THIS WAS FROM ELECTION EVE, November 3, 2008, seems like. Never turned up and I don't know why, but I do recollect that Dick and Louis weren't very happy about it. Dick called me early this morning and I'd guess he was drunk, but with him it's sometimes hard to tell. Simply supposing that he is indeed walloped is a steady plan, though. Naturally, he was threatening. He swore that he'd pummel me into "a smear of hairy strawberry preserves -- "Smuckers, the kind that radioactive toad Willard Scott likes" -- if I didn't straighten things out. That's beyond my meager powers, I told him, but listening isn't his strong suit. At any rate, here is their overlooked colmn from late last fall. Read it and weep. They were surprisingly prescient.

--Guy Neal Williams, 20 January 2009


RS: You know Louis, I think we've reached that dreaded and feared moment, the one that gives me the night sweats and the fantods.

LS: 'Fantods?' Are you trying to go all Twain on us here Dick?

RS: Fuck you Lulu, you goddamn homo wharf rat. You know what we have to do here and you know just how seriously vile and distasteful a chore it's likely to be. We have to take the pulse of the nation.

LS: My, put that way it indeed does not sound entirely appealing.

RS: Precisely. The patient is a bloated, reeking right whale, thoroughly feasted upon while it tumbled to shore. Ravenous and shrieking sea birds have been at the blubberous carcass like Jurassic guests at a FOX VIP cocktail party.

LS: Finding a pulse here sounds nearly as inviting as mid-wifing a breached past-term Camel.

RS: Well put, my boy, well put.

LS: So do we merely assume there's a pulse to be found?

RS: I think that to be a fine idea. 'Let's not and say we did' is the First Rule of what noble profession?

LS: Our own, Mr. Scrote, You Tease. How do we begin?

RS: Not me, you. You begin by using your unique insights to conjure up a satisfactory vision, an image of a typical voter who is happy to cast a ballot for Johnny Jet McCain.

LS: Now that just plain isn't fair, Dick.

RS: I know. So do it.

LS: Fuck you.

RS: If you insist.

LS: A proud McCain voter is, hm... Probably a voter with some sort of military connection and a deeply mistaken view of what a career in Today's Halliburton Merc Club actually is.

RS: Fine, but they're not enough of them to account for the polls.

LS: The Earl Butz crowd, the nasty supremacists, Commie Pussytatus?

RS: Not enough of them, either, and that wouldn't explain Barack's late-in-the-game strength out West.

LS: Main Street America, then.

RS: Without doubt, Lou: Main Street America.

LS: Soccer moms and deadbeat Plumber Joes?

RS: Not at all. Soccer moms don't live on Main Streett -- hey live on Whippoorwill Trail or Pink Lace Panties Cul-de-Sac. And Hispanic vultures are already circling over Plumber Josephines shack on a dead end off a numbered state road. Hasnt someone thrown something up on YouTube featuring Johhny J as Moe, Joe the non-tax-paying plumber as Curly and Impale Em Sarah as Larry?

LS: I think I know where you're heading with this, Dick. Nobody lives on Main Street anymore... in any small town, medium city, or bustling metropolis, Main Street is populated by shops, restaurants, and ---

RS: Banks. And inside them are the ruined, broken, and ashamed bankers who stare at their ledger sheets in their shaking hands and feel the dawning realization that they are following a party who is unintentionally more green than any tree-fondling liberal: The Grand Old Party, bereft of ideas, bankrupt of a new thought, and incapable of injecting any new life into the Republican rigor mortis. Consider how the utter failure of a single viable concept or conceit or even idle notion to have ever once sprung from a modern GOP administration has worked for us over the past eight years. Take a moment to reflect on how Ronald Reagan's mad giveaway of power by deregulation has come home to roost. And what of McCain's idle threats to not raise taxes across the board in order to pay for the nothing new he's promised? Isn't that a recycled Republican parlor trick that has become easier to pull off in these days of the Lazy American who relies on sound bites from the media? The scary stuff makes the news, the news becomes the truth, the truth swings the voters into pulling the lever for the person who makes them feel like the other candidate is scarier, and that's how we wind up with economic straits, geopolitical unease, and insecure homelands.

LS: I see the hospital stay did you some good, Dick.

RS: Damn tootin,' Louis. Come to think of it, the only good idea to come from the Republican party these days has come, strangely enough, from George W. Bush, who in his infinitesimal wisdom has decided to stay home during the campaign. He and the First Lady have already used absentee ballots to vote. I have it on good authority that neither of them voted for McCain, but I won't say who they are secretly supporting.

LS: So the pulse of the nation... you want to measure it by hipchecking banks?

RS: For a fellow of your stature, you sure do put on the hockey swagger, Louis.

LS: I could start dehumanizing the very ones who are most likely to be deprived in the current downward trend, just like Senator McCain and Governor Palin.

RS: Now you're talking my terms.

LS: Pete the Trucker, Jane the Teacher, Billy the Kid ---

RS: Outlaw or mere juvenile?

LS: One might become the other. The point is, in the waning hours of the campaign, McCain's strategy has been to oversimplify the people he's trying to attract to his base, and while in some cases it seems to be working, in other ways he is belittling their very nature. Tito the Builder, for example, is a Colombian immigrant, owner of a small construction company, and outspoken McCain supporter. But he has been distilled into a mere name and occupation, which should be a glaring revelation about the GOP to anyone paying attention from outside a television screen. If elected, the people shall become what they are, not who they are. You are a lawyer, a fisherman, a marketer, a housewife, a therapist, but not an individual. To be so reduced to simple quantifications is another parlor trick, but one with Orwellian overtones.

RS: You get mighty serious at the drop of a beret, Louis. But tell me this: Is there a Karl Rove afterglow? Because if there is----

LS: And youre sounding like Rod Serling, here, Dick. Ominous. Prairie born and bred and prairie terrified of dustbowls and hoop-snakes and tornadoes. If theres a Rovian afterglow, then what?

RS: Meaning: that lying, cancer-faced, LYING, old, so-called Zonie might still win it. Ill make my last call now, but Im not at all confident about comprehending all of the secrets this time around. The polls never agree. Perhaps (and it would be a good thing) if polling vanished from the trail unless a given candidate had enough faith in his own independent pollster to trust the results. This most certainly has happened as with Carter and Pat Caddell. But maybe lets hope the days of the NYT/CBS/Gallup/CNN/Harris scattershot polling is over. But...

LS: Youre making me nervous here.

RS: That lying coward might still pull it off, along with his voodoo Colt 45 queenie. The reason the polls are so haywire this outing is because we have every reason to believe that therell be a massive turnout of the coloreds and the wetbacks. And pollsters have never given minorities any more attention than they give the labia minoris: those fuckers buy blow jobs, they Do Not please no women. Time for our last round, gambling time. What sez ya, Professor Shiner?

LS: In spite of your concerns, I still think America senses the need for a change from the current, spoiled, and rancid regime. I don't think enough Americans are going to see McCain as an obvious change, and since we don't have a spoiler like Nader in 2000, I see Obama as winning this election. Like you said, the polls are for the majority, and Obama is a living message to the minorities. Barack Obama by at least 10%, Dick.

RS: You arent going to like mine, Lou. Im giving Obama a win by 4%, error margin of 5%.

Although while Im at it, Id like to steal some of your academicians thunder. Should that nasty old warhead somehow win, we should turn to the author of the Big Lie, P.J. Goebbels himself, from the diaries found near his body:

If The Empire must end at last, it is comforting to have an experienced grave-digger at hand.