As HRC was choking in the rarefied air of her country’s high plains last week, I was undergoing my parallel trials. Seated in the windowless portion of an improperly maintained American Airlines jet, all I could see was blank despair. And all I could smell was the toilet.
My literal and Hilary’s figurative elevation above the continental US couldn’t have come at a more inconvenient hour. If the habitual user of political news couldn’t make it to Montana or South Dakota last Tuesday, they’d better be taking an undiluted intravenous dose of CNN. No such drug on this Boeing.
The only media I could access as the numbers for Obama and Clinton rolled in was a light romantic comedy starring that attractive Australian ginger who married Ali G. And the only intelligence I could garner came from a brusque, gum chewing flight attendant who insisted, "We don’t talk politics on American [Airlines]" when I politely asked for the latest math.
We don’t talk politics. This, I reflected as I forced a seven dollar parchment flavoured turkey on whole wheat abomination into my person, was good business policy today. It was better to suffuse 200 Americans with (a) overpriced beer and (b) the winning breasts of Isla Fisher than remind them that their civic fate was being written some 30,000 feet below. They might have rushed to the windows to look down at the prairies of Montana. They might have ceased purchase of cardboard foods and carbonated beverages.
They might have requested that someone do something about the reeking lavatory. We don’t talk politics. News of politics, and of elections in particular, has the troublesome habit of making people think or, worse, act.
Nonetheless, citizens on the ground are talking politics. In fact, a recent study shows that many Americans are prepared to think and act. I refer to my own North-Eastern US investigation which was, as previously disclosed, performed chiefly in licensed establishments of questionable repute.
My scholarship led me to conclude that Americans are overwhelmingly cheesed off by a chaotic economy and a foul international reputation. My scholarship leads me to predict record voter turnout in November.
These results may have been a little sullied by effusive use of alcohol. They may have also been swayed by the refusal to travel in anything but blue States and studious evasion of any interview subject who looked like a Republican. They do tally, however, with more the findings by agencies more steadfast than my own.
Voter registration has soared. So long as that notoriously dodgy election machinery can lodge the increased turnout, November 4 should prove a red letter day for the democracy Americans are always banging on about. Negative equity, acute embarrassment and the price of gasoline has persuaded Americans to momentarily drop their TiVo remotes.
Nothing could obstruct the emergence of this new virility. At this point, not even winning breasts can eclipse the timely vision of OHB.
This, I foretell through an encumbered haze, is what will happen. In November, a record number of Americans will set down their loyalty cards, carbonated beverages and panic. The stench of war, economic mismanagement and poorly maintained toilets will tempt them to the polls. To paint the white house black.
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