E-Fret Edition

"He who slings mud generally loses ground."

--Adlai Stevenson

Firstly, apologies for the lack of ranting yesterday. I had to um...actually do some work. Paid work, that is...Hah! Get it while I can.

At this point, however, I must pay tribute to a kindred spirit, Allison Owings, who writes "Is anyone else having this problem? Barack Obama is messing up my work. In my case, a book. True, I'm not the speediest interviewer/researcher/writer, but after The Thin Man (as my husband fondly refers to him) announced in that topcoat in the land of Lincoln that he was running for president, and after I did some reading about him, never have I more wanted someone to be president than I do the intelligent, rational, compassionate Barack Obama. As a result, my focus has been fractured. While I write my book, which is about Native Americans in today's America, and which involves interviewing tribal members all over the country, and trying to find funding for the effort, and doing freelance writing and editing -- the Obama campaign hovers. Hovers? Engulfs... It helps that, in a wonderful discovery, every friend I've known from junior high (when we and our families were Republicans) to now, from everywhere in the country, was also for Barack, and enthusiastically, from the get go -- with barely one exception. And, although there are many moments of celebration, we are nervous. So we fret. How? Mostly we e-fret.

Allison continues: "We have sent one another polling concerns, primary anxieties, campaign worries, YouTube bounces. No alarm escapes us: flag pins, phony hate e mails, the racism behind them, certain other politicians' behavior, the astounding (and semi-successful) cynicism behind the Sarah Palin choice, pre and post debate reactions."

Don't know WHAT you're talking about, Allison.
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Eric is right, the bloviators are rotting my brain.

So, I came home tonight, turned on the TV, unpacked my bags and hadn't even poured myself a drink (maybe that was my mistake) before the guests on Larry King Live had me FIT TO BE TIED. No really, it's a good thing no one else was home, because I looked like a crazy woman. I was hurling epithets at the screen through clenched teeth.

I tried to calm myself down by muting the TV and watching the "Yes We Can" video on YouTube again, but that just makes me all weepy. Now I'm mad and I'm weepy. Let me explain.

But first let me down the week's worth of Abilify and have a vodka gimlet.

Look, it's not that I worship the guy, I don't think he can turn water into wine. I mean, I admit I'm in the tank for Obama, for sure, and I admire him. But I was a Hillary Clinton supporter throughout the primary season, which is when that video came out. I supported Hillary because I liked her stand on health care and I thought she would make a great leader. So the primaries were tough for me, but I don't hold a grudge now. It got scrubby and unpleasant, but I'll say this, it was a fight among candidates I respected, all of whom had what I thought were legitimate ideas to propose.

But ever since September, I've just been swinging between hardly daring to hope, and so livid I could spit nails. From hour to hour, depending on what is on CNN, I feel like I've been treated like an intelligent, thoughtful human being on the one hand and completely insulted on the other. As Jon Stewart said last night, "I don't run a hedge fund, but my brain is still attached to my spinal cord."

So this election, I weep with absolute frustration because instead of getting a terrific competitive campaign and deciding between these two candidates in a respectable way -- based on the issues, not on whether or not hockey moms wear lipstick. We could have had real discussions instead of this embarrassing display of the worst impulses in human nature.

I like feeling good about the candidate that I'm supporting. I wish I felt good about the whole election.