#98 Spin Control

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I pity the Presidential candidates. It’s not easy being them.

For starters, they live on the road twenty-four-seven. A life of travel sounds exciting until you realize that most of the time they are ending up in desolate, barely civilized places like East Armpit, New Jersey, Rattlesnake Acres, Nevada, and Kansas City. (Special note to readers in Kansas City: Not your Kansas City … the other one.)

When they arrive they have to pretend to enjoy the local cuisine. Again, sounds interesting until you find out the local cuisine includes Auntie May’s special rutabaga bouillabaisse, pig snout sandwiches or haggis. (Special note to readers in Scotland: Not your haggis … the other kind.)

No matter where they go, the candidates have to pose for photo ops wearing fixed smiles so rigidly indestructible that they can only be removed by specially trained teams of plastic surgeons. The other folks in these photos are always minor local celebrities like the Kumquat Queen, City Mayor or the Vice President of the United States. (Special note to readers who are Dick Cheney: Not you … the other Vice President of the United States.)… 

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NOTES: 

• If you’d like comprehensive coverage of the U.S. Presidential Election for 2008, I suggest NPR:
  http://www.npr.org/templates/topics/topic.php?topicId=1102#/primaries/.
• Did the mention of haggis whet your appetite? Check out this comprehensive web page about the famed Scottish dish:
  http://www.smart.net/~tak/haggis.html
• The Wikipedia defines “spin” as a polite synonym for “propaganda”:
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spin_(public_relations).

Tags: humor essay | funny story | pr | spin | election | comedy