Are you experiencing disturbing, election-related thoughts? When you close your eyes at night, do the colors of CNN’s “magic” electoral map dance in your head like red and blue sugarplums? When you get in your car and hear the same talk-radio personalities saying the same things they said the last time you got in the car, do you wonder what day it is? Are you getting carpal tunnel syndrome from hitting “refresh” at political Web sites and blogs? Are you aware that most of these sites refresh automatically, yet you find yourself clicking the navigation bar because new information about Sarah Palin’s other baby, the alien dinosaur, might have surfaced seconds ago and you can’t wait that long to read about it? Are you at once totally sick of election news and insatiably hungry for more? As a result, are you sick of yourself? Me too, and I don’t think we’re alone. In the past few weeks, I’ve noticed a malaise of unprecedented proportions descending on the American public. As much as we want to think and talk about subjects other than the election, we can’t. As much as we know we should watch that Netflix movie we’ve had for months, instead of staring at cable TV, we don’t do it. And even though we might hate ourselves in the morning, we can’t resist the quick fix of a screaming Huffington Post headline or a Bill O’Reilly conniption fit.
