Auchtoon!

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Press, October 30, 2010

Boy, how ‘bout that election, huh? Are you kiddin’ me? Politicians with their attack ads and whatnot. AmIright? Ha! Who’s with me? I tell ya!…

Yeah, it just seems like bad standup schtick to talk about an election after an election. Worse, to talk about a pre-election editorial cartoon after the election. …but it’s all I got, so let’s review the highlights and then you can get back to Facebook:

Politifact.com was an awesome resource for the election season. Their “Truth-O-Meter” rated political ads their depth of trueness — best being “True” and then desending to “Mostly True”, “Half True,” “False,” and for the worst, “Pants on Fire.” One of my pants-on-fire experiences came from a robo-call I got last weekend. The somber deep male voice advised me that candidate for US Congress, Justin Amash, had voted to give our seaports to terrorist. That a bill he supported would sell our seaports to a company from the United Arab Emirates (UAB) and that two of the 9/11 terrorist were from there so…. Of course, Amash could never have voted on such a bill — he was a state representative. And Michigan doesn’t have seaports that the legislation was talking about. And I don’t believe two of the terrorist were from the UAB, but even if they were I’m pretty sure that doesn’t make everybody else from the UAB a terrorist. So many lies packed into 30 seconds.

The Bob & Tom Show was running hilarious ads for fake candidate “Doug LaDouche.” Click for a collection of some of the things he said. My favorite: “I’m for eliminating all taxes. The government should use its own money, not ours.”

This is one of my favorite comedy bits. Greg Warren talks about his parents fighting each other with political ads: