Illustration by Hawk Krall

On The Radar

It’s the necromancy, stupid.

by Steven Wells

In England we settled our head of state question once and for all back in 1066 when French Viking psycho William the Bastard, Duke of Normandy, did a reverse D-Day, landed in Southern England, stuck an arrow in the eye of Danish Viking psycho Harold Godwinson and then went on a blood-crazed orgy of rape, murder, torture, mutilation, child abuse, enforced bondage, blatant racism and land theft that hasn’t really stopped to this day. God bless our royal family and long may they reign over us. Huzzah!

In America you do things differently. Every half decade or so you let a bunch of besuited plutocrats duke it out—not a battle ax in sight—until all but one of them runs out of money. But this election is different. The mysterious, pointy-hatted, wand-waving wizards behind the major candidates have for the first time stepped out of their murky magical shadows.

Barack Obama’s Merlin is the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who was recently the subject of some controversy when the press dug up some old quotes of him saying America gives black people a bum deal. (Gosh, what is it with black people? Why can’t they just be grateful?)

Meanwhile, it turns out that John McCain’s wizard, pastor John Hagee, has left a trail of slime a mile wide with attacks on Catholics, women, African-Americans, Muslims, gays and lesbians. He claimed, for instance, that feminism was a plot against God, and he blamed Katrina on the New Orleans Pride Parade.

But what’s really astounding is that these two near-omnipotent warlocks haven’t come to blows directly.

Don’t be fooled. Both these men have direct access to the unbridled wrath of their different gods. Dumbledore Wright’s god is the just and righteous and loving god of Jesus, John Brown, Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali.

Voldemort Hagee’s god is the drooling, chattering, wild-eyed, sinister, dark, hate-filled, perpetually masturbating insane demon monkey god of Judas and the Pharisees, the KKK, the modern-day Republican Party, conservative talk radio and South African apartheid.

And boy, do these gods hate each other. Which is why I think we should let them—the gods themselves—decide our next president through their respective wizards.

It would be simple to arrange and make for great television. We’d build a giant magi-dome somewhere in the desert. The two wizards would enter the arena carrying only their magic wands and would fight it out with fantastically loud and colorful and violent magic spells (just like at the end of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix) until the evil Hagee is turned into a spectacularly ugly frog and then stomped by the sparkly purple steel-toe-capped wizard boot of the triumphant Wright.

Making Obama our new King Arthur. Huzzah!