The only political post you'll ever see me do, unless I'm lying.

So I've been obsessively keeping up with this particular election, and you have, too. Maybe you haven't been doing it the way I have, watching CNN day in and day out, fastidiously neglecting schoolwork in order to catch the McCain-Obama town hall debate or doing research on pork barrel spending, the Bridge to Nowhere, public financing and myriad other utterly disinteresting and totally inconsequential social and political phenomena in order to fully understand the ins and outs of this election. Maybe you just think Michelle Obama has excellent legs, or you love the way Tina Fey says "William Ayers" (both totally valid).

Some things are universal to all elections, though, and it's at this point that I give credit to and issue rebukes toward the bolsterer and bane of every political campaign: the pundits. The Candy Crowleys, Donna Braziles, James Carvilles and Lou Dobbseseseses. Your opinion on punditry largely depends on your perception of the media's responsibility to the public, and punditry is the break in the track, the place where the train goes largely off the rails and starts reporting on shit that really doesn't matter. Nobody has ever cared about anything a pundit has said, or anything they ever will.

The bottom line in this sort of... impassioned rant upon which I'm about to go off is that TV news pundits are ultimately tools of the campaigns. I don't think there are very many people out there who would argue that Barack Obama's connection to William Ayers is even remotely relevant. In fact, I'd say it's not particularly interesting either, although that does a good deal to betray my own personal political leanings (although I don't personally have any real enmity toward John McCain, a decent enough guy [as far as the GOP goes] whom I feel is at best someone who's had to make a bunch of bizarre compromises to appeal to the more extreme sections of his voting base and at worst is just a puppet of the far right, though I'd argue his short temper and lack of empathy make him far from the ideal president). Nor do I think Sarah Palin's claim of having put a jet on eBay particularly needs to be debunked -- in fact, I'd prefer to leave it up in the air (no pun intended) because I believe it adds to her air of fabulous craziness.

In these two cases (and particularly, I've found, on behalf of the McCain campaign, though I added the Palin example in some half-assed attempt at bipartisanship), the good people at CNN have just acted as tools to disseminate campaign literature. It requires no actual work, and it's journalism at its laziest. You can interview Joe the Plumber as often as David Caruso drops witty one-liners and doffs his glasses on CSI: Miami, and that doesn't make either of them relevant. Does that make it bad? In a perfect world, I'm saying no. It entertains the fuck out of me, for one thing, as does everything about the broken-ass US political beast (although the enfeebled Canadian goblin isn't much better, and I don't mean Stéphane Dion) -- my particular favourite is the primary caucus system, where you publically group up with your neighbours and cheer for the candidate you love best, as though some kind of gigantic pep rally is the best way to decide the most powerful person in America. Notice I don't say the free world, because y'all bitches gettin' overtaken by China. Belee dat.

However, this isn't a perfect world. Rather, it's a world full of trailer park-living, cousin-fucking, backwater Joe Six-Pack hicks who FW: FW: FW each other emails in gigantic 18-point fuchsia Comic Sans, deriding Senator Obama for believing in the Koo-ran, comparing his wife to a monkey, and proposing longwinded, often bigoted speeches purportedly by Ben Stein, Bill Cosby, and other favourite figures which invoke the "good old days," rather than attributing them to their actual authors, crazy motherfuckers with volatile stills of moonshine and a Mustang up on blocks in the backyard. And in that sense, punditry is destructive. Because Barack Obama is not a socialist and Sarah Palin did not flip off a small child at a rally (although I would strongly advocate voting for her if she had, so it's a pity), but pundits discuss the issues as though they hold any weight. And they don't.

On its surface, I love it, mostly because I'm a giant gossip and I love hearing how Joe Biden asked a guy in a wheelchair to stand and receive applause. But it doesn't matter an iota, and it saddens me to think people will go to the voting booth with that in mind. Enjoy the political gossip for what it is, and keep the issues separate. And vote on the latter.

With my love/hate of punditry aside, this election is tomorrow, and it's reminiscent of a high school graduation: half relief, half disappointment. It's gonna be a long time before we have an election like this, full of dynamic personalities and crazy gaffes and a Vice Presidential candidate who shoots wolves out of helicopters (although Dick Cheney shot old men in the face, which I guess is almost as good). So, in that spirit, it's time for me to give my yearbook comments on the various figures of the 2008 election:

To Rep. Ron Paul: I've always hated 4chan and the internet in general, but I want to thank you for solidifying that. I also want to thank you for proving, once and for all, that the internet vote doesn't amount to shit, because all of the web denizens out in the vastness of the WWs are too busy playing Second Life, masturbating to anthropomorphic wolf porn, or cultivating their neckbeards to get out and vote. As fun as it would have been to have a cantakerous 78-year-old vagina doctor in the White House, somehow I'm a bit relieved that we won't be inaugurating President Paul in '09.

To Gov. Mike Huckabee: You are crazy as hell. Not fabulously crazy like Bette Davis or Beyoncé, but actually, legitimately crazy. I'm sure your plan to put AIDS patients on an ice floe and float them over a waterfall was a revolutionary one back in 1992, when it was still wildly out-of-date, but any amount of backtracking now still doesn't make it any less insane. Your success in this election, however marginal, frightens me and makes me distrust Americans more than ever. I have no idea how you and Obama won caucuses in the same state. Also, your family is ugly as hell. No disrespect, but seriously y'all: Google Image "huckabee family" and tell me I'm wrong

To Rep. Dennis Kucinich: Though I agree with everything you've ever said and every viewpoint you've ever laid forth, you will never hold any public office higher than Congressman. I'd love you to prove me wrong, but in the meantime, please enjoy the fact that you dodged an assassination attempt from the Chicago mafia, have been re-elected twelve years straight, and are married to a British Amazon supermodel wife even though you are a tiny little leprechaun man. Know that karma has your back, even if you don't always get what you want.

To Fmr. Sen. Mike Gravel: I'm pretty sure you're still out there campaigning, even after being turned down by the Democrats, the Libertarians, the Constitution Party, the Green Party, the Boston Tea Party, and then having created your own Mike Gravel Party, and subsequently losing that nomination as well. Thank you for being everyone's angry old senile grandfather, and for peppering the web with avant-garde campaign videos like "Rock" and "Fire." Sarah Palin may be the pageant girl of this election, but you definitely win Miss Congeniality.

To Fmr. Rep. Cynthia McKinney: You are possibly the best in the world, and I would almost consider voting for the Green Party just for the extremely slim chance that my vote makes every electronic voting system in the world malfunction and have you sweep the election in a landslide. I would love four years of President McKinney abusing the press, swearing when she thinks she's off-mic, throwing tantrums and refusing to wear her ID badge. People like you are the reason America needs more than two viable parties. We need a president who wouldn't talk with Iran because Mahmoud Ahmadinejad looked at her funny, or, as you might express it, "with stink eye."

To Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton: I don't know what's worse, that you lost the one thing you clearly wanted most in the world, or that your feminist mantle is being taken on by Sarah Palin, who wants to prosecute rape victims for wearing clothes that were "just asking for it." Go and have yourself a nice extramarital affair and forget all about this mess. God knows you've earned it.

To Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Prof. William Ayers: I get it. I really do. Sorry your views fall too far outside the aforementioned cousin-fucking mainstream to have anyone pay attention to your ideas. Make like Hillary and wash your hands of the whole thing. Or else work together on a plan to bomb Whitey.

To Sen. Joe Biden: You talk so much. You talk soooo much. You have delivered sentences that are longer than the body of this article. If you are elected VP tomorrow, be grateful, never speak in public, and do your best not to shoot anyone in the face, and you'll have already been better than the last guy. Also, way to go on that VP debate. You did pretty well for yourself, even if your opponent wasn't...

To Gov. Sarah Palin: Jesus Christ, where do I start? Thanks for bringing Tina Fey to the public consciousness. Thanks for making Elisabeth Hasselbeck degrade herself to a histrionic mess with each new day, not that she needed the help. Thanks for always having impeccable hair and a fierce new $20,000 blazer with each appearance. Thanks for making up a lesbian friend that one time. Thanks for giving the worst interview in the history of televised interviews -- I've seen five-year-old peewee athletes do better special interest fluff pieces. Thanks for obliterating the G at the end of every present progressive verb. Thanks for providing a legion of women with a new novelty Hallowe'en costume this year. Thanks for ensuring that your appearance will give every contemporary piece of pop culture a dated "2008" feel years from now, like O.J. Simpson in 1995 or Michael Dukakis in 1992. And, most importantly, thanks for almost, but not quite, fading away from the public eye if you lose tomorrow. Because as much as I think you embody the kind of aggressive ignorance that makes everyone incredulous about Alaska, I don't think I quite want you out of my life entirely. Become a consultant or something, like Geraldine Ferraro. There's nothing the GOP audience loves like pretty and brainless.

To Sen. John McCain: I don't hate you. Your campaigning sucks, your desperate terror-mongering is unbecoming, and I blame you for creating a beast you can't even control. You're working to actively deny civil rights to millions of people. And yet, I don't hate you. I do, though, question your choice of Sarah Palin, aka Harriet Miers if her nomination went through. It just screams of senility. Which, ultimately, is the problem: you're old as hell. And when people say "the VP is only a heartbeat away from the presidency," they're not talking about Obama, who has an off-chance of being assassinated, or getting in a car or plane crash if fate intervenes. They are talking about you. You are a million years old and you have had all of the cancers, all at once. Your heart is literally going to stop beating and you will keel over and die, probably within the week. And when that happens, we're all going to be kept nice and toasty under the book-burnings held by President Palin. Thanks.

To Sen. Barack Obama: You tick all of the boxes. You're eloquent, inventive, and your wife is probably the next Jackie O. (Please don't be the next J.F.K.) You will hopefully win the election, at which point the economy you've been saddled with will prove a logistical impossibility. You'll quietly be voted out of office four years later by a vengeful public whipped up into an ignorant froth, and then it's Farenheit 451, Palin-style.



So that's that. I'll be meticulously keeping up with my election map between rehearsals. I trust you all to do the same. And to all of the Americans out there: vote. Seriously. Ideally for Cynthia McKinney. That bitch means all kinds of fierce business.