Glass House Award: Meghan McCain

Hi, I'm Meghan. Have You Met My Resume?

Breaking news: McCain is scared of Christine O'Donnell's candidacy. It made The Washington Post on Monday. Apparently, McCain was on ABC's This Week and the subject of O'Donnell came up. He said that O'Donnell was a "nutjob" and that her candidacy scares him because O'Donnell "has no real history, no real success in any kind of business." A Republican Senator taking shots at a Republican candidate? Wow, no wonder The Post ran it on A4. That is serious news.

Sorry, what? Meghan McCain was on This Week and said that about O'Donnell? Are you fucking with us? Really? The twenty-six year old tartlet of John McCain doesn't think that O'Donnell has a legitimate place in politics because she is inexperienced? Have we got that about right? That it's just so scary to Ms. McCain that someone with so little experience is being catapulted into the national spotlight. We get that. Would you feel better, Megs, if she first wrote a blog about her famous Daddy? Would that qualify as enough "history" to deserve a voice on the national stage? Perhaps if she spun it out to book length and gave it some coy, hipsterish title like Dirty Sexy Politics? Could she run for public office then?

For Meghan McCain to say that with a straight face, without a hint of irony or self-awareness... well that's just next gen hypocrisy. But this is what we've come to... the Paris Hilton of politics vetting the curriculum vitae of Senate candidates on national TV. Exactly when did This Week hire the casting director from Entertainment Tonight? Maybe the show could book Miley Cyrus to offer her thoughts on the Pakistan insurgency. Or go all out and schedule an entire week of political insights from children of successful people. And Washington Post, no more burying these important news stories on A4. We're weeks away from a pivotal mid-term election so the next time Meghan McCain has a thought - front page all the way. Above the fold where it belongs. After that you can get back to contemplating why Howard Kurtz jumped ship for The Daily Beast.

The Virus Theory of the November Elections

Vote O'Donnell! (Yeah, we said it)

Folks, there's a lot of batshit crazy loose in the territories. Well, to be honest it's always there, lurking under the surface, but the nation's immune system is more compromised than Mexico's police force. Its weakened condition is due to a rare confluence of events: bad economy, shifting demographics, ten years of war, hot button social issues and a political system incentivized to fail. As a result, America's ability to fight off political extremism is limited. That's right, political flu season has arrived America.

The initial symptoms were well documented: rage, rabid political extremism, loss of higher cognitive function, and a severe allergic reaction to logic, facts or common sense. It was also confined to certain population segments, which led to a certain complacency and the assumption that the whole thing would burn itself out. But during the primaries we began to see a new symptom: the tendency to vote for whomever was promising the most outlandish solutions to a problem. It was as if someone rounded up homeless paranoid schizophrenics, cleaned them up and encouraged them to rant into a microphone. What once made people give someone a wide birth on a city sidewalk was suddenly getting them nominated for the Senate. A sure sign of a of a full blown, political pandemic.

The general consensus seems to be that should any of the infected get elected to the House or Senate that it would be a disaster. We disagree. It would be a disaster if they all got elected, but it would also be a disaster if none were. Allow us to elaborate.

Crazy ideas are like viruses; they're extremely contagious and tend to spread out of control. Particularly when times are hard as previously discussed. Like any body, the United States needs time to develop antibodies but in the meantime we're looking at serious collateral damage. Right now, Christine O'Donnell and her ilk, in the abstract, sounds good to a lot of people who have been exposed. The candidates have staked out crazy positions, labeled their scapegoats and proposed hardline solutions that will punish the un-American among us. It's appealing on some level to unleash O'Donnell or Sharron Angle on the Senate because no one that voted for her stopped to imagine them on the Senate Appropriations or Foreign Relations Committees. Stop now, and imagine it. We'll include a soothing visual to help calm you down after:

Focus on the duckies... so cute.

We're sorry we had to do that, but don't you feel your immune system is a little bit stronger now? Majority Whip Sharron Angle! Dirty pool, but can't you feel those white blood cells multiply? It's tough love, but it's the only way. That's why we're rooting for Christine O'Donnell in November. Rooting big. We won't start to feel safe until we see Senator O'Donnell crack one of her big, loony smiles on the Senate floor. It's not that we're admirers of O'Donnell. Her pro-witch, anti-masturbation stance conflicts with our pleasuring ourselves in ruby slippers fetish. But it's no longer realistic to just let this thing run its course. Pro-active, CDC style measures need to be implemented. We need a vaccine.

What is a flu vaccine? It's where you take a small, relatively harmless strand of the virus and inject it into the healthy body. The body's immune system reacts by developing antibodies so that when the real thing comes along the body is already mobilized. Christine O'Donnell is our vaccine. We don't want all the crazies elected, but we do want one.

On her own, Christine O'Donnell will be harmless, embarrassing and will remind people what happens when you elect contentious incompetents to high office. Her lunacy, and ineffectual dimwittedness will be center stage and as people react with horror to having elected her, the government and nation will develop antibodies. Now, we know that having her roaming the corridors of power is an unappatizing thought. And yes there's the possibility of her doing a little damage, but on her own it will be limited and she will make the thought of anymore of her brethren getting in patently absurd, but it's either inject a little now or risk coming down with the plague later.

Gesundheit.

Why So Serious, Bill Kristol?

Wanna Know How I Got These Scars?

There's a sequence in The Dark Knight when Bruce Wayne is discussing the Joker with Alfred. The Joker, originally hired by the criminal powers of Gotham to kill Batman, has spun out of control and proved to be uncontrollable and a far greater menace than anyone imagined, threatening both the city and the very men who unleashed him. Alfred, speaking of the crime families, argues, "You crossed the line first, Sir. You squeezed them, you hammered them to the point of desperation. And in their desperation they turned to a man they didn't fully understand." We imagine a similar conversation is currently underway about Christine O'Donnell and the Tea Party Movement as a whole.

See, it was all fun and games when the GOP thought it had the Tea Party under it's thumb. For two years the T.P. was just a valuable nuisance to unleash on Democrats, stir up useful yet unseemly topics that the GOP didn't want pinned directly to them, and "energize the base." Well mission accomplished - the basest elements of the right are gruesomely energized. You've frothed them up better than a Starbucks barista. Don't let the lack of clown makeup fool you, they're every bit as crazy, spun up and out for blood since the GOP helped convince them that their way of life is in danger. They weren't energized by reason; they were energized by emotion. So if Bill Kristol, Karl Rove and Co. think the Tea Party can be calmed by reason now...well, good luck with that.

The challenge of wooing populist, fringe politics in any age is not allowing it to overrun you. It's a bit like building a fire in your living room: its comforting and lovely to look at when it's snapping and crackling in the fireplace, but best keep an eye on it lest a hot ember leap onto your deep pile shag carpet. Exit picturesque hearth enter bonfire in your house. But that's the danger of courting the extremes of any ideology, lend them your legitimacy, boost their ego, pander to their delusions and they may discover that they don't need you after all. They may just discover that they've outgrown and outpaced you and you need to burn, too. Did you really think that you could wink, wink and smugly cover for them when they yelled "nigger" at Rep. John Lewis, and then neatly rein them in when election season rolled around?

Truth is, populist movements aren't controlled, they're ridden - ridden the way fleas ride an elephant. You fool yourself into thinking you're in control until you try and steer, and only then you realize that the reins are just for show. Now you're on the back of a crazed, pissed off elephant that knows you're there and wants you off. Did you entirely miss the end of the French Revolution? You know the part where Robespierre et al. got a taste of their own guillotine? How are those necks anyway? So in the immortal words of Gandhi as he sensed he was losing control of his movement, “There go my people. And I must hurry to follow them. For I am their leader”!

Do These Glasses Suit Me?

Ordinarily we like to have people die in a fire around here, but it's feeling a wee redundant this morning since the GOP is surveying the charred remains of Mike Castle's candidacy, and their chances of winning a senate seat in Delaware. We think that's enough arson for one day so we'll just point out that perhaps the GOP have turned to a movement that they "don't fully understand." That a week of attacks on O'Donnell from serious, thoughtful members of the party had about as much effect as a Justin Beiber sleeper hold. And remarks from Kristol such as, "I know Sarah Palin. I respect Sarah Palin. And with all due respect- Christine O'Donnell is no Sarah Palin" reinforces not undermines the legitimacy of her candidacy. Doesn't it indicate that the Republicans have become the Tea Party's enemies too? Not as much fun now, is it? They've unleashed yet another grinning clown on American politics, and with all due respect to Bill Kristol she is Sarah Palin, it just took her much, much longer to get her college degree.