After over a year's worth of conventions, campaigning, debates, gaffes, swings, slogans, bizarrely empty chairs, bizarrely empty chairs hung in equally bizarre effigy, billboards, idiot millionaires with names rhyming with "Gonald Frump," and Black pizzamen offering 9-9-9 specials, election day is finally here. Rejoice.
Sarcasm aside, as much as I'm anxiously anticipating who's going to be the last man standing tonight, I'm just as anxious and downright giddy about the fact that today marks the official end of the election season. While I realize much of what makes election season election season are necessary evils, there are quite a few things I'll be tickled to not have to see, hear, taste, or touch for (at least) the next four years, including…
The never-ending avalanche of negative campaign ads
I realize that since I live in a battleground state (PA), there's a strong chance that I've been inundated with these ads in a way that people in many other parts of the country haven't. If you are one of these people in one of those other parts of the country, here's a second by second breakdown of how one of these ads usually go.
0:01: Cue ominous music as the ad's protagonist (or, I guess they'd be antagonists) is shown in slow motion, smirking while pushing random orphans down some random stairs.
0:05: Cue voiceover: (ie "John Smith voted against the Orphan Abuse Act, making sure that…")
0:11: Since I usually change the channel by now, I have no idea what happens next. If I had to guess, I'd say that John Smith found some more random orphans to push down some more random stairs.
Polls
If you're online at all today, you will undoubtedly come across a poll that states that President Obama has a projected two or three point lead over Mitt Romney. If you stay online for a couple more minutes, you'll see another, updated poll that has Obama still leading Romney by two or three points, and there will be a 2000 word long blog attached to it, explaining exactly why Obama hasn't been able to separate himself from Romney in the polls in the last seven minutes, what this means for Obama, what Obama needs to do to increase his lead from two or three points to three or four points in the next seven minutes, how this strategy may backfire, how this will affect early voters, the typical demographic info (master degreed and single Jewish women living in cities with NBA teams) and breakfast choices (shrimp and scrambled eggs) of the type of early voters who'd be susceptible to this (non) change, what the Michelles think (Obama, Bachmann, and Pfeiffer), and what this'll mean for Hillary in 2016.
Michelle Malkin
As a staunch Obama supporter, when I happen to write about or speak of a person such as Romney, Ryan, or even Palin, I usually put some language in there to show that I do recognize that these people are just human beings. Sometimes I actually believe my words to be true ("Paul Ryan doesn't seem like a bad person, just comically, well, dangerously out of touch") and sometimes they're largely disingenuous (saying "I'd even have a beer with Bush" when I don't even drink beer) but I do this because it has a way of showing that you're not so partisan that you can't see that the other side isn't completely bad, and doing this gives your words a bit more weight.
I feel no such urge to do this when speaking of the rabid Republican dog whistling chickenhawk otherwise known as Michelle Malkin, She is, for lack of a better term, evil. Not evil in the serial killer, "I can't help it that I'm evil" sense, but evil like, well, Dr. Evil. Evil is her calling, her mission, her life's work. I have no doubt that she went to Evil Finishing School and majored in "Evil Theories and Practices" so she could shape her evil mouth to say evil things, write evil words with her evil hands, and conjure evil ideas with her evil brain. I'm happy that election season is over so I no longer have to spray holy water on my TV whenever she appears, for no other reason that I can't afford to keep buying new TVs.
Learning that rappers I actually like have ignorant views about voting
Since I had to limit this list to five things, it came down to a choice between this or choosing "Listening to rappers who haven't been eligible to vote since the first season of NYPD Blue tell you to vote." But, since I can't really chide positive activity, I've decided to direct my ire at the Lupe Fiascos and Kendrick Lamars of the world who seem hell bent on reminding folks that just because a rapper rhymes "constituency" with "legitimacy" doesn't mean that they're actually educated.
Text messages, phone calls, Facebook status messages, emails, and letters from the Obama campaign
If Obama wins tonight, I plan on using all of the pro-Obama material I've received in the last year to create a small bonfire in my driveway. I'll invite some friends, hire a DJ, and we'll roast hotdogs and marshmallows and dance around it while listening to "My President is (Still) Black."
If he loses, I still plan on having the bonfire, and I'm still going to invite friends. I may still even hire a DJ. (He'd obviously have to play a different song.) No hot dogs and marshmellows, though.
