“Don’t sit on that stool,” Tony said. “Don’t you see that my pal Clint Eastwood is sitting there?”
“Funny. But I can’t believe that you have watched the Republican Convention.”
“Are you kidding? I make Marty turn it on every night. It’s the most entertaining thing on TV. Except for watching the Cubs lose.”
“I thought you were a Cubs fan,” I said.
“Oh, I am.”
Not wanting to pursue Tony’s potential theory on this I simply nodded and decided to go on.
“So the great thing about the Convention is that these were the people the Party leadership thought were not the crazies,” said Tony. “No Bachmann. No Akin. No Cain. But then they thought Eastwood swearing at an empty chair would appeal to uncommitted voters? Fantastic. Plus they nominate as VP a guy who has an Ayn Rand jones.”
“You read Ayn Rand?”
“Okay. If you want to get technical about it, I only read the Cliff Notes. But I got an “A” on the book report in 11th grade. Of course, my American Lit teacher never actually read the report.”
“How do you know?”
“Easy. I would always put a dot of Elmer’s glue on the corner between the two middle pages of any report I actually wrote. If I got it back and the pages were still stuck together, I knew she hadn’t really read it.”
“Brilliant. But, you clearly found the convention all much more enjoyable than I did,” I said. “I thought it was depressing. Plus, now I have the choice of Obama, who has been terrible on education or staying home.”
“Oh. Boo hoo,” said Tony. “You teachers think the world revolves around you. It’s like my cousin Artie always says.”
“You have a cousin Artie?”
“Sure. Cousin Artie. He used to work at Ruben’s Baby Factory over on Fullerton until they closed down.”
“Tony. That was over twenty years ago.”
“Hey. It’s tough finding work out there. Anyway, Artie always says, ‘The important thing is getting things over with.'”
“That’s the important thing?” I asked.
“Hell yes. This campaign has gone on longer than a movie directed by Clint Eastwood. Did you see Unforgiven? I thought that movie would never end. Like this campaign.”
Fred Klonsky 
I have a sneaking suspicion that you will end up voting for Obama rather than staying home, Fred. For those of you disheartened enough to be thinking about boycott, not voting means that the Dees and Arrs are still happy. They don’t care if you don’t vote. However, voting for Jill Stein, Gary Johnson, Rocky Anderson, Stewart Alexander, Virgil Goode will send a much clearer message that we are tired of the games and the posturing. http://www.isidewith.com
No. I’m not boycotting. I vote. I’m just not getting into a debate with people about it. Vote for somebody, anybody other than Romney. That’s fine with me. There is no point in complaining about right-wing voter suppression if you’re then going to tell people that their vote doesn’t matter.
I felt that way once. Vote for anyone but…
I voted for Whitney for Governor because Blago was out of the question and Judy Baar Topinka didn’t cut it either.
My vote helped put Blago in the statehouse.
We know how that turned out.
Yep. 14 years in the federal penitentiary.
Wiser ( and others): Whitney was the better candidate. You knew that then and you still know that now. Whitney is very pro-union. Whitney wanted a financial transaction tax. He wanted a state bank ala ND. He wanted to back off on property taxes funding education to make sure school districts were funded more equitably. And he certainly understood constitutional law dealing with pensions He was better than any candidate in the last 20 years. Your vote wasn’t a throwaway. The thousands of others that voted in the last two elections for Blago & Quinn were.