Bet you're glad that's done

I’m Keith McLendon, and I approved this message.

Of course I did.

I wrote the damned thing.

After a given candidate has run on for his 30 seconds about how evil he thinks his opponent is, they then have to let you know (in no uncertain terms), that they agree wholeheartedly with the words that were just coming out of their mouths.

I know PACs (Political Action Committees) pay for a lot of advertising. These messages do not come directly from the candidate’s campaign, so the PACs would like you to know that the candidate they are endorsing actually does agree with the sentiment and ideas they have branded the candidate with.

Thus all the “I approved this message”.

When the candidate himself (or herself) reads the message, that should be a fairly large clue the candidate “approves” the message.

Do we really need the “I approve this message”?

I guess it’s all just code that “I’m (fill in the blank) and this message was paid for by Koch Industries.”

Maybe not Koch, but possibly some other tendrils-slimed-into-our-election-system corporation.

Of course, the aforementioned corporations don’t really put their names at the ends of the ads they paid for.

Nope.

Corporations are people now.

According to our Supreme Court corporations are “individuals”.

I know it’s true. I went fishing with my good buddy Chase Manhattan just the other day.

Corporate “individuals” might want to invest in a candidate—but hey, let’s dress up as a shell “individual” that can then contribute to a very unspecific yet patriotically-named PAC.

It’s kind of like a costume party where candidates can be seen bobbing for cashy apples, playing pin-the-policy-on-the-candidate and spin-the-truth.

… and now you know why we vote so close to Halloween kids!

Whew!

***

Then there’s the election Mind Reversion Vortex and assorted election medical conditions.

The Mind Reversion Vortex is best described like this: The higher the level of office a person runs for, the lower the intelligence level of the campaign run.

Let’s take look at some general examples shall we?

At the local level, campaigns are usually still about what the person running for office wants to accomplish. Those campaigning seem to believe the voters can handle the issues and discuss their solutions in a fair amount of detail.

How adult. How mature.

At the county level, the issues get a little bigger and now candidates think they need to distill their answers and goals.

Meh. I guess we all just graduated high school. Did I just get stupider?

At the state level though, you start to see candidates watering the dirt with a mischievous gleam in their eye.

One of the best ads I saw was about how the candidate’s opponent almost gave our educational system to … *gasp* … the president! The only thing that stopped this madness was … ta-dah! … the candidate running for office. This was all done very tastefully with photos and arrows so the message couldn’t be lost on us simple folk.

Wow, really. Why do I feel like watching a tweener vampire movie now? Ick!

Mind Reversion Vortex at full power captain!

At the national level, it’s a full-blown preschool playground mud pie fling-fest. This is where the dread medical affliction known as Election-Toddlerism kicks in.

You no longer need to know what my platform is. All you need to know is that my opponent is THE DEVIL!

He, she or it voted the “wrong” way too many times and “That’s not RIGHT for (insert state or country)”.

Going back a few years, I remember a few people actually saying “Obama is the anti-Christ!”

Really. No kidding. Pinky swear and everything.

They were even serious.

I would guess this was because he was wildly popular to begin his presidential marathon.

I guess nobody trusts that kind of runaway popularity.

Now that Obama’s presidency has become an extremely unpopular trudge to the finish line, does anyone want to eat those words?

I didn’t think so.

They just wanted to throw some mud too.

Election-Toddlerism is highly contagious.

One way to avoid Election-Toddlerism is to quarantine yourself from radio and television (or use your video recorder to fast forward through these devolving messages) every two years. Any media that involves “waves” is a hotbed for Election-Toddlerism’s incubation phase; You’re-a-Poopyheaditus.

I think newspapers are largely (not completely—see ad noted earlier) immune to You’re-a-Poopyheaditus and Election-Toddlerism because newspapers require a lot of something you don’t see or hear much of over the air. That something is also usually beyond a toddler’s grasp.

That thing would be READING.

The ability to ingest and digest what you read has been known to keep these dread diseases at bay.

Texting doesn’t count either. That R the TV version of werdz, C?

OMG! JK!

Like, totes learn how to construct a whole and viable sentence, dude.

***

See what the elections do to me? This article hit more different notes than a choirboy going through puberty.

***

In any case, the mid-terms are finished and we can all take a rest from the idiocy for a while.

… until presidential campaigning begins next week.