We were at Fanny Wood Day yesterday and amid the usual small-town street fair vendors and tent — for window treatments, aluminum siding, popcorn, and the local Board of Education — two caught my eye. The first was a table offering, quote, Islam. Which surprised me, because even though Fanwood isn't some backwoods retarded gun-toting cousin-marrying big-ass fourteen-karat silver belt-buckle flyover hicktown, it still has more of an intolerant 1950's-style conformist vibe than anywhere in the information age should have. At least that's my take, judging from the letters to the editor in our local waste of a tree newspapers, but maybe I'm wrong...

...or maybe not. Fanny Wood Day also had an Old People For McCain tent; see my above analysis of the town. Not that I expect Old People, or small-town Republicans for that matter, to have the slightest grasp of de-regulation, the eleven-trillion dollar national debt, or the mortgage crisis — haven't they at least figured out that for the past eight years, they've been making less money and paying more for the big-box crap they buy? Short answer: no, because they've been building credit card debt instead of paying for stuff. Very Republican indeed.

I wanted to confront them, and I wanted to change their minds, which are two mutually incompatible things, especially when I'm overflowing with contempt for these Old People who got us into this financial mess, this Iraq mess, this oil mess, and who also drive slow as they walk. But I believe I've found the key: There's this sardonic grassroots organization Billionaires for Bush that's a "grassroots network of corporate lobbyists, decadent heiresses, Halliburton CEOs, and other winners under George W. Bush's economic policies," ironically supporting the Republicans who would return the favor, if they were actually rich and not upper-middle class college students. The problem is that they're too self-aware, that you don't even have to hear the joke because you already either agree or disagree with it. People are stupid, and appeals to self-interest don't go anywhere when they're only supported by facts and logic.

What I wish I thought of back then, and had the balls to go through with, is agreeing with the Old People's economic instincts. It's way obnoxious, and the more smarmy MTV-generation lingo you throw in, the better:

"Hey! Hey, there, great job! Thank you for voting Republican, cause the hedge fund I work at, we made so much cash off this economy. You should've seen my Christmas bonus, it was obscene. Probably worth more than your house. Speaking of which, if you need money, you wanna reverse mortgage that place, you call me. Here's my card, there's my cell, my e-mail, cause I'm looking for real estate to turn a profit on. I wanna buy a motorcycle..."