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• Election 2008

 

All the braying and race-baiting and fear-mongering of the last couple of weeks had got me down. It may have been the “what do we really know about Barack Obama” talk that started it. The subtext, of course, being that he's an outsider (read: terrorist) with a different outlook on America (middle name: Hussein) than many of his countrymen (Joe Sixpacks and The Plumber, Hockey Moms). It seemed that the Republican platform had devolved into a kind of Hee-Haw variety show aimed at playing on the fears of the most ignorant members of American society. “Don't vote young black man!” they screamed, “You know about young black men (read: criminals, Arabs)!” “Vote old white man!” “You love old white men (read: Santa Claus, Mickey Rooney, Jerry Falwell)!"

The upside to this, of course, was that the main reason McCain's campaign had taken this turn was because he was slipping in the polls. As of last week, the election had all but been called in favor of Barack Obama, and the GOP was resorting to its Plan B: smear, smear, smear.

Here's the thing, though. Even with McCain's numbers heading south, there's still very little doubt that the race will be close in the end. When the dust settles in a couple of weeks, nearly half of the voters will have cast their ballots for McCain-Palin and their political gong show. That, friends, is what really scared me. That there are people in America, and no small number of them, who would boo The New York Times at rallies, and who feel more comfortable voting out of fear than out of hope, and what does that say about us as a nation, really?

But then, when my faith in country was at an all time low, I saw a bright shining light. It was Amy Poehler on Saturday Night Live's Weekend Update, interviewing a character called Crazy McCain Lady (you know her, the one from the rally). And for the first time, I was able to laugh at the absurdity of the whole thing, of her assertion that she'd “read” about Obama and that he was “an Arab,” and McCain's response that “No Ma'am,” he was in fact a “decent family man,” which, it would seem, an “Arab” could not be. I laughed, because, really, what else can you do in the face of such silliness?

Later that night, I caught the beginning of The Daily Show, in which Jon Stewart pointed out John McCain's pre-debate assertion that he doesn't care about the “washed up old terrorist” Bill Ayers. As Stewart pointed out, in that funny way he has of pointing these things out, Obama's relationship with Ayers had been the central attack point of McCain's campaign over the last few weeks.

I laughed again, thankful that along with close to fifty percent of the country, I could see the emperor running around naked, and found it quite funny.