Halloween Mask Instructions
By Wells Dunbar and Richard Whittaker, Fri., Oct. 31, 2008
1) An honorable, bipartisan approach is required – reach across the aisle and borrow some scissors from Joe Lieberman. Smile your rictus grin, make with the "my friends," and try to tire-swing on through!
2) Time for a little straight talk: What you're doing ain't working! But the problem isn't you; it's with your opponent's mask. Put down the scissors, and start smearing your opponent as a faux-European celebrity airhead (with a penchant for white women, of course!).
3) You need another mask to rile up the base: Deploy your mavericky vice presidential mask! Don't feel that you have to look at it before you select it – that's not what a maverick would do! And don't think you have to cut along the lines – not very mavericky either. While we know you're itching to use every bit of the carcass, don't affix the Palin mask straight to your face with home-rendered moose-hoof glue (maverick!). After all, you'll need this again in 2012. (Veep Elizabeth Hasselbeck mask to follow. Maverick.) Garnish with 150,000 dollars' worth of products from elitist East Coast stores, and wink liberally – no, conservatively, no, err, maverickly.
4) Your veep mask becoming a drag on the ticket? Immediately announce the suspension of mask construction to parachute into Washington and bring a resolution to this crisis – after a round of morning talk shows. Oh trollops – your opponent's still pulling ahead! This ain't a joke, like bombing Iran or women's "health"! Time to take the gloves off!
5) I sure hope you didn't borrow those scissors, redistributionist! Why are you trying to "spread the scissors" around, taking them out of the hands of hardworking Americans like Joe the Shearsman? Also, spend until Nov. 4 explaining to anyone younger than 45 what a socialist is or who the Weather Underground were. (No, they didn't sing "Who Loves the Sun.") When that fails, have a party worker claim a 6-foot-4-inch, 200-pound black man attacked her at an ATM and carved out her mask for her.
6) You know, during the five years he spent in the Hanoi Hilton, John McCain didn't have a single Halloween mask.
7) Only after shedding any pretense to honor and truthfulness – not to mention economic reality, the national zeitgeist, and the overarching, aching desire for real change – finish cutting out the mask on the cover, and become John McCain. Sigh. If only Obama had agreed to four dozen joint town hall debates ...
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