Straight from the 1948 playbook: It’s time to quote a little Hunter S. Thompson

I think this year’s various and sundry campaigns have reached the high-pitched whine that calls for…well, wine. And some Hunter S. Thompson. To whit: 

“Politics is like the guinea worm. It sneaks into your body and grows like a cyst from within until finally it gets so big and strong that it bursts straight through the skin, a horrible red worm with a head like a tiny cobra, snapping around in the air as it struggles to breathe.”

Politics is a little like fashion–everything comes back in style if you wait around long enough. Along those lines, if you haven’t yet heard this story about Lyndon B. Johnson, which I’ve seen attributed to Thompson…it’s worth checking out, ya know, just for kicks:

Back in 1948, during his first race for the US Senate, Lyndon Johnson was running about 10 points behind, with only nine days to go. He was desperate. And it was just before noon on a Monday, they say, when he called his equally depressed campaign manager and told him to call a press conference for just before lunch on a slow news day and accuse his high-riding opponent, a pig farmer, of having routine carnal knowledge of his sows, despite the pleas of his wife and children.

His campaign manager was shocked. “We can’t say that, Lyndon,” he supposedly said. “You know that it isn’t true.”

“Of course it’s not!” Johnson barked. “But let’s make the bastard deny it!”

  

And so, tune in to our next episode, when we find out if the wicked police chief really turns down the mayor’s not-politically motivated request, if the mayor really does get investigated for violating federal campaign law, if the contender is guilty of misuse of federal funds as well as his social status, if the lovely city by the rivers really does get flooded, if the citizens get to keep chickens and have their own NASCAR (TM) event, and if the bounty hunter arrives at the scene just in time to save them all.