Dear Michelle,
Can Barack please have a cigarette?
No, stop right there, maybe you don't get it: the future of the free world depends on it. Barack looks tired, and he's been awful on TV. I think he's bitter, bitter about not being able to have a cigarette. Cigarettes got him this far…can he please just have one? (It's like the year Tiger Woods changed his swing and was quickly superseded by Vijay Singh.)
Maybe he could have one this weekend? He really needs to win Indiana. Also, keep in mind: tobacco and North Carolina, they kind of go together, you know. Sure, he'll probably win there anyway, but a larger margin is always good. At least he should be able to have one while Rev. Jeremiah Wright is doing his Johnny Appleseed-best to to sow seeds of damaging sound bites around the country.
How unseemly will it be for you to have to pretend to support a race-baiting candidacy when the DNC takes the nomination away from Barack? How unfortunate will it be for ME to thus support McCain?
One little cigarette might even help Barack with white working-class voters! Think about the pure gold of "Barack outside smoking with the boys," like he surely used to do, talking sports with the friendly janitors who were having a smoke outside the University of Chicago Law School. If Hillary had stopped smoking, believe me, she'd have started again (and denied she ever stopped), and then reminisced about her smoking breaks with the gals back when she worked as a hair-netted cafeteria lady in a Terre Haute elementary school.
Can Barack please have a cigarette?
Thanks very much,
Paul Devlin
graduate student and writer
Long 'more Obama country than you think' Island, NY
Paul Devlin is a graduate student and writer in Long Island, N.Y.