Scary

Am I the only one that finds this whole TV appearance weeks before the election thing really surreal? It's like a scary movie about the future, where we all vote with remote controls for imaginary political candidates on television screens built into the backs of other people's heads.

Presidents and celebrities are not the same. Tina Fey doing Sarah Palin is scarily funny. Sarah Palin head-bobbing on TV to a fake rap song is a little sickening. (Amy Poehler singing it while hugely pregnant, surrounded by faux-eskimos and a stuffed moose only very slightly redeeming. Poor Amy!)

Sarah Palin is beautiful, ok, but she's not auditioning for America's Next Top Model, she's running for VICE PRESIDENT. Is this what it's come to? When the lines blur so strongly (Reagan flashback) between celebrity and reality that we are in danger of electing someone who is a caricature, running with someone who is pretty, over thoughtful, intelligent men... well, I just don't even want to think about it. How about we just elect Tom and Katie?

Read this. And this. And this. And this.

It seems every sound clip I hear of McCain lately has him desperately squawking his new mantra: "Kills Jobs! Spreads the wealth! Awk! Kills Jobs! Spreads the wealth!" You'd have to be a moron not to see that he's trying to stoke the most primal fear of loss. At the simplest level, the seed is being planted: "Fear the black man, he is going to take away what you have." The language he's using always contains strong negative associations. Even when he (weakly) defended Obama after he'd been criticized for ignoring the jeers and threats, he said, "...he's not a man you need to be afraid of being president." It doesn't matter that the foundations of his statements about Obama's tax cuts vs. his own aren't true. (I doubt even people making over $250,000 a year are shaking in their boots.) The people he's addressing-- the people who are responding-- believe him. What makes them think that a man who has helped to build the government structures that have created the world they live in today would do anything to change their lives if elected?

OK, OK, OK. This is what happens. I set out to make a simple point about how weird it is that the candidates are smiling and laughing on late night TV in the midst of one of the worst economic crises in the nation's history, and seven paragraphs later, I'm ranting and raving.

VOTE. VOTE. VOTE. Democrats, Liberals, Greens, Independents, Converts, Undecideds, women, men, young people, old people...it's going to take every single one of us to make that margin decisive. Don't give up.