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“As a karate expert … ” Finally, a political candidate about whom I can get excited.

I am not being ironic.

Obviously Jimmy McMillan is not going to win, and I don’t even think he should, not that the identity of New York’s governor is any of this Oregonian’s business. But I read the Register-Guard mailbag every day, and see a few letters every day from suspiciously on-message letters from people purporting to be everyday citizens who wrote them all by themselves. No excess, no matter how slime-smeared* from the Republican or Democrat parties can be considered shocking at this point, but you even see third-party no-hopers using this tactic, or assailed by it.

Additional viewpoints and political alternatives, no matter how whacked-out and gratuitous, are by definition welcome in the America in which I believe. My spirits drop, however, to see so-called alternatives, ones who have no realistic chance of winning, ape the win-at-all-costs methods of the establishment parties, though.

There may be some of that to Jimmy McMillan and his Rent is 2 Damn High Movement party too. I haven’t checked. Honestly, I don’t even know whether or not rent is too high in New York. But he seems more a shrill voice of the popular id. Rather than a hopeless pretender dressing up in the king’s clothes, he’s the gadfly all third parties ought to be. His rent is too high, he’s angry, and he’s not shutting up about it. Politics builds in its practitioners a thick skin, and perhaps his opponents’ skin is already thickened beyond the point that he can “sting (them) and whip them into a fury, all in the service of truth.” But at least the man is trying.

Maybe McMillan is the Socrates of our era. Where the original had complicated ontological queries, the new model has only rage, articulated simply. But maybe, cometh the confused, soundbite-obsessed, shallow hour, cometh the focused, soundbite-friendly, uncomplicated man.

Note: Credit to the New Yorker’s Amy Davidson for the blog post that alerted me to McMillan’s existence.

* Only slightly hyperbolic

  1. Ross says:

    His beard looks like a ballsack.

  2. Patrick says:

    you say you don’t know about rent in new york city, so i’ll tell you. it is too damn high.

  3. Lyzi Diamond says:

    I heard you giggling about this last night. Right ON.

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