There was a time in America long, long ago when the political convention really meant something. Before the convention would start, we might not know who would come out of the big gathering as the party’s nominee for president. These days, we know who the nominees will be months in advance, and the conventions are nothing more than dog and pony shows designed to fabricate an image and message around a candidate.
There is only way to survive through excruciating speech after speech if you so choose to watch the convention: with a drinking game! Allow me to assist you in getting through this week’s Republican National Convention as you watch people tell you that “government is not the answer” at their huge, government convention.
Whenever you see someone draped in an American flag with more than 50 lapel pins and a hat shaped like an elephant’s trunk, jumping up and down and chanting USA whenever someone waxes poetic about precluding people from being able to be treated for preventable disease, take a shot from a medicine cup.
When Rick Santorum expresses concern about with whom you conduct your private, sexual relations, lock your bedroom door, and fix yourself a Sex on the Beach. Make it something tall and stiff whenever a professional politician discreetly shuffles aside to create distance between himself or herself and national punch line Donald Trump.
Whip up a batch of cosmos in martini classes and clink them together whenever a person without a uterus gives a speech containing exhaustive detail about what legal restrictions and mandates are good for women.
Whenever someone hypocritically professes to strictly adhering to the teachings of both Ayn Rand and Jesus Christ, bless yourself and take a drink of communion wine.
Whenever the television cameras pan to celebrities in the crowd, take a nice fancy drink. Note: for the purposes of this particular drinking game, Kid Rock, Ted Nugent, Jeff Foxworthy and the Oak Ridge Boys count as celebrities.
Take several drinks of milk if you get a strange tingle inside when you see one of those handsome Romney boys and feel kind of guilty about it. Allow yourself an extra swig if you have trouble concentrating because you’re distracted by their immaculate, pearly white teeth.
So you don’t overdose, merely take a quarter of a shot whenever someone mentions the “traditional American family.” Make it a whole shot of something nice and strong if the person mentioning this phrase is obviously a closet homosexual.
Likewise, whenever someone mentions that they’re speaking for “all Americans,” have a drink of your most patriotic beer (PBR?) as you see the speaker completing that thought with, “except for….”
Pour yourself a crystal fluke of your finest champagne if someone comes out on stage riding an Olympian dressage horse.
For the sake of balance, take a drink of an alcohol-spiked vegan smoothie every time a liberal protestor in dreads embarrasses himself or herself in the name of a cause you can’t quite figure out.
Shotgun a Molson if you’re completely envious of our Canadian neighbors to the North that their election seasons are a mere four weeks long, allowing them to avoid the insane year and a half long parade of horribles that we call our Presidential election campaign.
If anyone utters a word about new insidious voter ID laws, ways to combat dangerous climate change or allocating funds to fight the war on poverty at home, drink everything in your cabinet. That’s how sure I am that it’s not going to happen.
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