Department of Redundancy Department

With just over a month to go before the crucial mid-term elections, one vote is already in.

We are sick and tired of the radio and tv commercials that the candidates are putting on.  They're redundant, and repetitive,  they say the same things over and over, and what's more, they are redundant.  And we are sick and tired of hearing them, because they are are repetitious, and, one might say, duplicative.

They pretty much follow the same pattern: when you want to smear the opponent, get black - and - white photos of them trying lingually to remove a raspberry seed from a molar at a church picnic.  Bonus points if their eyes and mouth are seemingly set in a sneer.

Then, have your announcer with the voice of doom read: "Dick Senormous wants to double your taxes and cut your income in half.  Can't we do better than that?" Then have your announcer go with the lightly-sprightly approach and say "Gabriel Angel for Governor...because the other guy is coming to take your children away."


Then, have your Mr Candidate Angel call in on the phone to record this: "I'm Gabe Angel and I approve this message"  and tack that on the end of the spot.  That way, the public says, "Gabe Angel is so busy trying to prevent the utility companies from cutting power off to transplant patients that he couldn't even take time to go to the studio to record that message. What a wonderful man he is. We must vote for him as much as we can."

If you're not out to smear the other person in the race, but just want to make your person look like the second coming of Franklin Delano Reagan (as if!), you roll archival footage of immigrants at Ellis Island and kids being cared for in Appalachian hospitals and you have a wistful-voiced Mason Adams-kind of announcer say:

"Amanda Reckonwith  left her native land to come here and heal the sick and disenchanted.  She'll do the same for you...if you care enough to vote..."


And the other kind of ad is something we are just a wee bit tired of too.  Down in Anne Arundel County, MD (known around here as "Anne Darundel" County, and no one knows why) there is a huge fight going on about whether to have a slot machine parlor at a megamall that is, honestly, the size of a small city.  Opponents claim that honest clean-livin' reg'lar folk don't want the atria of their mall to be sullied by the presence of ambling gamblers and slutty slotters. Proponents claim that the county will reap $400 million dollars for teachers, cops and firefighters if the voters will just allow a slot machine parlor on the mall parking lot.  Their ads drone on ceaselessly.  I say, why not settle the matter by yanking the crank on a slot machine?  If it comes up three cherries, bring it on, bulldozers!  Three lemons, and the purity and sanctity of a mall with very few homicides of late will be maintained. 

Just the way Gabe Angel would like it.