain and Obama, huh?). I resent John McCain and Sarah Palin, but mostly McCain, for ruining the word "maverick" for me. I used to love that word. It's a cool word. It's fun to say. It means something neat. It conjures images of Tom Cruise before we all knew he was crazy, back when we all just thought he was gay. He was Maverick, and we, as a nation, were his wingman. It conjures images of Mel Gibson before we knew he was an anti-Semite, back when we all thought he was just crazy. He was Maverick, and we were his posse. It conjures images of Jack Kelly and James Garner, back when we remembered who they were. It was 1957, and we were not born yet (but John McCain was 21).

A maverick used to mean some cool-as-hell guy who rebelled against The Man. Nowadays, you can't say "maverick" without referring to McCain. And calling McCain a maverick is, in itself, a maverick move, at least if you replace "The Man" with "The Truth." There was a time when John McCain rebelled against The Man, that being his own party. He voted his conscience. He conducted himself with integrity. I am a staunch Democrat, as you may have detected, but I held John McCain in immesurably high esteem. In 2000, I wanted Al Gore to win, of course, but I crossed my fingers and hoped that he would be running against John McCain, so that we would have a Presidential race worthy of the American people. In that wonderful fantasy race, whoever won would inherit the unprecedented financial surplus, as well as the surplus of international goodwill left by Bill Clinton, and not squander it ruthlessly within a single year. Of course, things didn't work out that way. McCain remained in my good graces for most of the next four years. But as the Bush administration wore on, and John McCain started abandoning his principles and voting the party line with such regularity that it could only have been due to political ambitions, senility, or a combination of the two, I lost my respect for him, and he lost the right to call himself a maverick. And Sarah Palin? Forget "maverick," she shouldn't be allowed to speak in public, period. But again, I'll get to her. For now, I have a final question: assuming we're all around long enough to find out, will the word "maverick" ever lose its connection to McCain/Palin? Will we ever get our word back? If not, we need another badass-sounding word to replace it. I suggest "rockules." It combines the awesomeness of rocking with the mythical might of Hercules, who was something of a maverick himself, in the most McCainless sense of the word.

So, from the Original Rockules, that's all for now.