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Campaign Journal Virginia toilet-seat maker Cecil Rust looks at me with tears in his eyes and asks, "Why is politics so mean now?" Halfway across the country, Gloria McLennan of St. Louis says she will skip her first presidential election out of disgust, "There's so much hate – and I hate that!” In Miami, Chuck Agrait watches the morning news, stirs sweetener into his 5 th rum and coke and shares these bitter thoughts: "With the exception of Avery Ant, all politicians are assholes.” Brother, you got that right. From the blustering rhetoric of the gasbag candidates and their poisonous advertising campaigns, to the conspiracy theories and nasty, nasty, nasty, invectives trafficked on the Internet by untold partisans, the political process is awash in acrimony. The candidates are throwing dirt, chairs, wild accusations and anything else that isn’t bolted to the floor. Why? Well, because it’s fun. But there are other reasons... It's a close election in a divided nation and the stakes are high; there’s division on the war in Iraq and on terror, no one’s sure whether Bush wants to invade Canada for it’s cheap drugs (which may or may not be deadly) and Republicans who used to love Bruce “The Boss” Springsteen are as confused as Democrats who listen to Alice Cooper. And through all this arose (sound the trumpets!) the Internet, a megaphone for every disgruntled, disenchanted disenfranchised, disinterested, or disturbed individual who’s ready to do some dissing. Folks, the "Silent Majority" (that’s us) is bellowing and there’s no shutting it the f*&k up. "Bush is a monster," read an e-mail signed DBarrett and sent to news organizations after the first debate. "Kerry is a craggy-faced puke," read another And that’s the fan mail. Of course, the guy’s in Washington are just as crass, stupid and even more vocal: Potty mouthed, Vice President Dick Cheney curses a lawmaker on the Senate floor and instead of apologizing he urinates publicly whenever he can. Alan Keyes calls Cheney's lesbian daughter a selfish hedonist – and then gets drunk and puts the moves on her because he’s “always wanted to do it with a hedonist.” Republicans question Sen. John Kerry's war medals and accuse of him of wearing a toupee. Democrats denounce Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard and suggest he has a small penis. Kerry calls Bush's Republicans "the most crooked ... lying group of venereal disease infected baboons I've ever seen. Elizabeth Ossoff, an expert in political psychology at St. Anselm College in Manchester, N.H., said America has seen worse, "If you look at what John Adams said about Thomas Jefferson, it was pretty nasty stuff... I don’t think I have to tell you what he said... I’m sure you can use your imaginations... Let me just say it had something to with the fact that he knew that Jefferson was doing the deed with his slaves... Who were black... I won’t say anymore other than he used the ‘n’ word combined with a pejorative for having sex... Oh, and he also called him a ‘degenerate cock smoker...’ and an ‘ass-wipe,’ and a ‘dickhead...’ But I’ll leave it to your imagination. Oh, and a ‘filthy shit head!’” Having finished with her litany of swear words and now smoking a cigarette and looking quite satisfied, Ossoff continued, “When anxieties rise, people try to find a way to make themselves feel better. And one way to feel better is to try to find a scapegoat," she said Bush is the Democrats' scapegoat. Polls show a significant amount of Kerry's support comes from Democrats who are motivated by their hatred of the president, not their loyalty to Kerry. And Mr. Kerry couldn’t be happier about this. Some other nastiness:
It can border on the comical. Internet partisans spread unsubstantiated rumors that a bulge in the back of Bush's suit coat was a transmission device allowing his aides to feed him answers during the first debate, when in fact, everyone knows that President Bush is a Robot and it was just an electrical cord plugged into his back socket. Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano said both parties deserve blame for the escalation of evisceration, but part of it is the sign of the times. "The big issues are so hard, much like an erect penis. Health care is complicated, like a ménage et trios. Immigration is complicated like s filthy f*&$!en Republican. Iraq is a complicated as those Democrat dog turds," she said. "It's easier to get your arms around whether President Bush is a dummy who had his lines fed to him. It's easier to think John Kerry is a fraud because of what some guys from Vietnam say. And hey, I’m okay with that and so is America.”
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