La señora protesta demasiado, yo piensa

I had a dream last night in which I was involved with a group of people who wanted to protest the war. The idea they came up with, was to make full body casts of themselves in poses that suggested protest, and then to fill the molds with molten Lucite. The result was these transparent sculptures of people protesting that the group then displayed publicly.

At that point my clock radio went off, and before the dream could be pushed from my brain by news of closures on the 118, I remember thinking, “Why not just protest?”

How little we know of real protest anymore. Because everywhere, all around us, is fake protest. Despite the demise of the uber-partisan prevaricating of CNN’s CrossFire, fake protest and phony defense doth make up the better part of our national dialogue, or at least that’s the way it seems with 19 days to go.

So poor John McCain couldn’t seem to rattle Mr. Unflappable last night, and over the course of the debate you could tell it began to bother him more and more. At one point I began picturing him à la Looney Tunes, with his face bright red, steam coming out of his ears, and blowing breath through his lips like the whistle of a very angry little choo-choo who’s pretty sure that the tracks should belong to him.

McCampaign has tried to gain traction by invoking the Holy Joe Trinity: Joe Lieberman, Joe 6-Pack, and now, Joe the Plumber. It’s interesting that they think a plumber who’s worried that his quarter of a million dollar profit might get taxed at a higher rate will somehow become this country’s economic touchstone. Because I know quite a few guys who make bread in that neighborhood. They drive Lexuses and Jaguars. Their kids go to private school. They own vacation homes. I’m not fucking worried about Joe the Plumber, ya fucking idiot Rovian assclowns. In fact, I think I got ripped off by Joe the Plumber once, when he charged me $800 to replace my S-trap.

But McCain, fucking clueless as ever, continued to pound his point about the hypothetical future earnings of some overpaid schmuck in Ohio, and he even threw in another reference to Obama meeting world leaders “without preconditions,” because THAT niggling foreign policy point has so resonated with voters afraid of turning on the radio in the morning for fear of finding out that the company they work for doesn’t exist anymore.

The Republicans are either listlessly going through the motions at this point, or else wildly stabbing at the heart of the Democrats with very dull knives. Last Friday I saw conservative columnist Steve Moore on Real Time, freshly armed with RNC talking points about the voter registration organization ACORN. The Republicans’ latest scapegoat in their whole ongoing pumped-up phony voter fraud teapot tempest was so hot off the RNC presses that even political junkie host Bill Maher had not heard of them yet. “What does ACORN stand for?” he asked Moore. Moore admitted he didn’t know. Fellow panelist Maxine Waters (D-CA) countered “well, if you don't know anything about it, then you should probably stop talking about it.” Moore then checked his talking points for a response to Waters, and finding nothing, shrugged and changed the subject to his less than convincing protestations that Palin was absolutely qualified for the most important job in the world. Without a doubt. Sure, she was. I could tell Moore was more interested in the single-malt scotch waiting for him in his airport limo than he was in mounting a credible case for Governor Flailin’, but he continued his ridiculous assertions nevertheless.

It’s an interesting turn of events to see the Republicans play the role of victim in this election, hence the Republicans and McCampaign testing the waters on this whole ACORN story, seeing if the press will bite. They probably will. They’ve shown themselves all too willing in the past to balance real stories of disenfranchised minority (mostly Democrat) voters with baseless charges from the RNC that Democrats are handing out ballots at prison gates and setting up voting booths in Tijuana.

But no matter what the outcome of the election, I relish the thought of so many Republicans holding their noses in the election booth. Their candidate hasn’t smelled so bad since…okay, well, since the last election, but still. They had no incumbent. They had the entire country to choose from, and they picked Grandpa Grumpy and the 80s beauty queen who spent 6 years getting a degree in broadcast news journalism, which, forgive me if I’m wrong, but didn’t you used to be able to get one of those free inside every box of Breeze detergent?

Well, readers, as that last joke clearly indicates, I need a vacation, and I’m getting a mini one. I’ll be taking a long weekend with Spooney, sis & her beau, and a few other people down in Puerto Penasco, Mexico, celebrating my sister’s birthday. Vive el cumpleaños de mi hermana, bitches. So, drop by her blog and wish her a happy. I’m going to go find my swim suit, my sunscreen, and my voter registration forms.

I'll be back late next week.