Dear Aunt Slugger,
I was reading this op-ed piece by David Rothkopf today, and I am really worried about the state of American politics. Mr. Rothkopf says that Barack Obama and Mitt Romney "are running a campaign that has the sensibilities and IQ of a typical
middle school student council election. With the values of an episode of 'Real Housewives' or 'Big Brother.'" How can we resolve this problem? What can we, the voting public, do?
Sincerely,
Concerned in Connecticut
Dear Concerned,
You know what you can do? You can calm the fuck down is what you can do.
There are two groups of people who are allowed to say, with genuine sincerity, that they are shocked by how low-class the current election is. These two groups are 1.) people in the 18-21 age range who are just now able to vote in a presidential election and as such are paying attention to an election for the very first time in their lives, and 2.) people who have been decapitated.
I don't know which category David Rothkopf, "CEO and editor-at-large of the FP Group" and "visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace," falls into. But it has to be one of the two. Because if you have lived through more than one election and you haven't figured out that presidential elections are a form of federally-sanctioned sketch comedy, then you are either a young fool, or your brain is on a sidewalk in Hoboken right now.
Presidential elections have ALWAYS been a clown car on a hot summer's day. The nation has ALWAYS been "more divided than ever before." The fact that Mitt Romney and Barack Obama haven't challenged one another to a duel or spit chewing tobacco into the audience at a Harvard fundraiser is a sign that this election is BORING AS SHIT.
Back in the 1800s, those old racist dudes would HAVE AT IT with each other. There was one election where a candidate was routinely referred to as "jackass." If that happened today, we'd have like 2 million tweets from people angry that their 6-month-old baby heard a candidate swear on national television. We'd have 48,000 two-member Facebook groups with names like "I Won't Vote Until U Campaign With Dignity." And David Rothkopf, Visiting Scholar, would go into anaphylactic shock.
Some people are very philosophical about political mud-slinging: "Candidates reveal a lot about themselves when they attack the opposition," these modern-day political theorists will say. All right, Plato. That might be true. But your Aunt Slugger is in it for the entertainment. There is nothing better - and I mean nothing better - than watching rich people try to explain their latest gaffe by making a series of additional, equally offensive gaffes. My only hope is that someday, in my lifetime, the candidates will start scratching at each others' faces on live television.
Stop worrying, Concerned. And stop listening to "David Rothkopf, Visiting Scholar," because he obviously never took political science. Or read Wikipedia. Or paid attention during any American presidential election during his lifetime.
Grab your Junior Mints and popcorn.
Aunt Slugger
