Apparently there's an election coming up here in Americaland. The commercial breaks punctuating Wheel of Fortune are presently stuffed with political campaign advertising, replacing the usual stuff about geriatric drugs which, if they don't kill you by actively inducing the symptoms you were hoping to treat, will enable you, as a senior, to go hang gliding, rock climbing, zip lining, or to enjoy an outdoor jazz performance with a loved one while smiling beatifically. Similarly, our dunderhead local news organ has been spending a lot of time helping us to decide how to vote. The possibility that anyone might require assistance in making a decision at this point is probably why we're already fucked and so fucked that voting won't make the slightest bit of difference.
Nevertheless, these seem to be our options here in San Antonio, Texas - all information deduced from television commercials viewed on occasion of my being too lazy to reach for the remote and hit the mute button. If there seems to be a certain Democrat bias, it's only because I dislike fundamentalist religious cults, conspiracy theorists, toxic capitalism, actual Nazis, and thickies who've somehow concluded that knowing fuck all about any given subject is somehow equivalent and as valid as knowing everything about it. Sorry.
Chip Roy - you know how sometimes you really can tell just from a person's face. Also, his name is Chip. Next.
Tony Gonzalez seems a bit of a wanker. His commercial opens with the usual shots of veterans while our man pulls serious faces and tells us how deeply he cares about those guys, thanks them for their service, and so on and so forth in the apparent understanding that this constitutes a bold stance because most of us hate veterans, or liberals hate veterans, or Gina Ortiz Jones wants to force veterans to undergo gender reassignment surgery, or something. Gina Ortiz Jones seems to be Tony's competition and I don't think he likes her very much. Half way through the advert he points out that she lives in Washington and not here in Texas as though this constitutes evidence of her true loyalties - you know, the Washington lesbian cabal or something.
Steve Allison is a fat old white guy who smiles a lot and is seen amiably reading picture books to small children. I get the impression his advertisement possibly spends some time slagging off the opposition but I can't remember for sure. The angle here seems to be - look, I'm white, for fuck's sake. I mean seriously, we've been doing okay so far, haven't we? Tell me we haven't been doing okay up to now. How bad could it honestly be?
I like to think M.J. Hegar may actually be related to Dik Browne's famed cartoon Viking. She's a veteran, but presumably went about it the wrong way and so failed to inspire Tony Gonzalez to thank her for her service. She rides a massive motorbike in her campaign advert and seems able to string a full sentence together without first having to write it down. The negative campaigning against M.J. Hegar warns about how she wants to impose a carbon tax and DESTROY TEXAS JOBS, which is doubtless terrifying if you don't believe in climate science because you're a fucking simpleton. Sorry if that makes anyone feel a little bit sad. Hegar also apparently said something about how Democrats shouldn't compromise which therefore makes her unreasonable, which is a bit fucking rich coming from that side of the toilet bowl.
Gina Ortiz Jones seems reasonably genuine, from what I can tell, and as with M.J. Hegar, the negative campaigning arguably says more about her opponents than it does about her. You can tell they really, really, really want to jump out of the television screaming, seriously? You're going to vote for a fucking carpet-muncher now? but they can't because that would be illegal (and physically impossible) and so have to content themselves with painting Jones as one of those people, you know, not mentioning any names or nuffink, while showing us a photoshopped image of Jones hanging out with Nancy Pelosi and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez just like those three witches in that Shakespeare movie, the one with Orson Welles. One of the more entertaining bits of negative campaigning suggests Jones intends to fund gender reassignment surgery for someone or other using money which would have otherwise definitely gone to our beloved military. I suppose it must be that special military money that you hear about with tanks and planes printed on the notes.
Wendy Davis is the one who talked for a million hours straight during some big political thing and so prevented her opponent passing a law that would define masturbation as Communism and therefore illegal and a violation of religious freedom - something along those lines anyway. So far as I'm able to tell, she's not actually evil which makes her something of a rarity in political terms. Negative campaigning has focused on how Davis once purchased a sandwich at the taxpayers' expense, which is exactly the sort of thing that our president would never, ever do. As you know, most Republicans have jobs in hardware stores or helping out at the local airport, engaging in political activities only as a hobby during their free time. Most of them would rather die than accept any kind of financial recompense for their work. No thank you, I'll quite happily pay for it myself, should be the new Republican campaign slogan.
The only Joe Biden advert I've seen was one made by Donald Trump so it wasn't particularly complimentary, or even coherent for that matter. Crooked Hillary's emails weren't actually mentioned but it was something in that general spirit. Biden was interviewed on 60 Minutes the other night and seemed to come across okay, I thought. That said, he could have been G.G. Allin and still come across as more dignified than the competition.
Thoughtful John Cornyn is, so I gather, being presented as a more thoughtful politician if we don't want to vote for Wendy Davis. The campaign emphasises Cornyn's canny reliance upon his brain when it comes to doing thinking and stuff, and so we have Thoughtful John Cornyn - unless Thoughtful is actually his first name. No-one knows what he stands for aside from the usual deal about how cops and veterans are amazing, but I suppose the ability to form thoughts counts as a mutant superpower in the current political climate. I'm actually surprised his people haven't had him on camera with an index finger set ponderously against his lower lip, one eyebrow raised in quizzical fashion, and a cartoon thought bubble above his head so as to illustrate cognition. They could even have him thinking I am Thoughtful John Cornyn in Comic Sans font just in case any potential voters hadn't quite got it.
Celina Montoya is another one about whom I don't actually know anything much, but judged on the quality of her enemies, she's probably doing something right. Additionally, it's interesting to note that all of the female candidates named above are associated with the Democrats, while all but one of the men are Republicans. I wonder why that should be.
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