A Political Thanksgiving

As we celebrate this long weekend of forced national gratitude, let us count the many terrible blessings of our political system. Every four years, those few of us who bother voting in the primaries get to pretend we have some important role as we cast our ballot for whatever candidate has raised enough corporate money to run television commercials for an entire year.

Let's gather together and say a prayer of gratitude for this long campaign's exciting collection of Leading Patriots running for our nation's highest office.

Fred Thompson, you have been on television, your latest wife is young and pretty, you helped Nixon during Watergate, and you also bravely provided legal and lobbying services to needy terrorists and abortionists. Thank you, Mr. Grumbles, for launching a loser campaign that ensures you'll never be president of anything, even though you pretended to be Ulysses S. Grant in a cable movie.

Barack Obama, you have done ... well, nothing that we've heard about, beyond running for president and writing a book about getting high. Thank you for proving, finally, that all it takes is good looks, an Ivy League diploma and a lot of corporate money to get somewhere in this country. Is it really so audacious to hope we might all become rich and famous? Yes, yes it is.

Rudy Giuliani, you briefly brought us together as a nation on your favorite day, 9/11, when we couldn't find the real president. America thanks you for so dramatically lowering the bar of what we'll tolerate in a GOP candidate for president. Abortionists, cousin-marriers, cross-dressers, opera fans, adulterers, the Mafia, terrible parents, gay rights activists, anti-gun forces and authoritarian First Amendment-hating warmongers have all joyfully gathered beneath your Big Weird Tent shaped like the Twin Towers.

Hillary Clinton, thanks for staying married to Bill and making the whole nation feel pretty uncomfortable, about everything. Thanks for giving America's right-wing misogynists a harmless target for their rage. Thanks for being the anti-war Democratic frontrunner even though you're a bloodthirsty nut who will probably start World Wars III, IV and V. Mostly, thanks for the not-so-convincing delusion that somehow you won't be quite as bad as Bush/Cheney.

John McCain, we are grateful for your service to the nation and sad about how you got locked up in that Viet Cong prison camp, which clearly made you crazy. Thanks for providing a moment of false hope, eight years ago, that George W. Bush wouldn't win the nomination that had already been given to him long before the first primary of 2000. And thanks for your magical Straight Talk, which simultaneously covers every possible position on every issue.



John Edwards, thanks for losing to Bush/Cheney in 2004. We are all inspired by how much you talk about being poor before you became the richest lawyer in the universe. Slick, good-looking attorneys everywhere look at you and think, "Maybe someday I can have a thousand-room mansion with its own regulation indoor basketball court, too." Truly, we have "Too Americas."

Mitt Romney, thanks for proving that even a liberal Taxachusetts Mormon guy who tortures dogs has a shot at the presidency, as long as he has $300 million dollars and is the son of a famous auto executive and governor.

Did we forget anyone? Yes. Thanks and sorry to Bill Richardson, Dennis Kucinich, Mike Huckabee and whoever else might be running. You all seem like fairly decent people, which means you can't be president. Sorry. Also, Dr. Congressman Ron Paul is truly our nation's President of the Internet, so GO RON PAUL!!!

And above all, let us be thankful that the dull misery of the 2008 campaign will finally be over when we next gather for the Thanksgiving feast a year from now ... unless it's like 2000 and we all gather to watch the recount on TV.