I've lapsed into a negligent coma of silence, and there is so much silliness out there to write about! Don't think I haven't been thinking about it. I've just been too damn lazy to actually write about it. Down deep, I'm a slouch.
Well, that was cathartic. Am I redeemed?
Mitt Romney - Like Gomez, Mitt is the least odd of the family. On the surface he seems perfectly normal. He doesn't look weird or goofy. He doesn't say things that are particularly outrageous. He seems like he's at least from the 20th century, unlike his peers, some of which harken back to the 17th. Mitt is very nearly normal.
But that's his problem. He's enough off-keel to create a painful dissonance with his otherwise placid surroundings. Some of his peers are so abnormal that their behavior blends in harmony with the normality of usual folk. Mitt is just enough off to magnify the fundamental strangeness of his nature.
While I've been slumbering, the 2012 campaign has swung into a spinning frenzy of blood, bone, and sinew. I saw this coming when that crazy Santorum launched his run last February with a wildly bizarre rant on the benefits of the Crusades, a lapse into insanity so grave that I felt compelled to blog. A must-read if you're even remotely considering voting for the lunatic.
We can all be thankful that Sarah Palin hasn't swooped down with vengeful talons bared, but the race is still young. She has plenty of time to mop up behind the rotting corpses in July. She's already defied my earlier prediction by resisting the temptation to announce at Jerry Lewis' farewell telethon last September, which was a sad coma seeing as Jerry was nowhere to be found. Sarah was wise to avoid it.
Well, there is plenty of juicy, naughty stuff to be said about these people, but that gets old fast. And I'm sure there would be just as much to say about those radical progressives on the blue side if they weren't so annoyingly united behind Obama. In the meantime I'm just watching the Republicans in delight.
Many of you may remember the post from last Memorial Day in which I compared the slate of GOP candidates to riders on the Partridge Family bus. That was kinda fun. The field has shrunk just a bit since then, but perhaps not enough. We've seen the churning rise and fall of an endless stream of chum-throwing POTUS wannabes, none of which amounted to a whole lot. We've got four left, three of which are not going to amount to a whole lot and one is going up against a rested, fed, armored foe loaded with hoards of cash and a relentless determination to win. When one of these guys limps into the fall election season it will look like feeding time in the Amazon.
I'm really long winded today. OK, bottom line I decided to compare the remaining Republican hopefuls to the cast of Adams Family, all of which suffer from equally ghoulish shortcomings.
Newt Gingrich - Like the smiling, impish Uncle Fester, Newt is a happy, rotund guy with a twinkle in his eye. He's mischievous and full of ideas, most of which lack careful thought and follow-through. Fester is often the one-liner guy - the guy with the punch line. Newt is also full of one-liners and punch-lines, and they are equally strange. Like this one: "A mere forty years ago, beach volleyball was just beginning. No bureaucrat would have invented it, and that's what freedom is all about."
And that's just the beginning.
Ron Paul - Lurch, like Paul, is the only truly morbid member of the family. Both are so unhinged as to be laughable. Paul has been stomping around like a zombie in search of his grave for years, trying in vain to convince people to take him seriously. Like Lurch, he has a cult following, but these folks tend to occupy shotgun shacks in remote corners of the Nation, experimenting with firearms and explosives in their spare time. A scary bunch, but that's what Paul wants you to believe. That he's leading a ragtime army of dispossessed, disenfranchised rebels to the next Battle of Bunker Hill. That's the Bunker Hill in Massachusetts, in case Michelle Bachman is reading.
Rick Santorum - Clearly I'm saving the truly bad for last. Just look at that evil little bugger! Like Pugsley, Santorum is dangerous precisely because he doesn't know how dangerous he is. Pugsey will grab a box of matches and play with it out in the woodshed. Santorum would make prenatal screenings illegal since they might be used to foster abortions, despite the fact that they are used far more often to ensure a healthy baby and mother. Pugsley had an excuse. He was seven.
