sex & the presidential debate

as regular readers of this blog already know, i don’t have a television. but i was determined to watch the final debate on a big screen, hopefully with a bunch of like-minded citizens. tribal spears art gallery down the street, which had scheduled a debate watch party, was closed for emergency repairs. what to do? i didn’t want to sit in a bar all night!

that left only the musem of sex on 27th street. needing some exercise, i walked the five miles downtown and got there about 20 minutes before the opening. things were a little disorganized, as people came and went and milled around in the lobby and generally tried to find out wtf was going on. eventually we were allowed upstairs.

the MOS has two large galleries, one with a 30″ plasma TV and both with countless small screens hanging all over the walls. when we arrived, there was much fucking and sucking going on, a different “event” on every screen. there were a lot more TVs than there were seats. in fact, there weren’t any seats at all, save for some ornamental architecture in front of the big screen. us old fogies settled ourselves there pretty much immediately, while the instreaming twenty-somethings got their free drinks and giggled at the exhibits.

two senior citizens behind me were deciding whether or not they were going to stay. one said she was leaving, though she never got around to it. the cock onscreen was much larger than life, with massive drops of scented KY dripping gently down the licked shaft. seemed none of us really wanted to watch all of that, but it wasn’t easy to not watch it, as anywhere you looked in the room there were more couples (albeit smaller) energetically and enthusiastically doing the same thing.

i like sex as much as anybody, but this wasn’t exactly what i came to see. at 8:10, i took out my iPhone and read the pre-debate conversations at some of my favorite blogs (firedoglake, dailykos, huffingtonpost).

while the sex stars were screwing and the seniors were blushing and the candidates were prepping and the gen-Xers were exploring, a bunch of iraq veterans were being attacked by the police outside of hofstra university. while they assembled for a prescheduled nonviolent protest, the mounted cops charged their horses right at the vets (one had to be taken to the hospital) and arrested six. none of them seemed to know why.

i know why. eight years of GWB using the police as his personal gladiators to crush any and all dissent wherever and however possible have created an atmosphere where this kind of behavior is rewarded. look at what happened at the RNC in st. paul. for that matter, look what happened at the republican convention in NYC four years ago. the present administration WANTS this, and out-of-control police are confident that they will not be punished.

here, the unarrested (so far) veterans speak:

as 9pm nears, the space around me starts to fill up. we’re in sort of an alcove, with room for floor-sitting between the bulwarks and standing room around the edges where people can watch either this big screen or one of the smalls. an elderly gent settles himself beside me while onscreen a man is ramming his massive schlong all the way into the ass of a grunting woman. the soundtrack is low (thank god) but audible. after a few moments he turns to me and says, “that’s exactly what they’ve been doing to the country for the last eight years” and everybody cracks up.

when the debate finally starts, there is a big problem with the sound, which seems to be working only in the gallery where we are not. but the museum staff is all over it, and in under 10 minutes barack and john are, if not exactly booming through the halls, at least able to be heard.

anyone who watched the debate might well have been left with the burning question “who the fuck is joe the plumber?” after i found out who he was, i realized how stupid it was for mccain to bring him up, much less bring him up relentlessly: he just singlehandedly assured that this video will go viral, and it’s a great advert for obama. watch:

okay, then! who is this guy really? his name is joseph wurzelbacher, and the available facts about his business don’t exactly match what he said to obama at the rally. well hey, if he’s a republican in disguise at least he wasn’t screaming “off with his head” like many of the wingnuts have been doing.

if i read a transcript of this debate i would probably think that mccain did okay. not great, but okay. yeah, he was a bit obnoxious, a little more on the attack than was really appropriate (he answered almost every policy question by criticizing an element of obama’s policies rather than detailing his own). but watching it was a whole other story. mccain looked like he was about to explode most of the time, as twitchy as heath ledger in The Dark Knight. at one point, late in the debate, mccain was so upset at what obama was saying that he actually seemed to be holding his breath. someone in the crowd (there were about 75 of us in the museum) stage-whispered “he looks insane” and heads nodded all around the room.

i don’t ever want john mccain sitting across the table from another world leader looking like that, practically a fire-breathing lunatic. i don’t want the old guy’s beauty rest to be disturbed with an urgent question concerning our national security (the famous 3am phone call).

cenk uygur said mccain looked like an old boxer who has been in too many fights which just about nails it.

john, we all know that you’ve wanted to be president for a very long time. that you’ve tried and failed again and again. we all know (including you, i assume) that this is your last shot. we understand how very badly you want this one thing.

and you know what? if you rather than george bush had been elected in 2000, that would not have been a bad thing at all. if we had to have a republican in the white house you were, back then, a pro-choice independent republican who wasn’t afraid to speak your own mind. that was then. now you have become a pandering, name-calling, rabble-rousing has-been with nothing but a dipshit fundamentalist secessionist hatemongerer beauty queen ready to step in the minute you drop dead. even conservative republicans are distancing themselves from you in droves.

america deserves better than that. senator mccain, your time has come and gone. accept it. think about how you want to go out, and how you’d like to spend your retirement. you, unlike most americans will certainly have enough money on hand to do whatever you like in your twilight years.

except, of course, to run this country.

finally, here is the ad that ABC refused to run after the debate, saying it was “too controversial”. maybe i’m just jaded, as i don’t see anything controversial in this 30-second spot. you decide. then pass it on: