The Cauldron Of History

POSTED BY: T. Herman Zweibel, Onion Publisher Emeritus

Nov 05, 2008, 2:14 pm

It has been brought to my attention that another flag-bedecked, bunting-encrusted electoral pantechnicon has been brought to a roaring, shuddering crescendo, climaxing in a orgy of voting never before seen in the history of this Republic as a hundred million tiny souls rushed to negate each others' ballots. How impressive is the willingness of the commoner, that eternal puppet of plutocrats, to invest a few hours in deciding if his life will be directed by the strings on his limbs or the hand up his fundament.

Naturally, I am not impressed. This is perhaps because I, one incomprehensibly powerful businessman among dozens, have made no promises to improve your lot in life, enrich your children, or make the world a better place. Nor have I had to do so to acquire power undreamed of by the most avaricious and grasping politico. Yet you blithely keep me—and other news-paper men, and oil-men, and manufacturers, and for all, I know, rail-roading barons—in riches and in power. Perhaps it is my superior intellect or more realistic out-look, but it astounds me every day when I wake and find you have not yet set fire to me and my fellow captains of industry.

So enjoy what joy and triumph you may find in your pitiful exercise of the democratic franchise. Reflect on it for a night or two. Then, with the inevitability of the migrating lemming, you shall transfer that joy to the availability of a new sandwich, perhaps one topped with a a heretofore unseen variety of cheese and accompanied by fried potatoes cut into an unusual helical shape.

God bless this America, and get back to work.

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All The Electric Premonition That Rides The Sky Being A Drama Of Human Devising

POSTED BY: Don DeLillo, Master of Postmodern Literature

Nov 05, 2008, 12:23 pm

In the morning, Electorate, he passes people trooping away from home with their newspapers, bearers of a weight that goes beyond pounds and ounces. They headed up an avenue still blistered with the flotsam of campaign advisers, of newspapermen. Men and women, almost in single file, leaning into wind, faces steeled against complaint, obligated to carry this load. They are standard-bearers, foot-soldiers, walk-on spear-carriers with tiny but necessary roles, of an idea first given a name by ancient Greeks. No one can say for sure yet if it really works.

Countless pairs of little white wires, framing people's faces in the flat fluorescent light, denoting: iPods.

Marketing men in sharp, crisp ties gaze impotently from their offices at spectacular Midtown Views. There is nothing at this point left for them to do. The Day has come. This is the Day itself.

Feet set, purposeful and resolute, on the lime-green tiles. In the toneless acoustics of the school gymnasiums and school cafeterias and dual-use school gymnasium/cafeterias the low steady roar of raw electoral mass forms a background of white noise. Mathematics steadily accumulate around them.

The emotional tone. Let it express itself.

Technology from what appears to be pre-WWII (the Second Great War)-level manufacturing stands at the ready, waiting for the numbers. In poorer parts, plastic card racks with push pins attached to countertops with the same little chains affixed to pens at banks. In still other neighborhoods, eerily blinking computerized interfaces no one is sure can be trusted.

No one is sure they can be trusted.

From the crowd, more snatches of unattributed dialogue, nonsensical yet queerly resonant:

"Days like this. Pull a lever, and a potential, a mathematical possibility, shoots up. Sensitivities. Attunements. Things are ready to happen that normally never do."

"My name's not important. What's important is the news organization I'm polling for. I'm here to poll the area and make sure the area is polled as you conduct your undisclosed business. I am not here to interfere or influence or affect you or the person you may or may not be supporting in any way. You are but one mere node in a vast aggregate of polling data which is at this time our primary concern. We have procedures we've developed over long periods of time."

"Paper. Legal size. White with blue lines."

"What do you mean a Blockbuster Video membership card does not constitute a legal I.D.? This is America! What's wrong with you people?"

"Do you have a working telephone?"

He stands in the doorway to the junior high school gymnasium and stares blinking into the loud murmuring bustle of unedited, unmediated humanity massed before him. Waiting with grim expressions in interminable lines. Glancing back and forth at petty annoyances as the hours draw out. Swarming into lines, paperwork in hand, forms filled, addresses verified.

Far from here, massive telecommunications infrastructures are employed to frantic ends. Media professionals dart from room to room, dash onto camera and off again as slips of paper are handed this way and that by grim-faced white-knuckled interns. Encrypted data fills the rooms around them with crucial up-to-the-minute updates.

It is flat, on flatscreens, two-dimensional.

But the real story is not in these waves of electromagnetic signals being beamed via satellite and fiber-optic cable onto cathode rays and plasma the nation over. The real story today is here, in this ugly room.

The New Yorkers, the Wisconsinites, the Chicagoans, waiting in line. Some have come out of a sense of patriotic duty, some in hopes of a quick fix, some out of vague, barely comprehensible last-minute anxieties about redistribution of hardworking plumbers' wealth.

A primary motivator these last eight years, the pundits have explained—on cable, and on basic cable, and on radio, and even, still in this day and age, newsprint—not fear, not terror, but a new thing: fear of terror. Yet today the faces of the grandmothers and the hippies and the Joe Six Packs and the pained, exasperated office workers in painful, pastel shoes do not seem, to his searching eyes, to be afraid.

Miles from here, in the White House, a nervous cluster of Ivy League graduates attend to the needs of one man imparting terror to the dreams of the Republic. He is thinking about his ranch. His staff prepares to pack his things.

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A Message From FBI Agent Lucas Emerson

POSTED BY: Kendra Davidson, Owner of The Davidson Family Restaurant in Cedar Rapids, IA

Nov 05, 2008, 9:09 am

To Whom It May Concern:

This political blog, normally authored by one Kendra Davidson, will immediately cease publication effective this post. As many of you may know, Ms. Davidson has been detained at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base following a series of coordinated attacks on Senators John McCain and Barack Obama, the most recent of which involved attempting to jettison a food product she referred to as "Swing State Fish 'N' Chips" into their respective campaign headquarters using a crude homemade cannon constructed of PVC piping and a butane triggering system. The payloads from these two attacks are currently being analyzed for any possible chemical or biological agents.

Anyone with any information pertaining to this investigation is urged to come forward.

Thank you,

FBI Agent Lucas Emerson

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Here's How You Win An Election, Mr. McCain

POSTED BY: Carla Freeman, Junior Class President

Nov 03, 2008, 12:00 pm

Oh no! It looks like John McCain's in a lot of trouble, and the election is only a few days away. That shouldn't be too much of a problem, though, because my entire campaign this year was only a few days long, and I won. Mr. McCain seems like a nice man, a lot like that old guy who mops up the cafeteria after-school, so I'll help him out with some campaign advice that worked for me!

1. TIME FOR A NEW HAIRSTYLE!

There's no better way to completely change the nature of an election in a jiffy than to do something new with your hair. A new hairstyle will put your opponent on the defensive immediately. I mean, why didn't the other candidate change her hair? Does she not care about her hair? Is she old and out of touch? These are the things people will think. Make sure you go to a big-city salon though, like the one they have in Kansas City, because NOTHING will sink an election faster than a botched haircut.

2. CARRY A BABY AROUND!

This worked really well when I was running this year. One day Hannah Becker stopped by school to say hi to everyone and show off her new baby, Willa. I picked Willa up and walked around a little with her, and all of a sudden, lots of people came up to see me. If you carry a baby around all the time, you'll always have the PERFECT excuse to tell people your campaign message. Also, Mr. McCain, the baby will make you seem cuter.

3. GET IN A CAR ACCIDENT!

Last year, nobody was going to vote for Andrea Dixon for senior class president, but then she and her boyfriend Greg Dolan got in a car accident on the way back from their shift at Applebee's. After that, EVERYONE voted for her because Greg was in the hospital for weeks. She didn't even have to do anything to win, except go to a couple funerals.

And more than anything, Mr. McCain, if you see a big group of people gathered, GO TALK TO THEM! It's the best way to get your message out, just make sure you ask the teacher or coach or whoever is in charge of them first.

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Please, Someone Do Something About Prison Sodomy

POSTED BY: Sam Holtzman, Single Issue Voter

Oct 29, 2008, 4:10 pm

If a candidate doesn't talk about this soon, I may take my own life.

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Who's Going To Do Something About Prison Sodomy?

POSTED BY: Sam Holtzman, Single Issue Voter

Oct 29, 2008, 4:00 pm

My fellow Americans, I don't have to tell you that one of the most overlooked crises facing our nation today is the proliferation of prison sexual abuse.

For example: did you know that, according to Human Rights Watch, almost 1 in 20 inmates are sexually abused at the hands of a fellow prisoner? That's 70,000 people. Even assuming those numbers are artificially low due to underreporting, it still means I'm unluckier than 95% of America's federal prisoners.

Obama, McCain: please think of me.

It's just not fair. Those two can't say enough about reforming prisons when it comes to Abu Ghraib or Gitmo. But ask them about the state of prisoners in America, and it's Lock Them Up And Throw Away The Key. When are they going to answer the tough questions?

The main one I have for them is: how to give someone who is already in jail for life a reason to stop attacking you.

We have people here from the Aryan Brotherhood, and even a couple from that crazy group, MS-13. I saw a show on these guys about a year ago, and remember thinking to myself how terrible it is when people are violated against their will. Never in my wildest nightmares did I ever think my thoughts would come back to haunt me like this.

Go on, Obama, talk all you want about our prisoner abuse, and how we are violating the Geneva conventions and Blah, Blah, Blah.

Old Sam Holtzman knows the truth: the real prisoner abuse is right here in America, and it's happening practically every single day now.

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Granite State Blues

POSTED BY: Kendra Davidson, Owner of The Davidson Family Restaurant in Cedar Rapids, IA

Oct 27, 2008, 3:45 pm

After all that unpleasantness with Barack Obama in Muscatine a couple of weeks ago, I decided to focus my efforts on getting some good buzz going about Davidson's Family Restaurant within the McCain campaign. But with my arm in this big cast and the Davidson's catering truck left a smoldering, twisted pile of steel and rubber by that goshdarn bomb-defusing robot, how was I supposed to get my delicious McCain Hotcakes—add an order of Homey Palin Homefries for only a dollar extra—into their namesake's mouth while he does damage control in New Hampshire?

Ingenuity, that's how. I got the address of the venue in Manchester, NH where McCain would attempt to stave off a GOP loss of the Granite State, and packed up one of those heat-retaining insulated mailers with McCain Hotcakes, a fresh Thermos of Davidson's coffee, and a cute little note that said "These hotcakes are to die for, Mr. McCain!" Then I mailed it off same-day with FedEx, and waited for word-of-mouth to do its thing.

Well, apparently the fucking coffee spilled all over everything inside the package, and the note emerged reading "Die Mr. McCain!" And how do I know this? The goddamn motherfucking Feds that came by today to freeze my assets because I'm a "potential terror suspect" told me, that's how I fucking know.

Fuck you, McCain, it was innocent mistake. And fuck you, Agents Emerson and Logsdon. I've just about given up on this whole goddamned country. How does "Davidson's French Riviera Bistro" sound to everyone? Starting to sound pretty goddamned good to me.

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I'm Glad I Don't Have A Brain Yet, Because I Hate Elitism

POSTED BY: Gary Brunson, 5-Week-Old Fetus

Oct 25, 2008, 5:00 pm

If there's one thing I am sick and tired of listening to as I sit here growing clusters of nerve cells that will eventually form ears, it's the elites . And the worst elite of them all is this Washington insider, career politician, and writer of too many books Joseph R. Biden. Just listen to him talk! Every single time he appears on TV, it's "analysis of the issues" this and "informed opinion" that. Blah blah blah! Even I make more sense than this asshole, and I don't have a fucking speech center yet!

Seriously, doesn't Mr. Biden and his kind know how sick of all their fancy "thinking" we are? I'd rather spend all day listening to the monotonous beating of my mother's heart than hear one more word from this jackass. After all, at least my mother's heart doesn't drone on about "the economic challenges facing our nation" all the damn time.

As a pre-born entity who has yet to develop any higher brain functions, I am uniquely in touch with what voters are looking for this election. They are looking for 3 things: heartfelt emotion, righteous rage, and good old-fashioned Joe Six-Pack-style values. … three things that an elitist like Joe Biden will simply never understand.

I'm sorry but that's the facts, elitists! And if you don't like it, as soon as I grow a digestive tract you can kiss my ass.

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