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Thursday, October 09, 2008

The return of Mister Answer Man

You’ve got questions, Mister Answer Man has answers.  That’s one of the reasons his name is Mister Answer Man!  Let’s go to the mailbag.

Dear Mister Answer Man: Is this election over?
-- L. P. Berra, Bronx, NY

Mister Answer Man replies: That’s a very good question, and I want to consider it carefully.  OK, I did.  And I think you should just STFU.

Dear Mister Answer Man: Oh, come on.  Obama is up by eleventy billion nationwide, he’s holding all the Kerry states and leading in Missouri, Florida, Ohio, Iowa, Virginia, Colorado, New Hampshire, Idoming, West Caledonia, and maybe even North Carolina.  The McCain campaign now consists of “Obama is a terrorist’s best friend” leavened by references to “my fellow prisoners.” Lighten up already, dude—all this is not good news for John McCain. 
-- G. H. Gallup, Jefferson, IA

Mister Answer Man replies: Clearly, you don’t understand very much about polling, Mr. Gallup—if that is your real name.  First of all, as Chris Bowers soberly reports, the idea that Obama is going to crush McCain like a goldwaterbug is simply delusional.  Only in the nation’s English and Comparative Literature departments could Obama pull off the 97-3 win he deserves (with the 3 going, of course, to Nader).  Thirty percent of the American public would vote for a fire hydrant if the hydrant promised to overturn Roe v. Wade; another ten percent approve of Fire Hydrant’s plan to cut taxes and burdensome federal regulations; and another five to eight percent thinks that Fire Hydrant will be tough on crime terrorism.  Add to that the fact that no Democratic nominee has pulled more than 50 percent of the popular vote in the past 150 years save for FDR and LBJ, and you’ll understand why it’s a good idea to count on a close race right to the finish.

Dear Mister Answer Man: Back in August I went to see the New York Mets play the Florida Marlins. The Mets won 8-6, and at the time they had a slight lead over the Phillies in the NL East.  But the weird thing about the game was that the Mets had not one but two four-run leads, 4-0 and 8-4, and yet the crowd was restive and querulous throughout the entire game.  Every time a Marlin got a base hit, even if it was a dribbling single with two outs and nobody on base, the entire stadium of forty-something thousand went “mmmeeeeehhhhhh” and people began grousing to their neighbors that now was the moment the collapse would begin.  It was almost as if they knew the Mets would find a creative and heartbreaking way to lose, and were waiting (with dread but also with a perverse fascination) for the inevitable crushing defeat. What was up with that?  And do you think it might serve as an apt metaphor for the way Democrats feel every four years?
-- J. Manuel, Flushing, Queens

Mister Answer Man replies: You ask a profound (and, I must say, somewhat leading) question, Mr. Manuel.  The short answer is yes: the Mets lost four-run leads twenty-nine times in 2008, beating their 2007 record of twenty-six coughed-up hair-ball losses*, and only two weeks before you attended that Mets-Marlins game, the Mets gave up six runs in the ninth inning in a critical divisional matchup against those Phillies. The grumbling Shea crowd you encountered in early August was what sports psychologists call a “traumatized bunch of MFers,” that is, a group of people who not only fear the worst (often with good reason) but also believe that their fears actually call the worst into being, and who are therefore consumed with guilt about the possibility that their fears may influence reality.  As it happened, the Mets were in fact incapable of holding a lead, in a game or in the division, and incapable of getting base hits in critical situations during crucial games, so the “querulous” fan reaction at Shea would appear to be quite justified.  For many years during the period 1967-2003, Red Sox fans were the paradigmatic case of a traumatized bunch of MFers, but in more recent years they have started to become overweening, Yankee-esque bullies who expect to win every game every year.  Chicago Cubs fans have undergone a different evolutionary path: sometimes their team is made up of Dukakisian sad sacks who finish 77-85—you know, bad, but not McGovernistic 58-104 abysmal—and sometimes the team consists of talented Gore-Kerry almost-rans who prolly shoulda woulda coulda won it all except for Steve Bartman’s amicus brief in Bush v. Gore.

Mister Answer Man should add, on a personal note, that you should never, ever listen to him when he says something is over before it’s over.  In 2003 he believed the Cubs were a lock for the NL pennant once they went up 3-1 on the Marlins; last year he said out loud—on September 12, to be exact—that there was no way the Mets could blow the division now, up seven games with seventeen to play.  And just this past June, he turned off game four of the Lakers-Celtics series midway through the third quarter, knowing the Celtics could not possibly come back from 20 points down with 18 minutes to play.  (They closed the gap to two by the end of the quarter and went on to win by six.) So even though Mister Answer Man is quite good at predicting Super Bowls, thanks to his patented scientific formula, he is possibly the World’s Worst when it comes to missing epic collapses and comebacks.

Dear Mister Answer Man: The sheer barking madness of the right-wing blogosphere never ceases to amaze me.  Just yesterday I happened by that “Powerline” place and read this: “This may be a case of the irresistible force meeting the immovable object. The political, media, cultural and social establishments are determined to elect the pro-status quo, anti-change candidate, Barack Obama, as President. The power and money arrayed behind Obama seem unbeatable. At the same time, it is inconceivable that the American people would elect a socialist President. So, if this report is correct, something’s got to give.” The amazing breaking news is that Barack Obama was once a member of the New Party.  “This report” turns out to be the work of one of those freepy people who apparently had never heard of the New Party until a few days ago, and now all the hounds are baying, like so: “J. Brown of Politically Drunk on Power has dug up multiple documentary sources (with hyperlinks) proving that Barack Obama was a member of the New Party, despite alleged attempts to cover up his tracks by scrubbing evidence. He or she deserves tremendous praise for doing this detective work.” What is the matter with these people?  Will they bark at every shiny object they see?  I know that if I ask, “are they stupid or ignorant,” you’ll tell me this isn’t an either-or kind of blog.  But this time I’m really puzzled.  Perhaps, as a former member of the New Party, you can help clear this up.
-- J. Rogers, Madison, WI

Mister Answer Man replies: Actually, Mr. Rogers, this time they’ve hit pay dirt.  The New Party was indeed founded by the Union of Soviet Democratic Socialists in 1992, and its mission was to abolish private property, nationalize the means of production, and put all white people over fifty years of age to work in underground Communist sugar mines.  It also advocated “fusion” ballots, which would destroy Western civilization and also require your daughter to marry Lindsay Lohan.  But Mister Answer Man joined because he liked the Communism, and he’s willing to bet that Obama did too.  Seriously, if the folks at No Quarter get a hold of this shocking new information, it could be a real game changer.

Uh-oh.

Dear Mister Answer Man: I know you don’t want to jinx anything, but can’t you please please please give us some idea of what Obama’s cabinet will look like?  Even just a few guesses?  It would be so much fun.
-- J. Jackson, Chicago, IL

Mister Answer Man replies: Oh, all right.  Just this once, just for you:

State: Stagger Lee
Defense: Huey Newton
Attorney General: Bigger Thomas
Labor: John Henry
Interior: Malik Shabazz X
Energy:  George Clinton
Agriculture: Ludacris
Commerce: Jack Johnson
Transportation: Rick James
Homeland Security: Kanye West
HHS: Blackazoid
HUD: Chuck D
Veterans Affairs: There will be no Secretary for Veterans Affairs
Education: Bill Ayres Aires Ayers

Mister Answer Man wishes good luck to all these worthy nominees!

* These numbers may be exaggerated or made up.

Posted by Michael on 10/09 at 08:50 AM
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