ALVIN, KESHA & BASILMARCEAUX.COM!

Special to PollyStaffle.com

Herschell Gordon Lewis should be proud. In 1972 he directed a film about a country singer running for the U.S. Senate. It was called Year of the Yahoo! Little did he know that 2010 would be a real life sequel. Just call it the Year of the Yahoos!

Midterm elections are upon us shortly here in the U.S., and I must say as long as I have been alive and following politics at all, I can’t recall a year in which I have seen more cranks, kooks and weirdos running for office. This was not drawn along our traditional party lines - it was not specifically democrat or republican candidates. I can be very non-partisan on this issue - you had them on the right, you had them on the left. You even had the guy with his own party known as The Rent is to Damn High Party. They all got national coverage, some of these kooks, cranks and crackpots got more attention, some got less. I’ll take a look back at some of the best and brightest of the bunch...

1. Alvin Greene

Certainly, the best and the brightest of our candidates. The world was stunned to learn that an unknown candidate had won the democratic primaries in South Carolina without even doing any campaigning- nothing, no website, no campaign signs, zilch. Things got even weirder from there- he turned out to live in his father basement, he was and is still unemployed, he’s facing sex offense charges for showing a not particularly attractive college girl a bunch of porn. He was also discharged from the military for what appeared to be incompetence. None of that was even the weirder shit about him. He had difficulty completing sentences, giving the appearance of being highly mentally impaired. His own party asked him to step down repeatedly. He refused. The best was his plan to save the South Carolina economy by having them make action figures of himself. Possibly his being an African-American and being a democrat. Totally inexplicable, this will all go down in history I assure you. If you loose humor in politics though, your fucked, so go Greene!

2. Kesha Rogers

Kesha Rogers was, like Alvin Greene, totally insane, and also like Alvin Greene an African-American democrat running in a traditionally red state. She’s fucking nuts. The Lyndon LaRouche movement are those weirdos that approach you on the street with weird conspiracy theories often about shit you wouldn’t even care about if even if it was a conspiracy, like the Princess Di thing? They’ve been around for years, they generally regarded a weird-ass cult. Kesha Rogers is one of them. She called for the impeachment of Obama and is real big on Mars explorations. Oh yeah, she doesn’t make any fucking sense. Her victory is less puzzling then Greene marginally because she actually campaigned. Loopy. I’m sure she’ll be handing out LaRouche propaganda on the streets again very soon.

3. Basil Marceaux

This one’s on the right, more cute and funny then anything else - dude ran for governor of Tennessee. He had a funny ass speech impediment because of his missing teeth. He wanted to fine people for not owning a gun. Sweet, I’d be good to go. It became to cool to watch him on YouTube - he didn’t make a whole lot of sense and he referred to himself as BasilMarceaux.com. I like the fine people who don’t own guns thing. A real American patriot if nothing else!

4. Christine O’Donnell

Republican Party candidate for Senate in Delaware- on the surface and from her Wikipedia page she looks like a fairly conventional republican candidate. That’s if you ignore the witchcraft controversy. Apparently, she admitted to dabbling in witchcraft as teenager. Later, she had a campaign ad in which she clarified "I’m not a witch". I must say, it’s been sometime since the issue of witchcraft has become an issue in North American politics, the last time I’m aware of such a thing occurring was the Salem Witch Trials. Oddly enough, New York City councilmen Dan Halloran admits to practicing Theodinism, a religion based around the Norse gods, nobody much of an issue about it because he was fairly straight with people about this.

5. Jimmy McMillan

This guy does not make sense, but he got big applause and laughs with his appearance at the New York Gubernatorial debate, as the candidate of his The Rent is Too Damn High Party. He’s a karate expert and Vietnam vet who speaks for people for who the rent probably is too damn high.

- William Wheaton, October 2010

For more from Wheaton, visit The Wacky World of William Wheaton on Facebook.