Mon, August 10, 2009

Sorry I haven't written for a while. The past two weeks, I've had these migraines that feel like Ghost Rider combined with Two-Face from Batman. (Your head is on fire, but only one half.) The three weeks before that, I was just lazy or didn't feel like sharing my genius with you. Deal with it. I have a girlfriend now – blogs are for dorky loners who post from their mother's basements in their underwear. Now I sit in her basement in my underwear and make out with MaryBeth. It's a whole new life!

Anyway, yesterday at a crappy home goods store, we bought a little plaque on clearance which featured an engraved quote from Bill Clinton:

There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what's right with America.

It's one of my favorite Clinton quotes (so much so that I parodied it in a recent screenplay!) and it was on sale for $4.00, so we figured why not? (Ironically, one thing that's wrong with America is that people spend too much money on stupid unnecessary shit, but right now that's what'll get us out of this economic nosedive, so I don't know whether I'm what's right with America or what's wrong with America today, but either way, you're welcome.)

It got me thinking about how much I love Clinton (despite his many flaws), and how Obama is sort of the heir to Clinton in terms of being beloved (despite many flaws, most of which we probably haven't seen yet – but smoking is a big one, yuck). Which reminded me of something from November of 2000.

My very first response when the announcement came across NPR that Bush had won – that eerie, incomprehensible night – was that he would be so terrible the Democrats couldn't help but beat him the next time around. My quote, verbatim, was: "Well, at least the Democrats will be able to get a black, female, dead cat elected in 2004." (Nothing against blacks, women, or dead cats – but, traditionally, they don't win presidential elections.)

As I thought about it this morning, I realized that in 2008, we ran a black guy and a woman, and one of them won! Not bad! I admit, I was wrong about the dead cat. We ran one of those against Bush in 2004, and he lost by a narrow margin. Still, two out of three isn't bad! I didn't even go to college for this!