The Religious Wrong and the bravest man in America

The last time a crowd of otherwise law-abiding citizens transformed themselves into bloodthirsty mobs the way supporters of McCain-Palin do was at the trial that led to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

Now, I’m not saying McCain is Pontius Pilot or that Barack Obama is Christ, but when the crazy hyperbole gets flying it’s hard to resist joining in on the fun.

Nobody on the planet comes unhinged like the Religious Wrong. You’d think the disastrous Bush presidency would at least leave them open-minded to having someone they wrongly suspect to be a closet Muslim might be worth a try, but no. And again I’m left to wonder why a group that so vocally declares to have found one Messiah is always so restlessly seeking another.

Clearly, they haven’t found him in McCain, whose campaign is in the midst of what will be regarded as a historic meltdown. By any measure, this is one of the worst campaigns we’ve seen in the past 30 years. Just today, one of the leading conservative voices in the country (i.e. “enormous horse’s ass”) Bill Kristol urged McCain to fire his entire staff and start again.

With 22 days before the election! Yeah, great time to start all over in a campaign that’s been going on for two years.

The John McCain I’ve always admired finally resurrected himself last week when he proved he’s the second bravest man in America. He did this by standing up to his own frothing supporters to tell them that, contrary to what Palin’s been telling them, that Barack Obama’s a decent family, a proud American and that, no, we have nothing to fear with him as our president.

For this he was booed.

And now, for him, it’s too late. This election’s over. It’s destined to be won by the bravest man in America.

That’s Barack Obama.

Unlike McCain, he’s never had to duck a bullet, never gone into combat or had to crash land behind enemy lines.

But what he’s doing today is braver than anything any veteran’s done in those fearsome circumstances.

He’s standing near naked before crowds of 20,000 to 80,000 people knowing that there’s a well-armed and hate-filled fraction of America that wants him dead. We all know of bitter racists, deranged religious zealots, and Right Wing crazies -- sometimes all three in one -- and we know some of them have lethal potential.

They shout “Kill him!,” “Traitor!” and “Off with his head!” at rallies. Just today, the chairman of the Virginia GOP, Jeffrey Frederick, said he was no different than Osama bin Laden. Think that won’t egg on some deranged believer to begin diabolical plots in the belief that they’re patriotically acting with God on their side?

John Wilkes Booth, an actor with the equivalent popularity that Brad Pitt enjoys today, pulled the trigger behind Abraham Lincoln’s ear and brazenly jumped on the Ford Theater stage knowing he'd be recognized and believing he’d be hailed as a hero.

I can’t fathom the bravery of a father of two young daughters who’ll go out and stand on a stage knowing that his opposition is saying he’s dangerous, that he’s chummy with Al-Quaeda, and that their most primal fears about dark-skinned men with exotic names are more than justified.

I hope Obama wins in landslide. Then I hope he gets into the White House and plants himself so deeply into the secure bunker so that no one can hurt him or his family.

And then I hope he begins to do many great things.

Debate analysis you won't see on TV

• Apropos of nothing, here's a picture of me and the Bronze Fonz statue in Milwaukee. Now, onto the debate analysis.

• I was surprised to see McCain’s a lefty when it comes to handwriting. I’m sure some obscure expert’s done an analysis saying some of our best/worst presidents have been lefthanders. That won’t factor into whether or not I’ll vote for him, but I just hope he’s never sits down to my right if we ever wind up together in the same cafeteria.

• Commentators immediately began focusing on the candidates’ body language. Not me. I was drawn to the body language of the captive audience. They sat mostly immobile for the first 30 minutes, but there was a monumental amount of background fidgeting during the home stretch. There were toe tappers, knee bouncers, thumb twiddlers and an entire corp of nap-jerking yawn stiflers throughout. I’d wagered with my wife that bald guy with the blue shirt in the back row was going to fall asleep. I lost.

• I believe if the country could survive eight years of the idiot Bush, it can survive anything. I’m all in for Obama, but last night left me feeling a surge of optimism knowing that one way or the other we’re going to have a president who at least knows how to pronounce simple words like “nuclear.”

• It was annoying how often grumpy Tom Brokaw kept reminding everyone that the participants had gone seconds over their agreed upon time. Neither seemed that long winded to me, and he kept cutting them off just as true debate seemed about to emerge. I’ve been to parties with nagging clock watchers like him. It’s no fun.

• I understand the rules that say the audience shouldn’t applaud, but I think it would add to the debates if they were all instructed to yell and holler any time either of the candidates said a secret word like say, “bailout,” “Main Street” or “Petraeus.” They always had secret words on Pee Wee’s Playhouse and it was always riotous good fun. Try it around your own house someday.

• Do you think people in the audience had to raise their hands and get the go ahead nod from Brokaw if they had to go to the bathroom?

• I like it when candidates -- and both of them did this -- pronounce the names “Pock-e-stan” and “Tolly-bon” instead of “Packistan” or “Toweliban.” It makes the evil doers seem less intimidating, like they are populated by Oompa Loompas, albeit ones with murderous dispositions.

• I give huge credit to the audience members for being able to stand up and ask either of the candidates a question knowing that there were maybe 60 million people watching and that many of them were like me and my wife. We didn’t listen to a word they said, but made disparaging remarks about their hair, their eyeglass frames or the way they were dressed. I wish I wasn’t like that.

• In this day of microscopic spy gizmos, did the microphones really need to be so big and clunky? They looked the amplifier anchor Roger Daltry swung around during The Who’s 1969 performance at Woodstock.

• If either of the candidates had dropped their microphone, it’s all we would have remembered. I was hoping one of them would.

• I respect John McCain’s service and think he’d have made a dandy president in 2000 when George Bush dirty tricked it out of him. But he’s starting to remind me of Grandpa Simpson.

• I was glad to see neither of them had suspicious bulges between their shoulder blades the way Bush did against John Kerry in 2004 (simply Google “Bush, bulge, debate”). To me, it’s one of the great underreported stories of the Bush era. Well, that and the reasons for going to war in Iraq.

• One of the greatest lines in debate history came when Lloyd Bensen left Dan Quayle sputtering after he’d blasted him with his great line, “Senator, I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. You’re no Jack Kennedy.” When I was doing a golf book about hole in ones, Quayle was one of the few politicians or celebrities to call me back for a chat about their ace history. We talked about golf and luck for 30 casual minutes. He was cool to me. I wonder if Jack Kennedy would have been. Who knows? When it comes to golf chat, maybe Jack Kennedy was no Dan Quayle.

• They say that 10 percent or so of the electorate is still undecided. Who are these marshmallow heads? I say we nullify their votes and get all the partisans who are stubbornly Obama together with the people who are stubbornly McCain and just let them duke it out.

I want to see Palin naked!

I keep waiting for the announcement that Playboy has offered Sarah Palin $1 million to pose nude in time for their November election issues. That’s what they do with these instant sorts of celebrities isn’t it?

Me, I’m a knee-jerk liberal whose knee jerks most liberally whenever it's near a conservative’s crotch. It’s been twitching like crazy every time I see news of the Republican National Convention.

Until selecting Palin, John McCain had done absolutely nothing to fire up the senselessly rabid far right he’ll need to have even a chance of becoming president. It’s what I predicted in spring as he, one by one, he began dispatching the feckless bunch of Republican primary contenders, namely Mitt Romney, Rudy Guiliani, Fred Thompson and Mike Huckabee.

Of those, only Huckabee had a chance of energizing his base while still engaging swing voters. He’s funny, thoughtful, experienced and as he likes to say, “he’s a conservative who’s not mad at anybody.”

That’s something that appeals to guys like me. It drives me crazy to see a party build an entire campaign based on hate. George W. Bush and Karl Rove were masters at it.

They hated the media. They hated liberals. They hated gays. They hated Mexicans. They hated negotiation. They hated human rights. They hated the environment. They hated anyone who thought there should be sensible restrictions on guns.

I’m basically at peace with all those things so they left me no choice but to hate ‘em right back.

But after eight years of it, I’m tired of hating. My biggest problem with Bush has been that, at a time when every American was yearning to be united, he cast anyone who thought differently from him as an American enemy, a supporter of Al-Quada. Go ahead and search, you won’t find any “Go bin Laden!” posters hanging in my office.

That’s why I thought the Obama/McCain election was going to bring about a refreshing blast of sanity. It seemed like they were going to argue about each other’s positions, experience and potential. Sure, there’d be some sharp jabs, but they seemed to respect each other as patriotically motivated men with different solutions.

Now pretty, sexy Sarah comes out and it’s all about hate again. She hates me and we’ve never even met. It’s us against them all over again, only it’s really us against us.

McCain’s risky pick endangers us all. Her fanatical enthusiasts -- the ones you saw weeping on the convention floor -- aren’t for her because of her experience or her grit. They’re for her because she’s for killing things like polar bears and preserving things like babies no matter what the circumstance. Personally, I admire her motherhood and her decisions to my core. I just don’t want her or anyone else telling my wife or daughters what they should do in that same sad situation. And with all our problems, do we really want to decide yet another election over abortion?

And that’s not me or some liberal pundit talking. That’s Pat Buchanan, Charles Krauthammer and many equally befuddled conservative commentators. Did you hear Peggy Noonan, the Wall Street Journal opinion monger and a former Ronald Reagan speechwriter? She was caught on a live mic saying, basically, who the hell is this? Why did he pick her? It’s a mistake, or as she said over the air picking Palin was “political bullshit.”

But don’t try and tell that to the convention weepers who are already doing the cold calculations as to when she might replace a cancer-damaged senior citizen who’ll be the oldest president ever if he’s elected. It’s clear, they have no enthusiasm for McCain. For them, it’s all about Palin.

I don’t understand why so many people who so loudly claim to love one savior are always so restlessly seeking another.

Me, I’m not worried. I’m suspecting another scandal or two is about to erupt and force her off the ticket.. Reporters from the hated media -- and, man, did all their press bashing motivate that rabid bunch -- are right now scouring Alaska for scoop. My money’s on that nonpartisan crackerjack team from National Enquirer to get the goods.

And who knows? Maybe she will pose for Playboy and throw her candidacy into more turmoil.

I’ll buy one.

Part of being a peace-loving, gay-defending, gun-confiscating, pot-legalizing tree hugger is an absolute duty to support the First Amendment in all its sordid glory.

Reading Playboy means I’m just being patriotic.