I don’t know about you, but I hate re-runs of old television shows. As a boy, there was a brief time when we were only able to tune in a Christian-run UHF channel from Pennsylvania. At dinner, my parents watched Bonanza. This was in 1989 – 1990. I hated that show.

But there were people out there who loved Bonanza — who love it still today. Little Joe and Hoss and Ben Cartwright. And their monotonous, wholesome adventures out West without any women at all.

Presidential campaigns feel a lot like Bonanza. They’re predictable, particularly since 2000. This is the third campaign since Al Gore famously won the popular vote, but lost the war, and it’s the same show.

Republicans run endless smear ads against the Democrat, making him unacceptable to the average voter. The Democrats wring their hands: “If only the average voter new the truth, they would realize that the Republicans are lying.”

But here’s the thing, folks. Americans have loved the Republican Party since Richard Nixon, and the Republicans use smears and negative ads, because they work, and on some level Americans want to emrbace the myth of the Democratic traitor trying to seize control of the Presidency from “good” and “honest” men like George W. Bush and John McCain.

It’s time for us to wake up and realize that on a macro level, Americans believe that narrative about Democrats — they expect it, and when they hear it, they embrace it. Obama is not a terrorist-sympathizing Black Panther hippie Weatherman Ivy league elitist muslim who hates America. Yet, people believe the lie because they want to believe it. Even if it contradicts itself.

I suspect a lot of this is generational — it’s people who lived through the sixities horrified what liberals wrought on the country, people who lost their jobs due to what they perceived as liberal abuses such as affirmative action, or people who had a bad experience with the New Deal and the Great Society.

There’s a guy at work — a conservative, but a nice enough bloke — who is constantly labeling me, accusing me of having beliefs that I just don’t have. No, I don’t drink herbal tea. No, I don’t drive a Prius. No, I don’t eat organic produce. No, I’m not a vegan. No, I’m not obsessed with saving the planet. But he knows I’m a Democrat — so he imposes these things onto me. I am a progressive, I try to tell him, but my politics are rooted in my father’s Union activism, in blue collar Democratic traditions. And there was a time when I was young that I called myself a conservative. But the complexities of my beliefs are too much for this guy — he likes the cliched narrative better. He can’t believe otherwise.

And that’s the problem with Americans. They love Bonanza re-runs — they love having the story come quick, easy, simple and pre-packaged. Good versus evil. Black and white. And yes, I mean that literally, because race is a huge factor in the narrative against Obama.

There is a new generation on the cusp of delivering the presidency to a progressive, but the old generation, the sixties boomers still fighting the wars of their youth will dominate the cycle for a few more elections. Once they’re gone, I hope their successors will be ready for a new story besides the strong-willed American patriot versus the pinko-commie traitor bad guy. But honestly, I’m not that optimistic.

After all, Bonanza is still running on TV Land.

Yes, the general election is stressful for both sides, but take a break.  Kick back and relive Obama’s victory over Hillary Clinton.  Politico’s Roger Simon has a great series up which explains why Obama’s team won and Clinton’s team lost.  Not as scandalous as the recent Atlantic piece, but more comprehensive in its narrative.

Click here to read it.

So, my cell phone did not go off Saturday morning with a text message from my close personal friend Barack Obama revealing his vice presidential choice as expected. I had to get the news from CNN.

Joe Biden.

To be honest, I wasn’t crazy about the pick at first, but he’s been growing on me. If anything, Biden’s a real guy. He goes home every night the Delaware, and he’s a far cry from McCain and his rich socialite sugar mama, or likely GOP VP Mitt Romney whose vast personal wealth is only outmatched by his magic Mormon underwear.

Evan Bayh or Tim Kaine would have been sunk the ship. But Biden could be okay.

Of course the PUMA’s are grumbling. “It should have been Hillary!”

Man, if football teams were such bad sports — could you imagine the Redskins screaming about losing to the Dallas Cowboys 3-0. “We’ve been robbed! Robbed! Robbed!” You’d think the Hillary deadenders didn’t understand that their candidate lost. Seriously, she fucking lost. Howard Dean lost in 2004. I didn’t cry, I didn’t switch to Bush — I voted for John Kerry.

Grow up, folks. Seriously. Hillary Clinton wasn’t owed the Democratic nomination by blood right. She had to win the election. She came close, but in the end, she was outplayed. That’s how elections work. In my adult life, I’ve never had my candidate win.

Of course, it becomes pretty clear that the cult of personality is a lot stronger than party allegiance. So they’re all going to vote McCain so Hillary can come out again in 2012 and save us all. I can imagine the yelling and screaming if the rolls were reversed, and the Obama supporters went McCain.

John McCain’s daughter doesn’t just love her daddy, she also serves as the McCain Blogette for the campaign. Recently, McCain hosted the D.C. Press Corps at his ranch in Sedona, Arizona for a special BBQ thanking them for their support, and the McCain Blogette was there to capture it on video. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen a journalist fall of McCain’s tire swing, or met some of the McCain family’s special “friends,” who in reality are the family servants. I really wish I had a nice couple to take care of my two-bedroom apartment when our family is “away!”

There’s no question that the media love McCain but this shows just how close they are to the Republican Maverick. Unfortunately for the Senator, though, they had such a good time that a Politico reporter had to inquire about McCain’s other properties. See below for the full details on that one.

Finally, I have to say that it looks like McCain Blogette would like to audition for her shot on “The Hills.” Too bad the McCain’s aren’t rich enough for that …

How many houses does John “Regular Guy” McCain have? The answer may surprise you:

And yet Obama is the “elitist” with his single home. And the low end of rich is a $5 million a year income. Someone should see if McCain knows what a supermarket scanner is while they’re at it.

If Barack Obama picks someone out of the box — a Hillary Clinton or Jim Webb, perhaps — then I think we have a good chance of winning.  But if he goes with a safe choice, a vanilla choice like Tim Kaine, Evan Bayh, or Joe Biden, we’re sunk.

McCain’s pick really isn’t as important.  McCain’s victory is predicated on making Obama unacceptable, not on selling John McCain.  At the end of the day the only moves that count are Obama’s.

I’ve played the Battlefield series since its inception in 2002 with Battlefield 1942. In that time, I’ve been team-killed for planes, run over by my own teammates, and killed in a barrage of friendly artillery fire many times.

I’ve been playing on XBOX Live since 2003. In that time, I’ve had my sexuality questioned, my skill disparaged by team mates, team-killed mercilessly, and generally been reminded of why I hated bullies in high school.

Lately, I’ve been playing the new XBOX 360 game Battlefield Bad Company, which has mixed the traditional Battlefield team-killing, with XBOX Live idiocy.

Case in point: two nights ago I spawned on a new server to find myself instantly attacked by my own squad mates. Not just team mates, but squad mates. Their leader tossed a grenade at me and immediately started telling me about how he was going to kill me.

Instantly, I was surrounded by him and his goons in a tight circle.

“What are you going to do about it, Jeff?” he said to me.

I had not spoken to him, yet. Didn’t intend to. Instead, I pivoted around the circle until I found the leader and knifed him. For a moment, the bullies were shocked.

“He knifed me!” the guy shouted, surprised.

His friends opened fire and killed me.

“He knifed me!” the kid squeaked again. There was a tinge of admiration in his voice.

Deciding that I couldn’t hurt my permanent stats by committing another inevitable team-kill, I left the server for happier pastures.

You have to have a thick skin to play on XBOX Live. Really, I have nothing more to say than that.

One of McCain’s Naval Academy and POW acquaintances explains why he isn’t voting for McCain (via Andrew Sullivan).

When I was 16 years old, I thought the Judybats were the greatest band on earth. My only question now as I look back at them on YouTube is what the hell was I thinking? I saw this band five or six times in college, even interviewed them once. Who knows how many thousands of times I listened to their records. My later participation in the 1990’s indie pop scene was undoubtedly influenced by my early love of the Judybats, but their music does not hold up in 2008.

Can you believe this video sold me on them enough for me to go out and buy their CD for $18 in 1991 money? What’s that, like $35 today? Actually, the Judybat’s Native Son was the first CD I ever bought. All my previous records were enjoyed on analog audio tape.

I’m trying to figure out the horse in the video. It’s some kind of metaphor for sexuality or drugs or something. Huhm.

Some of my friends have reminded me that I haven’t blogged in awhile, so here I am.

I’m pretty depressed by the election.  Longtime readers may recall my depression during the primaries — as well as my conviction that my guy (Obama) would lose.  He didn’t!  Huzzah!  But now we’re going into the general and the inevitable smear campaign has begun.  I used to like John McCain, but now I don’t.  He’s become a complete tool, and his incompetence and bad judgment has been on full display, despite the “liberal” media looking the other way.

Apparently the only way he can win is to make everyone think Obama is unacceptable.  That means smears — racial, political, even religious.  There’s a rumor going around evangelical circles that Obama is the Anti-Christ.  Seriously, you can’t make this shit up.  Longtime observers of the evangelical movement may recall that there was a time when Mikhail Gorbachev and Saddam Hussein were both the Anti-Christ in the 1980’s and the early 1990’s respectively.  The world didn’t end then, and it’s not going to end now.  But if it was going to end, I’d say John McCain’s proposed war with Russia would be a good place to start.

If Obama reveals a high school Advanced Dungeons and Dragons habit, we’re all going to be sunk.

On the home front, the girls are getting bigger, but the potty-training is not coming along as well as we liked.  Apparently some kids can be resistant to  potty-training.  It doesn’t surprise me that mine are.

I’ve seen a total of four movies this summer: Indiana Jones, Incredible Hulk, Iron Man and Batman.  That’s more than all of 2007.  They’re actually letting me out of the house, again.  My favorite of the four, shockingly, was Incredible Hulk.  Edward Norton’s Bruce Banner is a real guy struggling with his demons — there may be three big action set-pieces in the Hulk sequel, but the meat of the film is with Norton’s struggles with the monster inside him.

Although I liked The Dark Knight, I wasn’t as blown away by it as many of my friends.  Heath Ledger was good, but I think he’s suffering from the inevitable halo effect of tragedy.  Brenden Lee’s performance in The Crow experienced similar support.

The Dark Knight somehow managed to take the creepy villains of the torture porn genre (i.e. Saw, Hostel, etc.) and apply that archetype to the Joker.  This means he’s not a real character so much as an inexplicable force for terror.  Granted, it’s watered down, but I was troubled by the amount of marketing dollars spent trying to get children to the theater.  The Dark Knight is a dark (I know, haha) film geared towards adults.  There’s no good reason for them to have made action figures and sold them at Walmart.  If you ask me, the movie should have been rated “R.”  My girls would have nightmares for months if they even saw a photograph of the Joker.  Being a parent has definitely sensitized me to the sale of violence to children.

On the music front, I’ve bought a number of great records.  Throw Me The Statue’s Moonbeams is a phenomenal pop record, and I’ve grown extremely enamored of Bowerbirds’ Hymns for a Dark Horse, which is in the “Americana” genre of indie rock occupied by such favorites of mine as Andrew Bird and Joanna Newsom.  Bird’s Soldier On EP is definitely worth a few hundred listens. The addition of American and European folk traditions to indie rock has been an incredible breath of fresh air.  Of course, I’d be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge that guys like Will Oldham and John Darnielle have been doing this for years.

I’ll leave you now with a live performance of Bowerbirds performing “Dark Horse,” which is available on  Hymns for a Dark Horse: