South Park this week lent its usual on-the-spot spot-on insight to the Obama victory. The South Park plot suggested Tuesday’s triumph was the result of McCain colluding with Obama to seize the White House, solely to access a presidential escape tunnel which runs under the Smithsonian, putting them within grasp of the HOPE Diamond (get it?). An Obama-McCain Oceans-08 Mission Impossible heist might be stretching it, particularly with Palin cast as the technical mastermind, but would it be entirely a fiction?
Did you hear McCain campaign director Steve Schmidt recently answering critics of his strategy? Schmidt described John McCain as “the only Republican who could have mounted a campaign that would come anywhere close.” Was that Schmidt’s directive? To come close? Was the nominee his to choose?
It’s been revealed that Schmidt himself chose Sarah Palin as the VP pick. A good choice? Not? It makes me wonder about the objective of the McCain bid. To put up a good show, or to be a contender? As unthinkable as Palin was as a potential national figure, her draw as center of attention was undeniable.
The McCain/Palin ticket sure looks to have been a setup. Was it but a straw-man against whom an African American couldn’t lose? Both McCain and Palin, in their own ways, seemed epically comic caricatures of awful. They played the bad-guy opponent for the majority of wrestling fans to cheer against. There are of course always legions of WWWF fans who back the bad ass. They follow the underdog’s career as the heavy, maybe hoping someday he’ll be picked for a stint of glory. Even if wrestling is fixed, you can hope to influence the fixing with your cheers.
Tuesday night also reminded me of watching the loser of the 2004 presidential election, dutifully giving his concession speech attended by his multi-millionaire wife. Remember the Heinz heiress who would be First Lady?
The Producers Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder knew where the money was made on Broadway, from widow pensioner investors with dreams of stage glory. Maybe political party apparatchiks know it too. You can defray a bunch of your expenses if you can draw the lonely heiresses into the ring. They’ve got the billions/millions, with the wardrobes to match. Where would they find comparable spotlights to highlight those baubles? Make them queen of the ball, with the chance to be First Lady Win or not, they’ll get their money’s worth of attention.
Does America have a two-party system, or a single corporate party? Well then, are the Republican and Democratic parties a single political machine or not? Ergo, wrestling match aside, do the match promoters care whether the democracy torch bearer is Red or Blue or black?
The much we already know must color the election result.
What did you make of the orchestration we saw in Grant Park? A celebration of historic proportion was laid out in Chicago. In Arizona, the GOP assembled their booing chorus of hangers on. En toto, Obama’s CHANGE movement was executed without a single hitch. The train came into the station like clockwork, like an MI08 final scene. Concession and acceptance speech delivered like a College Football game. No overtime please, climax within the prime time alloted.
Warnings about how “power never yields without demand” appeared to be so much crying wolf. So, did we witness a shift of power, or simply the inauguration of a more palatable figurehead? If there’s a Lion King remake to re-stage for Broadway, maybe Steve Schmidt should be tapped for the job.
NATO CONFERENCE, STRASBOURG- The subject came up again –how cute– when President Obama took questions from European students in Strasbourg, about whether the White House has gotten its dog. Obama’s answer was still “not yet,” sidestepping more substantive topics. Let’s play into Obama’s sleight of hand for a moment because there is something telling about this dog-less pony show. Everyone thought it was our sky-high expectations which made Obama appear stuck at the gate. We count the days for his administration to do this, and undo that, meanwhile Barack Obama can’t even buy a dog.
