I keep hearing about things that are described as a
“political stunt”, and it always conjures up images in my head that are far
more interesting and sensational than whatever they’re talking about. I can’t
even think of an example of a “political stunt” I’ve heard about on the news
panel shows, so that tells you right there that none of them are particularly
daring or memorable. So then do these things really even deserve to be called “political stunts”?
No, for something to be called a “political stunt”,
shouldn’t some candidate do some Evel Knievel-style motorcycle jump or
something? Like, for example, they could have some Republican congressman who
is opposed to President Obama’s healthcare bill dress up in a plushie elephant suit
and attempt to jump a motorcycle over the entire 3,000 pages of the healthcare
bill, laid all out side-by-side on the ground; and then, naturally he would
fail to make the jump over all those pages, since the healthcare bill is so
ridiculously long, and that would be the whole point of this “stunt” to begin
with: that the healthcare bill is so enormous that not even a motorcycle can
jump over it. And so he’d crash and wipe out; but unfortunately for him,
because he’s opposed to the healthcare bill, he’s denied healthcare for his
broken, mangled body, and he dies. And that, of course, is another, secret part
of this “political stunt”; because when he dies, his other Republican buddies
in Congress can say: “See? If Obamacare is so great, then how come our esteemed
colleague died of his non-life-threatening injuries that he would easily have
survived and recovered from by now had President Obama not destroyed our
healthcare system and its quality of care with his left-wing Socialist takeover
of the medical establishment! Yes, our esteemed colleague’s failure to
successfully make that motorcycle jump is demonstrative of the failure of
Obamacare’s government takeover of healthcare! It’s the perfect analogy to
President Obama’s failed policies!” And then the dead political stunt
daredevil’s obituary would read: “He dedicated his life to public service, and
he died in a bitchin’ motorcycle jump crash that was totally rad, dude, proving
once and for all that Obamacare is a failure!”
Then, some other guy, this time perhaps a right-wing
political pundit, could dress up like Evel Knievel and try to jump a
rocket-sled over some canyon that represents the federal budget deficit or the
national debt. And what happens this time is that the rocket launches but fails
to make it across the canyon, and the parachute fails, and the whole thing
crashes and burns in the big gaping canyon. So this time, all the Republican
pundits come out and say that this is the perfect metaphor for our country’s
financial situation: The rocket-sled symbolizes our country, and as it tries to
fly high over our country’s gaping, yawning hole in its federal budget, it
stalled out and crashed and burned under the weight of such incredible
pressure, yadda yadda. And that this crash is just like the way President Obama
has crashed the American economy, etc. And that the guy dressed up in a leather
American flag suit being burned alive is symbolic of President Obama’s secret
Socialist flag-burning tendencies, etc.
And then future “political stunt” daredevils could do things
like show a graph of our national debt, and then show the drastic spending
increases that are coming down the pipe, so to speak, and it could look like
that “hockey stick” graph form Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth, only to accentuate how high it’s going to get,
rather than riding one of those little cranes up like Gore did, this guy could
jump out of an airplane with a parachute that opens up to say: “2050 Spending
Levels”, and then the parachute would fail, sending him plummeting to his
death, which would demonstrate that without reforming our social programs, our
country’s financial future will be like “jumping out of a plane without a
parachute”.
And then, if that made a really big splash (I mean in the
news, not just a big splash of blood on the ground), then they could go further
and further with these “political stunts”. And next they could have someone who
wants to cut spending give a campaign speech on the edge of a cliff with a
megaphone, addressing the crowd below, and then they could say: “If we don’t
fix our out-of-control spending soon, we’re going to spend ourselves right off
of a cliff!” And then he could take a wad of cash out of his pocket, throw it
into the air, and step off the cliff, falling to his death below. And that
would probably make a real impression on everyone! (They would, of course, be
warned ahead of time in the front rows to bring that clear plastic sheeting to
use to protect themselves from all the splattering goo and stuff for when the
guy lands at the base of the cliff, kind of like they do at Gallagher shows to
keep all the watermelon juice off of everyone.)
And when people do these “stunts”, they will all have to
wear like American flag suits and flashy helmets and stuff like that, just to
rub it in to everyone that they’re political stunt daredevils! And posterity
will remember them as the crazy, death-defying, didactic discourse
distributors, pounding political polemics into our little sensationalism-hungry
heads in a dazzling display of performance art daredevilry! And with political
stunts like these, they would be sure to get their message across in a way we’d
never forget it! Plus, if we could encourage them all (political pundits,
partisan blowhards, etc.) to do this kind of stuff, maybe we’d get rid of some
of these jackasses eventually this way.
And what a way to go, too, huh? Even I would fondly remember
even the most asinine, self-important, narcissistic polemicist if they went out
in a self-imposed “blaze of glory” like an Evel Knievel-style motorcycle jump
“political stunt” of didactic daredevilry! Wouldn’t you?
In fact, when they burn all their bridges so as to become no
longer employable, maybe this is how they ought to try to make a comeback:
through some death-defying daredevil stunt to demonstrate some political point.
And if they lived, they’d be back, baby! And if they died, well then, at least
they went out on a high and with a “bang”! And even if their point was wrong or
misguided, we’d all remember it forever and ever, for as long as we lived. And
for this reason, I believe that this will end up being the future of American
politics: Add reality show obnoxiousity, the attention-grabbing and dangerous
stunts from things like Jackass, the
angry polemics of blowhard pundits on TV, and combine that with the
ever-increasing short attention-spans and jaded need for ever greater and more
extremely ramped-up risks and stunts necessary to grab our citizen’s
over-stimulated senses, and where is the logical conclusion for all of this ever-increasing
intensity-demanding desire stuff’s trajectory? Why, it’s stuff like these
“political stunts” I have outlined above, don’t you think? They’d just have to
find a way to make them a little bit more survivable, and we’ll see stuff like
this up the road a bit, I’m sure!
