THE LYING THE WITCH AND THE WORD WAR... OR WHAT HAPPENED NEXT TO THE TEA PARTY?

Clever compile: Copyright Steve Paulo via Flikr.

I’ve had a bit of a break from blogging. Partly because of some big projects at work – one of them our coverage of the U.S. midterms.  Which was brilliant.  To scamper down the rabbit hole into the mad, bad … perfectly profane world of U.S. politics - can be bliss itself for me – but not everyone loves it so much. Still I feel there’s some journalistic mileage left in the Tea Party yet – those candidates who made it and those who didn’t – the media spotlight shifted from these intriguingly nutty men and women far too soon in my humble opinion.

John McCain (remember him) let his daughter Meghan lose on Jay Leno this week where she was asked about the Delaware Tea Party candidate Christine ‘I’m not a witch’ O’ Donnell - who lost her bid for the Senate seat in that state. Refreshingly Meg McCain finally uttered the words all right minded people (and some Republicans too) had been thinking about this woman: She’s “out of her frickin mind.” – it got the biggest applause of the night.  Meggy Poos went on to talk about Karl Rove and masturbation, which, frankly makes this TV worth watching – the clip is below.

Next to Kentucky where Rand Paul – the Tea Party candidate who won – is preparing to take his ‘we hate all taxes and most government’ message to, erm Washington, where he gets to work from now on.  It turns out most people this side of the Pond don’t read the Louisville Courier Journal with as greater regularity as myself and so you may not have heard of the delightful story of ‘Aqua Bhudda’ doing the rounds shortly before his victory.  The allegations were fairly simple – essentially that Paul and his college buddies once kidnapped a female student, took her to a creek and forced her to bow down and worship a fake God called Aqua Buddha – (well that’s the kind of man I’d want to represent me!) The allegations appeared in an advert created by his opponent, Paul slowly and kind of half heartedly denied it, and  - get this – the guy’s ratings went UP and he won. Apparently most Kentucky voters thought this election advert was a pretty nasty move (!?)

Finally out West to California where they needed a replacement for Arnold Schwarzenegger. The race pitted Democratic veteran Jerry Brown against another Tea Party supported candidate Meg Whitman.  California bloggers have been concentrating on where she goes next, but from here – and despite her being backed by this band of nutters - it’s quite difficult to dislike Whitman, for two reasons – 1: She founded Ebay   2: She used her millions to produce one of the best election adverts I’ve ever seen – and I’ve watched a lot of these things. Give it a watch – give all of these things a watch and understand … it’s probably a good thing our elections aren’t as long or as expensive as those of our American cousins …  But God if they were as interesting.