Sticky Wicket

There are loads of metrics we could use to determine what a presidential candidate will mean to his country, if elected. The hope is that, before we get to inauguration day, we've sussed out, at least to some extent, what kind of character s/he possesses and, therefore, what we can expect in terms of policy and competence in execution of said policy.

There is voting history, time in service, pre-political employment, ideological affiliation, temperament, even choice of spouse, spending habits, medical history or, in the case of John McCain, cutting off a leg and counting the rings therein. It would be useful, I think, to judge just how many dry seasons and forest fires he's endured and how, exactly, he weathered them.

What people usually forget to mention--and I'm grateful to the McCain campaign for helping illuminate this most helpful point of inquiry--is the critical issue: What's the candidate's middle name?

Amidst all this talk of polling breakouts and swing-state dominance and potential landslides, we're reminded of the sobering reality that Barack Obama's middle name? Hussein.

Just think: we came thisclose--just one short month away--from accidentally electing to the highest office in the Free World, a known terrorist.


Or maybe an an English cricketer. Or the Prime Minister of Malaysia, which I'm pretty sure constitutes political bigamy. Or the king of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Anyway, doesn't matter. Probably a terrorist because they're all Muslimy. That English dude seems benign, but what's more creeping and foreign than cricket? It's got a tea interval, for Christ's sake. Is gay baseball less threatening than bombs? I ask you.

The obvious answer to pointing out the terror-nymic secret underlying the Obama nomination is for the Obama people to point out that John McCain's middle name? Sidney.

We can infer three things from this: 1) Secret agent of the Australian government. 2) So old he uses the archaic spelling for the city of "Sydney." 3) Girl.

Of course that last one could go either way, i.e. he's so tough he's made it this far sharing a name normally reserved for girls AND the title of a Tony Randall sitcom about a gay dude.

This of course begs the question: why was Tony Randall always playing a gay dude? And opposite Rock Hudson all the time, which... you know... irony. Meanwhile Tony was so straight and virile his own self, he was out there fathering children (by women!) at the age of approximately 326.

Which makes him a contemporary of John McCain (as I bring it full circle), lover of boomerangs, Outback steakhouses and barbie shrimps. Doubt me if you want to, but you pay close attention the next time you see John McCain at a didgeridoo recital and see if he doesn't well up.

Dismiss it if you want to, but just consider: one of the most popular sporting pastimes in Australia? Cricket. The Russell Crowe/Nicole Kidman vanguard has softened us up with their roles of raw masculinity, delicate femininity and noble, quiet dignity and grace. The last tumbler is about to fall with the McCain stealth candidacy, when baseball, our sport where lumberjack manliness is so necessary one NEEDS to inject themselves with EXTRA testosterone just to compete, is threatened by a sport where men wear sweater vests and white pants.

And we all know what white pants means.

Vigilance, people. Vigilance.