The Audacity of Hopelessness

“I still haven’t gotten the invitation to your birthday party.” “It’s in the mail, you dork.” “I hate you.”

Or With Whom Would You Rather Share a Geritol?

What is this, high school? The McCain campaign of late has come off looking like a cabal of meat-headed jocks who can’t seem to do anything right against the nerds and are resorting to dirty pranks against the shiny, happy kids. Their Big Man On Campus is losing the class president election because said popularity contest is swiftly going to their shiny, happy BMOC.

So, popularity, when it goes to the other guy, is rebranded as an evil by the frustrated, furious and befuddled jocks of the GOP.

Yet, where was this self-serving bias against popularity eight years ago when some genius thought up the question, “Who would you rather have a beer with?”

Barack Obama’s growing popularity, however legitimately earned, is merely a reflection of what is and always will be a $300,000,000 popularity contest that is still decided not by the popular vote but the electoral college. Yet to Camp McCain, the worthless popular vote is in itself scary and for good reason.

Considering whom we’d “chosen” eight years ago in the wake of the beer meme, we’d exposed ourselves as an electorate with all the refined decision-making skills of starving children set loose in a candy store. That alone, I have to admit, makes me suspicious of Obama’s actual substance.

But popularity is not an inherent trait or quality but a state conferred on one by a populace. McCain’s attack ad can then be extended without much effort as saying to the American voting public (especially progressive liberals) “You suck for choosing the other guy.” It’s barely concealed contempt for the will and voice of the people. In other words, "Pox populi." A pox on all you for not liking me.

We saw this time and again during the Lieberman/Lamont senate campaign in 2006. After Lamont threw his hat in the ring, Holy Joe had the audacity to say on TV that Lamont was audacious in thinking he could represent Connecticut better than he.

We saw it again after the primary was won by Lamont when Dick Cheney called his supporters “al Qaeda types.” It's the classic wifebeater mentality. As long as things are going their way and their egos are fed, they're lovey dovey. The minute wifey decides to file for divorce and move in with someone else, their true colors come out and suddenly you're the biggest slut on the block.

Popularity’s only for our guys, doncha know, so you’d better vote for them or Al Gore, John Kerry and Osama bin Laden will fuck your grandfathers while Barack Obama videotapes the whole thing and puts their sodomy on Youtube for shits and giggles.

And considering his ongoing hissy fit regarding Obama’s popularity, how does this not in itself make the chronically underemployed McCain synonymous with other celebrities famed for immature antics outside of their own stalled careers?