Five times a day I'll still say to someone, "I don't know what I'm going to do if McCain wins." Of course, the reality is I'm probably not going to do anything. What can I do? I'm not going to kill myself. If I didn't kill myself when I became impotent for two months in 1979, I'm certainly not going to do it if McCain and Palin are elected, even if it's by nefarious means. If Obama loses, it would be easier to live with it if it's due to racism rather than if it's stolen. If it's racism, I can say, "Okay, we lost, but at least it's a democracy. Sure, it's a democracy inhabited by a majority of disgusting, reprehensible turds, but at least it's a democracy." If he loses because it's stolen, that will be much worse. Call me crazy, but I'd rather live in a democratic racist country than a non-democratic non-racist one. (It's not exactly a Hobson's choice, but it's close, and I think Hobson would compliment me on how close I've actually come to giving him no choice. He'd love that!)

Apropos of nothing, I'd also like to insert into the Congressional Record that season two of Mad Men, for all the Zeitgeist hype, has been almost uniformly so-what in its sliding nowhere malaise, the most recent episode a hodge-podge of watered-down baptismal redemption cliches and clumsily integrated flashbacks that reduced Don Draper to an existential everyman in an Antonioni for Idiots exercise. The only pleasurable element is Pete's snappish irritation over ever hoop he's being made to jump through (his outburst over his travel expenses, for example), which is also just about the only recognizable bit of human behavior that's managed to squeak through the show's alienation effect--its trafficking in period stereotypes and talking mannequins at the expense of individuality. At its draggiest Mad Men is like some square's idea of Douglas Sirk, a graduate thesis with its head stuck in a fishbowl.