i reiterate

[my favorite picture of Brad because he looks so studious, so like he knows what he's talking about]

As you may or may not know, I nag Brad about the watching-paint-drying nature of his election fraud reportage with stultifying regularity. I’m in for the whole pound, but dang this stuff can make your synapses snap shut if you’re not careful, and I want him throwing in some relief for this around here, and on the radio.

The bad guys deliberately make this a big old confused ball of electrified baling wire in a cotton gin so that the concerned masses would just rather chalk this up to some whacked-out conspiracy than have to pay such close attention. We’re too tired from trying to make ends meet, from the terrifying state of the world. It’s dire in every direction we turn, and now somebody’s hollering about the wrong boxes to check and walking our absentee ballots into the precinct polling place on election day? 800 numbers for irregularities? What is “regular” anyway?

Put a bikini on it! Get some hip sweatshirts with wry slogans on them! Involve movie stars! Make it a video game! At least get some good guitar music for background. Sheesh. I’m going to lose it if I’m reminded of another folding metal chair on the hard linoleum floor of some civic meeting space, or one more spindly plastic contraption spending the night in a poll worker’s garage.

So, then, what to my wonderment, but Tavis Smiley had Brad in a panel discussion on his show Friday. The salient part, to my mind, is that smarmy Hans vonSpicolli, or whatever, was on the panel with him, and Brad Friedman blew him off the airwaves. It was beautiful! I stood up and cheered and ran around my living room pumping my fist!


[1/2 hour -- Had Tavis been just slightly less wussy it really, really would have rocked.]

This does not, you understand, exempt him from my abuse when I don’t approve, but it makes him practically godlike in my book anyway. Good grief! I can’t tell you what a relief it was to me to hear him speak to one of those filthy felons in precisely the tone and using precisely the terms that are mandatory to a better world.

What a man! I ain’t kidding. That is manly. Don’t miss it.