Two Months From Now

Neon Memes • "This presidential race has jumped the shark," columnist Anna Quindlen wrote in the September 1 Newsweek. Stuff and nonsense. If anything, with Election Day now just two months away, the race has shifted into overdrive. Certainly, during the past year or so, many, most or all of the candidates on both sides of the aisle―an invidiously reductionistic phrase, by the way―have said or done something moronic. Just as certainly, true believers on the right and the left alike have sporadically threatened to pass November 4 pouting at home. (They had a horse in the race, you see, and the damned nag stumbled or even threw a shoe!) Yet against all odds, the contest for the two highest elected governmental offices in this great but conflicted nation has narrowed, effectively, to a quartet including an African-American and a woman. And whether Sarah Palin becomes the nation's newest vice president or Barack Obama its newest president, that turn of events deserves not sitcom-based snippiness but celebration. ―Bryan A. Hollerbach, Managing Editor