I have a 6 year old half-brother (mom’s second marriage). He is obsessed with politics; during the 2004 election he had a Kerry-Edwards sticker on his big wheels tractor. Living in Michigan, he is also a democrat and proudly has his own Obama sign in his yard. He calls him Barackobama (all one word).

Today he asked me something that actually made me ashamed of the political system in this country. I told him that if he wanted me to, I could get him an Obama-Biden sign to go in the yard. He asked who Biden was and I explained that he’s Obama’s VP pick. Then he said this: “Sissy, is Joe Biden the one that tried to blow up the White House?”

I laughed and said I was fairly certain Biden had never tried that. I asked him why and he told me that Obama has a friend that tried to blow up the White House and he (Obama) is very proud of him. Completely confused I asked him where he heard that. He told me that it was on the TV.

I’m still not sure if it was an ad or if Fox News was somehow on, but I was floored. I told him that this is a very important election and that politics get dirty sometimes, and people will exaggerate things to make the other candidate look bad to the public. To be fair, I also told him that it’s not just Republicans that do it, that Democrats are guilty of it too.

Now I want to see this ad or segment. I want to see if they make it seem like Obama was helping Bill Ayres back in 1970. Let’s see, Obama was born in 61, so yeah, that seems about right. I think at 9 I was helping with plots to bomb the Pentagon too. I also think that I am responsible for everything that everyone I know did at any point in their life even before we met. Come on people, really?

I told the boy just to ignore those ads. He asked me of John McCain was the one putting the ads out. I explained that there are committees in charge of these things, but at the end it should say who put the ad out. That it may even say “I’m (Obama/McCain/etc.) and I approve this message. I stressed that he should just ignore the ads and go based on what he knew before he saw it. I should mention that the boy picked Obama on his own. His dad was an Obama supporter, but switched to Hillary but the boy stuck with Obama and even argued with his dad about it.

The whole thing just made me really sad and as I said, disappointed. We have a president who had a cocaine problem and a former president who couldn’t keep his freaking pants on and people are going after Obama for this connection? That’s just sad to me. Let’s focus on the issues at hand, the war, the economy, civil rights, stem-cell research, protection of Roe v. Wade, getting the troops where they should be instead of Iraq, McCain’s nutty VP choice, and leave this shit out of it.

Ok, off the soapbox now. Back to our regularly scheduled sarcasm. Next post will be about the useless intern TSU sent us.