My father insisted today that I take a break from "getting old white men to vote" today, and return his phone call.

Before I leave the table I tell my cohorts about my father's line. The one person at the table who is white, male, and past the conventional retirement age says, "tell him you're sitting across from an Air Force Veteran his own age who thinks he should vote for McCain."

I smile. "I'm not sure you know what makes the old man tick," I remark.

Out in the parking lot I find myself a nice place on a curb and punch in Dad's code on the cell phone. "I'd sure like to see you this weekend, if you'll be back," he tells me.

"Ah. But I'm not going back until after the election, like I told you. That's why I went over the night before I left," I remind him. (I refrain from telling him that this is one of the reasons I left a several hours later than I really wanted to, and ended up spending the night in Primm, Nevada, on the way out here; I had to pack that morning, alongside my traditional try-to-clean-up-the-house-on-the-day-I-leave idiocy.)

"So, you're getting people to vote for Sarah Palin," he remarks. "She's just so . . . pretty."

"You know, Dad," I tell him, "if you vote for McCain, you'll be seeing a lot more of her on the news and in various magazines and newspapers. Not that I'd want you to make such a serious decision for such a superficial reason. But I'd hate to see you stuck looking at pictures of Barack Obama and Joe Biden for the next four years."

"Furthermore," I continue, "the Governor wears skirts more than she does pantsuits, so the average consumer of news would see a lot more leg with her than they would have with Senator Clinton."

He seems to be wavering. "Her legs are nice," he tells me.

"There's also the fact that if she and McCain win this one, the contest will be between Palin and Mrs. Clinton in 2012. Wouldn't that make the debates more fun?" I ask.

"Maybe. Will they be held in hot oil?"

I move in for the kill: "Not in real life. But with computer graphics, there will still be video of it happening in hot oil, and it should look perfectly realistic."

The only thing that could go wrong now is if my stepmother accompanies my dad to the voting booth in order to "help" him. Of course, it's just the Golden State, so what he does won't matter on the Big Battleground.

But still . . . . I would like to have made the sale.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 11:01 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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