Silver Platter

I'm starting to think that American politics are becoming intentionally difficult to pay attention to.

It's a field I'm meaning to get into -- at least as an observer -- so I feel a certain obligation to try to pay attention to what's going on. But the realities of day-to-day political headlines are so stunningly stupid that it's hard not to just throw in the towel and go look for stories about Apple's new iPhone.

Take, for example, the Democratic Party's front runners for the 2008 presidential campaign: Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama. One is a woman, and the other is black.

Trust me. I'd love to believe that the United States of America, as a people who are supposedly so devoted to freedom and equality and human rights, are thoroughly prepared to elect a female or black president. We've beaten sexism and racism, haven't we? We certainly showed those damn communists what the score was.

But let's be honest. Does anyone think that the enormous expanse of backwardness that exists between America's two coasts is really going to vote for someone who doesn't look like JFK or FDR? Are we really at a point where the ethnic demographic a candidate falls into isn't going to matter?

Christ, has anyone seen an episode of COPS lately?

I think I can say without exaggeration that the GOP has done everything in its power to hand the next presidency to the DNC on a silver-gilded platter. Democrats, in response, have simply slapped that platter out of the garcon's hands and send it clattering to the floor. No, they're saying. We don't want to win. We'd rather show that we have inclusive principles.

Sorry, guys. The same red-state rubes who re-elected George W. Bush are going to be returning to the polls next November, and they're not about to have some colored gentleman running their blessed country. And God forbid they give the job to a woman... Hell, we'd be bombing some damn country every month or so.

The plans and agendas that Clinton and Obama bring to the campaign debate table will never matter, believe you me. And the DNC ought to know that by now... but they don't, and I'm wondering if they'll ever figure it out.

And the repercussions of electing a Republican president after eight years of this current maniac are too horrible to imagine.

A new GOP president with a referendum? It chills my blood.

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