Tuesday, October 5, 2010

You Are Christine O'Donnell

You've probably heard a lot about Delaware Republican senate candidate Christine O'Donnell in the last couple weeks. She gives everyone you know on Facebook a daily video that they can paste into their feed to seem politically "with it." Plus, she neatly helps the Democratic party make sure you never hear about its spinelessly walking back even faint promises to restore effective progressive taxation — like how they gutted and bailed on their attempt to kill the carried interest tax break. Pocket change you can believe in.

O'Donnell's so fucking nutty that she's almost a perfect distraction. First there was the video of her anti-masturbation opinion. Then it turned out that her passionate Christianity hit a speedbump a few years back when she was one of those loopy dorm-room-type witches. In 2006, perhaps because of witchcraft, she knew of classified Chinese plans to take over the United States. She thinks evolution is a myth because monkeys don't evolve pipes into their hands and turn into Presbyterians for no reason. Then there was the video where she admitted that she failed to become a hare krishna because she loved meatballs too much. And she claimed to have attended Oxford University in England, when in fact she didn't get her pedestrian American BA until a short while ago. Also, apparently somewhere along the line somebody asserted that her father was the official Philadelphia affiliate's Bozo the Clown, when he was actually just a substitute Bozo. Fine, whatever.

Anyhow, now O'Donnell has a video out to set the record straight, one in which she asserts, "I'm not a witch.... I'm you." Watch:


Easily the best part of the video besides those two statements is, "I'm nothing you've heard," which neatly gibes with the fact that her academic credentials, political experience and Christian faith seem to be sloppily cobbled-together bullshit.

There's more to make fun of, here, but commenters at Talking Points Memo, as well as other sites, have picked all the low-hanging fruit and driven most of the jokes into the ground in less than a day. Still, several people emailed or IMmed this video and asked for a breakdown of it. As it happened, I was already chatting with Mr. Awesome, who has lately returned from the Mysterious Orient, and I mentioned it to him, then — as usually happens with these things — sat back uselessly and watched him riff. Since you're on the internet, I know you love chatlogs. Check this one out:



I have no idea what to do with this woman. Aside from the bookends of "I'm not a witch" and "I'm you," which are probably two of the most memorably fucked political declarations in history, I just don't see much here beyond the obvious.






Do you think she really is me?








I don't think so. I think it's far more likely that you're slowly becoming a man making oral arguments in a moot court, wearing a hideous tie and bearing a faint but heartbreaking resemblance to John Stossel.






Do you think her ultimate plan is to literally become every voter?—like to merge with all of us like in Akira? You're going to be driving a flimsy Japanese scooter around a reddish hellscape screaming O'DONNELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL, shooting a bazooka at nothing in particular.





Ahahaha.








Or it's gonna be more like a Phillip K. Dick Palmer Eldtritch thing, where the stigmata of O'Donnell starts to permeate your reality.







Going off everything I've learned about her, if Christine O'Donnell told me that she had stigmata, I would be forced to believe it.







Christine O'Donnell fits the diagnostic criteria for borderline personality disorder so well. It's pretty uncanny. Also, what would a witch make of this O'Donnell ad? You know that's how Captain Kirk killed robots.






Hahahaha what?








All right dig this: it's a logical paradox. She says, "I'm not a witch. I'm you." So if you are a witch, she says, "I'm not a witch. I'm you," but you are a witch, and you are you, and all of those inputs can't be true.





*sips chamomile and performs binding charm on hamster to make it more perky in the cold weather*

*tv explodes*




O'Donnell's taking the exclusion of non-Christians typical of American political discourse the extra step further by telling those people they don't even have their own identity. She has supplanted that identity and assumed their demographic characteristics. They are now white Christian women who lie about weird shit no one cares about except crazy people. They are Big Brother. They are the most equal pigs. It's like you get home one day and Joe the Plumber is sitting on your couch drinking your beer and buying shit on Amazon.com with your credit card.




Ahahaha, shit. I have to go take out the recycling and trash.








Look in the mirror, man. You're O'Donnell.