What Barack Obama Wanted to Say Last Night But Wouldn't (Rude Version):
At last night's "debate" (if by "debate," you mean, "an insipid, degrading evening featuring a former staffer for one candidate's husband and a man shaped like a bowling pin"), Barack Obama kept deflecting every question about Lapelpingate and Wrightgate and Bittergate and Somefuckingprofessorwhoisaneighbororsomesuchshitgate by falling back on his themes of hope and "let's all work together." But the man looked tired, wearied by the inanity of it all.

And, even when given a hanging curve ball, he refused to swing. Asked to comment on Clinton's Bosnia sniper fire lie, Obama balked: "But look, the fact of the matter is, is that both of us are working as hard as we can to make sure that we're delivering a message to the American people about what we would do as president. Sometimes that message is going to be imperfectly delivered, because we are recorded every minute of every day. And I think Senator Clinton deserves, you know, the right to make some errors once in a while."

He's right, of course, of course, and it was goddamn civil of him to say so. And then Clinton paid him back by trying to impugn Obama because of his relationship with former Weather Underground member William Ayers, but it's okay, because, you know, all Clinton says she's doing is telling us how McCain'll try to gut him: "So it is -- you know, I think it is, again, an issue that people will be asking about. And I have no doubt -- I know Senator Obama's a good man and I respect him greatly but I think that this is an issue that certainly the Republicans will be raising." Yeah, he's a good man, but he's friends with a former terrorist who's unrepentant, so he must hate America.

You gotta think that Obama wished he had his answer back on whether Clinton had been "truthful about her past" and that he had said, "For seven and a half years, we've had a motherfucker in the White House who has used every word under the sun to avoid the word 'lie.' The Bush administration has said that things were 'misstatements' or were the fault of someone other than the speaker or just outright denying they had said something they had said. What Senator Clinton said was a lie. It wasn't just a lie she told once. It was a lie she told repeatedly, a lie her husband re-told just the other day. If I said to you, 'I can shoot rainbows out of my ass,' and then you said to me, 'Senator Obama, fire my way,' and all you got was a face full of shit with no pot of gold at the end, well, then I'd be a liar, wouldn't I? Oh, but, fuck, I could just say, 'Did I say "rainbows"? I meant "turds." I must need some sleep.'

"And Senator Clinton wants to keep talking about how untested I am, how un-vetted, how people are gonna dig up shit on me, that somehow it's good that there's all this shit out there about her already, that it gives the Republican fuckbags nothing to talk about. Are you fuckin' serious? Every year corporate America sells us the same shit in a different package, tellin' us it's better, shinier shit, and we Americans, we go out and buy that same old shit in the new package and convince ourselves it's something new. The GOP ain't gonna not bring up Travelgate or other shit just because they've done it before.

"Instead, they're gonna say, 'Hey, Hillary Clinton said she was shot at when she wasn't. Oh, and, fuck, remember when she said she couldn't find files and then she did? John McCain was a POW. Who you gonna vote for?' So, yeah, yeah, keep on, Hillary, with that bullshit about people-I-know, keep tryin' to call me a San Francisco faggot liberal or an America-hating nigger churchgoer. Man, the right wing wants you so bad that they've been sharpening their knives and cleaning their guns and those motherfuckers are jonesing for you like a junkie's arm holes start to bleed when he sees a needle."

But, no, no, Obama didn't get into the mudpit; there was no wallow in the muck. When he's against McCain, though, he'd better get his hip waders, 'cause he's gonna need to go feet first deep into the shit or he's gonna be suffocated in it.