And the Claude Rains Memorial Gambling Awareness Award goes to Shepard Smith of Fox News

The cameras returned to the Fox News studio after McCain’s concession speech last night to a lot of Very Concerned Faces. The audience… booed. Hissed. In one particularly fragrant case, demanded to see Obama’s birth certificate. The audience, a more in sorrow than in anger Shepard Smith said, just didn’t Get the elegiac mood of McCain’s classy concession speech.* How, Smith asked plaintively of his appropriately somber spokescoanchor, did we get to this?

Gee. I have a theory.

Victory has a lot of owners, but defeat tends to be accidentally on purpose left on the bus. Let’s return it to some of them. The people who turned vicious, take no prisoners politics into a parlor game for ruling class hobbyists? They own an enormous share of this. Mr. Murdoch’s Fox News and and Fox News contributor Karl Rove (who gifted us with Steve Schmidt, the guy who made the call for McCain to Go There) and CNN’s Alex "hands ad" Castellanos, and ABC’s Matthew "screw the middle" Dowd, and the entire Republican permanent floating murderer’s row campaign apparatus have spent decades shaping the responses of the people in that courtyard.

It was their day job, and the founding of their fortunes, but they love their kids and their dogs and they have gay siblings and it’s just how the game is played, right? No harm no foul.

Only, you know, harm. And foul. And hatred, and division, and soldiers dying, and tax dollars disappearing by the billions into the pockets of contributors, and the economy going under, while we fiercely debate what goes on in other peoples’ bedrooms and how to taxonomize those threatening creatures, People With Skin Colors and Religions Other Than Our Own.

How did we get here? Everyone who wasn’t involved in making it no big deal to say this stuff to a national reporter, take one step back

"It’s terrible, just terrible," said Lindsay Diamond from Phoenix. "When the economy’s bad, Republicans lose."

The 28-year-old dancer could take some consolation from Obama’s victory though. "I don’t think we’ll have to worry about another African-American president in four years time," she said."Because after what’s going to happen in the next four years under Obama, we’ll never elect an African-American again."

Duncan’s friend, 30-year-old Sarah Duncan, was more generous."There’s no question that Obama’s an absolutely phenomenal, knock-your-socks-off speaker," she said."McCain is old and not very dynamic, and that’s what people see. But people don’t look past the image and the fancy words when they look at Obama.

"I just don’t think America is quite ready for an African-American to be President. There’s already people out there saying they’ll try to assassinate him. He’ll make us a socialist country but Americans won’t accept that."

…"I’m very disappointed because I don’t believe Obama is telling the truth when he speaks to the crowds," said Jeanette Woodward."And the press has been very biased. We don’t get the truth."

"I’m frightened because we are in the tax bracket that he’s been talking about punishing. So we are going to have to let go some of our employees and cut back on our business now."My husband says that if he knew that he was gonna work that hard for 30 years for somebody else, he wouldn’t have worked so hard."

Mazie Hoffmann, meanwhile, lamented the effect that father-of-two Obama’s election would have on family values."I don’t feel that he has good values, you know, wholesome values that represent America," she said."He believes in abortion, about all the abortion rights that are extreme. Maybe in Europe you have that but in America, most of mainstream America is more conservative. And I feel that as far as gay marriage we are going to get that here… America is gonna turn a lot more liberal."

Marian, a long-time Republican, also blamed the media for McCain’s loss."I can’t believe it. We lost, it’s the media," she said. "The media robbed John McCain of the presidency."But we’ll wake up tomorrow morning and life will continue. But it’s got a bitter taste."

Dan, who works in construction, said McCain had paid the price for not attacking Obama more aggressively. "I think McCain didn’t attack hard enough against Obama. In the political debates, I had the impression that he didn’t give straight answers," describing himself as "Dan the Builder".

*No, he didn’t say elegiac.


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