SPLENDOR IN THE GAFFES

I don’t know about you, but I’m going to move to the other side of the electoral bed and light up a cigarette. Anyone have a match?

       

And how sweet it is!

       

Please, if only till the last ash is flicked, let me just lie here and savor the moment. I'm not used to such extended foreplay, or such a rich sense of satisfaction and afterglow.

       

Let me contemplate Karl Rove handing out T-shirts that proclaim, “I spent $400 million on the Goddamn 2012 election and all I got is this lousy T-shirt!”

       

Let me picture Eddie Haskell’s twin, Paul Ryan dragging his 87-year-old mother onto the stage repeatedly, as if they were both trapped in a nightmare that wouldn’t go away, to prove to blue-haired and highly-wrinkled audiences everywhere his heretofore-hidden concern for the elderly.

       

Best of all, as I suck in the aromatic smoke from this symbolic-but-delicious cigarette, I see Willard Mitt Romney himself, foot in mouth, shape-shifting and position-changing like some creature from a 1950’s William Castle horror flick. Think “The Tingler” or “The House on Haunted Hill,” made over by dint of Mitt’s millions into “The Shapeshifter” and “The Creature From The Hollow Core.”

       

“Step right up, folks!” the narrator calls, “Watch the man on the screen change from pro-choice to pro-life, from advocate of universal health care to advocate of universal emergency rooms, from moderate Republican to conservative ideologue. Don’t be afraid, children, it’s only a movie.”

       

In the end, Mitt, as most fairy tales go, you were saved from an eternity of shape-shifting by the kiss of the handsome dark prince.

       

I can’t see you in the dark of the room, boys, but I can hear your heavy breathing.

       

Let me take a lungful of smoke as I savor the thought of Karl explaining to his billionaire friends how hard he worked, and how difficult it can be, to create hundreds of totally discreditable TV commercials that could chase people out of their living rooms faster than an air raid siren.

       

Just imagine, Karl, if you had only had another $100 million and one more year to work with…The Democrats might have recaptured the House!

       

And one more smiling drag on the butt to recall Paul Ryan balancing on the razor-thin edge of fatuous logic, explaining how he and Mitt were the ones looking out for the interests of the poor and the elderly and how especially he—his house budgets aside—had not come to bury Medicare but to save it. 

       

Well, the ash grows longer, boys, the time grows fleeting. One last drag, Mitt, to accompany these sleepy memories of all the glorious gaffes you blundered through. How you managed to insult the British and the Palestinians on your whirlwind foreign affairs tour. How you inelegantly managed to insult 47% of the entire population at your chummy millionaires' fundraising dinner. How you inhumanely, and ill-politically, tied your faithful dog Seamus’ carrier to the top of your station wagon for the 12-hour trip from Massachusetts to Canada.

       

Good grief, if I start recalling all your gaffes here in bed, Mitt, I’ll smoke so many cigarettes I’ll ruin my lungs.

       

Better to crush out the butt and forget how badly you and your friends tried to screw America.

       

No hard feelings, Mitt, we only flirted with you for a few cheap thrills ourselves.

       

Could you pass over the ashtray?