You Know Your Campaign Is In Trouble ...

... When you lose a battle of wits to Paris Hilton:

Video from Funny or Die

See you at the debates, bitches!

— Paris Hilton

The World's Dirtiest Joke

A new act comes in to a vaudeville booker. It's a man, a woman, a little girl, and a little dog. They're all well dressed and clean-cut and wholesome looking.

"So what's your act?" the agent asks.

"It's kind of hard to describe", the man replies. "We'll show you."

So they start into a sweet little song-and-dance number. However, it starts to change. Soon is is the most ghastly, obscene routine imaginable. It's the kind of act that would be banned in Thailand.

(This is what makes this the World's Dirtiest Joke — it's all in your head. I'm sure you can think of things that would gross you out totally that I might consider a mildly boring kink, and vice versa. Just imagine the grossest thing you possibly can.)

As the act comes to a close, it changes back to a sweet little song-and-dance. They've worked cleaning themselves up and rearranging clothing into the act, so that when they finish, they're all clean-cut and wholesome looking again.

The agent is aghast. "Well, what do you think of it?" the man asks.

The agent is speechless. He tries to think of something to say, but all that comes out is "What do you call your act"?

"The Aristocrats"

The metaphor is obvious.

Woof!

The latest Bush ad shows a bunch of wolves being spooky. Sheesh! What are these guys thinking? Wolves are not a scary image to Americans. There is no record (including Native American legends) of a North American wolf ever attacking a human. Nature programs have rammed the picture of warm fuzzy lovable wolves down our throats for years. It's only been in the last couple of years that you'd know that wolves are carnivores. Before then, you'd think they ate nothing but Alpo.

Hypothesis: the Republicans are outsourcing their ads to Russia.

North American wolves are harmless.

Unless you're a sheep.

LATER — Now, of course, we have Wolfpacks for Truth:

They told us we were shooting a Greenpeace commercial!

As We Dodge Another Bullet ...

Cards top Astros, to face BoSox in World Series

If the Astros had won, the national media would probably have collapsed with a case of terminal Metaphor Overload. I don't think they could stand having both the Presidency and the World Series be Massachusetts vs. Texas.

Rattlesnakes

Continuing with the RedState fluff piece, the "folksiness" secion (as opposed to the "character" section, which is actually most of the post) goes off into fearmongering:

Out here we have rattlers, big ones, that if you approach will sink their venomous teeth into your leg without hesitation.

Rattlesnakes are generally pretty harmless. Leave them alone and they'll leave you alone. Normally, on the desert, you'll never see one. They can sense you long before you see them -- and they want nothing to do with you. (You're too big to eat.) The urban equivalent is broken bottles-- nasty if you tangle with them, but easy to avoid.

The traditional Republican approach to issues is based on fear. Fear of terrorists, fear of crime, fear of drugs, fear of foreigners. Most of the Republicans' bogeymen are like rattlesnakes -- dangerous, but much less dangerous than presented. You'd never know from watching TV, for example, that violent crime has been going down lately. Read James Lileks for an example of somebody who is pants- pissing terrified by the Republican bogeymen.

Now, one of the oddities of "the fear card" is that politicians never seem to get called on it. "We elected you. We don't feel safer. Goodbye" just doesn't seem to happen. Reminds me of old- time medicine -- if you're sick, attach leeches. If you don't get better, you need more leeches.

When Democrats try to play the fear card, they generally sound whiny instead of scary. I don't know if this is an advantage or a disadvantage.