Final VP Debate Preparations

Two overripe avocados, skinned, pits removed, and mashed but still chunky.

One diced poblano chile. (Keep the seeds and veins if you like it extra spicy.)

One diced roma tomato.

Juice squeezed from one lime.
2-3 cloves of garlic, finely diced.

Combine all the above in a cool ceramic bowl and serve with blue corn chips.

From the grille, we're also serving up steamy hot Cincinnati Chili Dogs (made with healthier ground turkey and turkey dogs rather than the beef), complimented with piles of grated cheddar and yellow mustard. Add in a box of frozen TGI Fridays Fried Cheese Sticks and we're ready for the big game.

My friends, tonight the good people of America have the opportunity to witness one of the most anticipated political events of all time. I'll be there, or here actually, in front of my TV, bringing out the munchie menu we usually reserve for the Super Bowl or the final game of a Red Sox World Series championship. (I'll have to do this all again in a couple weeks, I suppose.)

The candidates are finishing up their final practice sessions, listening to tight-assed aides whispering last minute punch lines into their overtaxed brains, and mumbling incomprehensible tongue twisters to loosen their lips before tonight's verbal joust.

The pundits are in a tizzy, predicting and prognosticating the plausible outcome after the 90-minute debate. They say, let Sarah be Sarah, and that tonight we'll see someone other than the bumbling, ignorant, unprepared colonial governor we've seen interviewed over the past couple of weeks. They say that Biden must hold his tongue and his snark to avoid the appearance of picking on a girl or being condescending. They say he'd be best off keeping quiet and letting her humiliate herself as she's proven so capable of late.

I, for one, am hoping for more from Joe. I'm hoping for a "Jane, you ignorant slut" moment where he calls her out on her inexperience, incuriousity, and intellectual incompetence. I believe the McCain campaign has already sunk itself anyway, beginning with the Palin pick and then by letting her out of the Arctic Circle to talk on record to anyone at all.

Americans love a good crash, thus the popularity of Nascar and pairs figure skating. We've got a good one in the making here. 6pm on all the major channels.

Caribou Barbie Reads Good

I got home late last night after a thrilling softball playoff game (losing in our last at-bat, goshdurnit) just in time to catch a replay of Sarah Palin's address to the Republican National Convention. I briefly fantasized that she'd announce, "I'm honored to be nominated, but woefully unprepared for this awesome task," then gracefully withdraw from consideration for the good of the nation.

But no, with a sparkle and a grin, Ms Palin blew us a kiss, denied her sordid past, and turned us all on. I'll admit it, she was good, especially if you enjoy red meat political sarcasm and cynicism wrapped up in a tight bun tossled with a healthy dose of resume fluffery and a few out'n'out lies.

But, then again, give me a professional wordsmith, three days of lockdown practice with a team of political image coaches, and expectations so ridiculously low following five days of embarrassing revelations about my family and (brief) political career, and I think even I could've lit a fire under a few thousand previously passionless partisan white folks with exaggerated tales of my hardscrabble suburban middle class life and limited executive experience.

Sarah Palin's highly touted and subsequently lauded speech was, of course, not of her own creation, but the carefully crafted words of bush aide Matthew Scully, read from the rolling screen of a plexiglass teleprompter. In fact, Palin's speech was originally written for an unknown male VP nominee (Romney perhaps?) and later dolled up to fit the new gender and family fairy tale that is McCain's hail mary choice for a ruling partner.

"Not anticipating that McCain would choose a woman as his running mate, the speech that was prepared in advance was "very masculine," according to campaign manager Rick Davis, and "we had to start from scratch." (Washington Post, 9/03/08).

That modern day political speeches are often ghosted by others more clever with words than the candidates themselves, is certainly no secret. But in the midst of her able recitation of Matthew Scully's script, this self-styled pitbull in lipstick had the cajones to attack Barack Obama for writing two books which thoroughly outline his own life story, his political philosophy, and his vision for the nation. Obama has also written all of his own major speeches that represent, (from Palin's lips and Scully's pen) "the idealism of high-flown speechmaking in which crowds are stirringly summoned to support great things".

I'm a lover of words and what words can do to provoke and inspire. Presidential campaigns are most certainly more than mere words. But I prefer knowing that the words coming from the mouths of those who yearn for my vote and my trust, emanate from their own thoughts, their own experiences, and their own dreams, not wholly created by clever underlings to be poured into the mouths of polished and pressed political mouthpieces.