On my way out of the caucus I started to pass a woman with a microphone in front of a satellite van with a camera person aiming right at me.  Miss TV personality made the dubious choice of putting that mic in my face and asking me a question.  

“Do you mind if we ask you, ma’am, who you chose today?”

Now understand, I looked like any 30-something average American female in a grey fleece acrylic pea coat with a chartreuse alpaca scarf dangling on either side of the collar.
Why do I mention the attire?
Because it could have been a Democratic or a Republican caucus in my fair state of Maine that I was I exiting.  I could have been either party.  You don’t really have to look a certain way anymore to be a Democrat.  Democrats have become kind of the hero.  Republicans have become either the enemy or the machine.  Democrats aren’t the only ones running around in tie-dyed t-shirts.  Sometimes the Republicans with wily business sense buy ice cream factories and run around in tie-dyed t-shirts because they know they will SELL.  Democrats are not angels.  You have to do something to be able to actually afford a pair of Doc Maartens.  You had to make that money somehow.   
When I saw Ted Kennedy endorsing Barack Obama, wagging his finger triumphantly into the audience as he preached a new future, trying to re-capture the lost glamour of his own family’s failing legacy, I wondered to myself if he was shaking from delirium tremors or fear of knocking over the podium?  That aside, she hurt my feelings by calling me ‘ma’am’, so I had to respond.

“Well,” I said, looking at her quickly through sideways glances, playing nervous chicken, “I
AM just on the heels of a sugar coma from last night, and that always makes me a little bit…” and here I turn directly but deliberately into the face of the camera like a long term professional…
“CRAZY…”
I visibly saw her jump and hoped the cameraman caught that in her side shot.
“That makes me just the right sort of person to vote for the fringe candidate who has a lot of great Libertarian ideas for changing the government.  AND I DID.” I finished, with a little bit of a stern southern drawl that came out and overtook my poorly hidden native accent.  

“Why did you choose this candidate?”

I paused only long enough to take a breath because I already knew what was coming.

“Because Mike Gravel will never be able to make it on the ballot in this state,“  I breathed.

I’ve always wanted to stump someone with a statement like that, and while I was holding back the laughter inside, she was smiling this plastic smile of, ‘Oh, god, she is just blowing my career’.   Or at least I hoped I was that powerful; which I’m not.  

There was a nanosecond pause before she turned toward the camera herself and said “There you have it folks, votes are coming in for every candidate, and it’s anybody’s guess who’s going to come out on top.” She held her smile for the cut.

I don’t know what compelled me to do it, other than the fact that I am approaching my 45’th birthday (yes, I KNOW I said 30 something, but hey, I get told that all the time. How many middle aged women say that everyday? Trust me. It’s a self-stroke.)

I am tired of just accepting our poorly run system and being a hamster in the wheel, burning calories every day to generate enough steam to power a single cog in the machine known as oil.  Oil carefully crafted to break our backs.  They’re running scared now on the heels of their 90 trillion dollar profits.  They’re running scared all the way to Zurich, with their wives and their whores and their fattened children.  In 100 years it won’t matter to any of us anymore, and their offspring will be doing heroin somewhere in a heroin bar in the future, because they can.  We, who hoped to raise our children strong with open minds that questioned authority when they made no sense and nurtured their own creativity and problem solving ability; pray to unseen gods that our children will raise their children this way and in doing so, will preserve intelligence and fairness and not perpetuate stupidity. I look around me and see blundering spandex and sweat-pant clad idiots paving their way into Wally World with a look of inane wonder upon their pudgy faces.   They leave with poison bags hanging from their arms in bundled bunches like severed heads, swinging on the winds of commerce.  

I leaned in suddenly between the camera and Miss TV.  

“It’s not anybody’s guess!” I glibly stated, with a joyous smile that probably appeared like a maniacal stranger on crack.  

“I’m sorry?”  Miss TV tried to maintain her greasy smile slipping from her red layered lips.  

“No need to be sorry, Miss TV, unless you are voting for the same, old thing.  I mean, a person would have to be a complete moron to vote for things to continue the way they  are, wouldn’t they?  You didn’t even ask me why I would vote for a fringe candidate who I know is not going to win.  Why is he not going to win?  Because there are too many dollars chasing too many candidates to the polls.  BUT,”

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is where I EARNED my air time,

“IF people suddenly get so angry at all the waste, at working for 4 months going on 5 every year to feed that piggy bank known as Washington; if they suddenly sit up and realize that THEY are the problem, it would be CHAOS. “

I saw the feet under the camera shift slightly.  I had my audience.

“I hope this gets on You-Tube because that is the generation that GETS it.  They know that all of this consumerism, all these big TV’s and big-ass couches for big-ass Americans; all of the ENDLESS chains of supplies and demands, don’t mean sugar to a donut hole without the environment.”

Confused pause, no response, so I continue my rant, checking to make sure the little red light IS on.  

“We all know who was SUPPOSED to be President of these United States, and it gives my heart great comfort to know that at least he brought the big “E” to the center stage where it belongs and got the Pulitzer in the process. In the long run, all those oil executives can’t eat their money, and they can’t out-swim a shark.  The Bush administration has become the most dysfunctional family in Washington.”

I noticed out of the corner of my eye some young constituents laughing and making rock-on devil horn signs.  I wondered if they were waiting to go in and caucus or if they were waiting for their parents to come out.   Inner sigh.  I continued.  I don’t think they got the jump.  For those of you who don’t know what the jump is, it is what the person with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder does in every conversation.  Sometimes so many times and so quickly bouncing from one relativity to another that the listener’s head explodes like a pregnant pimple.  

I guess I’ll try an analogy.

“Here you’ve got poor little Dubya.  He’s been everybody’s favorite pet, so cute when he squints up into the camera and gives that sly boyish smile and opens up his mouth and says things no self respecting sixth grader would say for fear of making himself look stupid.”

No gasps, I continue.

“Over here in the corner is our foxy Cheney, who knew that people would link him to the military contractors, so disengaged himself in public from them while everyone knows he is going to be their biggest pay-rolled employee after the WARRRR.  He just sits there quietly factoring his dividends and shooting his friends, while Condi is coming back from another trip overseas  (they just can’t get rid of her can they?) to find the sandbox completely messed up and draining from the bottom so fast poor G can’t shovel fast enough.  She puts her hands on her hips, purses her lips and says ‘oh, what am I going to do with you boys?’ Meanwhile, back in the day when Dubya first got elected, Greenspan, who was flying this plane, saw that the fuel line was cut and bailed out with his gear, letting the next guy come in and take the wheel while it nosedived into the horizon, and the ground is coming up fast.”  

I had to come up with an ending because it was far too silent when I stopped.  Silence is unbearable when you hope for anger, indignation, SOMETHING. I forgot that APATHY is our new national religion.  
“SNAP OUT OF IT! Unless someone TELLS you who to vote for, you can’t make a decision.  INFORM yourself, vote OUT the people who you’ve voted in. “

And here is where the idea hit me, hard.

“Better yet, tell the people you voted in that you want a moratorium on all new bills.  We don’t need any more bills.  We need to reduce most of the ridiculously overdone laws on the books now.  Write to your Congress person, write to your Senator.  Tell them, NO NEW LAWS.  Forget taxes.  Once we reduce the laws upon which we already have a bloated government to overlook, catalog, and document them, our taxes will go down due to lack of need.  Really cut the budget.  Tell them it is now their job to REDUCE the laws they’ve made.  This should appeal to everyone.  Right wing, religious people (the very people I usually avoid) should be the biggest supporters, the very same people sitting in their Barcoloungers right now at home thinking I’m insane.  Look, we were given 10 Commandments back in the day, and really, everything that we try to make into minutiae details can be applied, or at least reduced to them and the original Constitution and Bill of Rights. “

Something finally snapped Miss TV out of her anorexic reverie.

“You think you’re the first person to suggest that the 10 commandments are ultimate law?”

Wow, have I hit a nerve with Miss TV!?  I wonder if the audience is waking up. I prepare to rub their eyes.

“No, of course not.  I’m not a messiah, or messiah-ess? Or anything” I had to suppress a smile for that one.  I was having way too much fun with my 15 minutes.  

“Thou shalt not kill.  Ok, that means, kill.  Take someone’s life.  It’s killing.  Not manslaughter, not self-defense, it’s killing. How hard is it to figure out that the snapping sound you hear when you twist someone’s neck is killing them?”
“Thou shalt not covet.  Well, that covers wanting to rape someone because you can’t have or control them, it covers greed and avarice.  It covers child molesters who damage children for life with their fulfillments of covetous fantasies that should never have made it from their brain to their hands. “

Then I looked challengingly into the camera:

“While I’m on a roll, change also begins with those of you who have done these things and are now doing your time.  Every single time you knowingly appeal your sentence or allow your lawyer to do it for you, you are wasting tax payer money and forfeiting your children’s future, taking food out of your girlfriend’s mouth, cutting your mother’s healthcare.  Take your medicine.  How refreshing would it be if you finally just went up and said to the judge “I’m guilty.  Keep me here for the remainder of my sentence.  I want to pay my debt to society to try to make amends for my misdeeds by making a better person of myself in a controlled environment.  If everyone who is actually guilty did that, then maybe those people who truly HAVE been wrongly incarcerated can be set free to go with their families and take care of their parents.”

In my head I hear the raucous banging of the proverbial tin cups on metal bars and the voices of all the incarcerated rising ‘We are ALL innocent in HERE!’ and then the laughter.  I become lost in this image.  I stand limp, with my arms at my sides in defeat and my head slack back against my shoulders looking up to the sky.  It’s a beautiful day, azure blue, fluffy bunnies chasing each other in a game of tag with the wind.  

I see Miss TV hand off her mic to the tech lady.  She  takes a sip from a bottle of Poland Spring water someone had handed her and looks at me in a curious fashion.  

“Are you ok?”

I feel confused. “Yes, just tired.”

“Well, we appreciate you helping us out with the poll.  Thanks for trying.  I thought that after you answered the question you were going to pass out.  Your face got kinda white.  That happens to a lot of people when we point a camera in their direction. “
She bent down and picked up her heavier winter coat, the one she doesn’t wear on camera, to fight off the bitter afternoon winds picking up and biting through her blouse.  

“I turned pale?” I felt suddenly like I was weighted down with bowling balls in my coat pockets.  

“Yes, just as soon as I asked you who you voted for, you turned quite pale and just mumbled really low.  Then you just kept standing there, like, well like that.”

I looked at myself.  I was hunched, bent slightly forward, feet pointed out and apart, my head had been tilted skyward until she spoke to me.  And why was my mouth so dry?

“Did you like my speech?” I felt my words slurring for some reason.  Was I having a stroke?

She nearly spit out her water and laughed, “Oh that’s a good one.  I don’t think saying one word constitutes a speech.  But it was appreciated.”

Now I was starting to get angry.  “One word? But what about all that other stuff I said about Bush, and Cheney and the innocent prisoners?”

Miss TV suddenly had this uncomfortable look of recognition, one I felt I had recognized before.  It is somewhere between knowledge and pity.  

“Um, sure.  But all we really HEARD was one word.  You said ‘Yes’. ”