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The American Idol machine lurches back to life in January, and that usually features a plucky minority with a gleam in their eye, a song in their hearts, and a terrorist at their dinner table (or at least that happened in that Mandy Moore movie.) But January is a long way off, so we suggest you try Top Chef, a Bravo cooking competition show now entering its fifth season. Why is this perfect for Obama supporters? Because it's smart, elitist, and is about people trying to make something good and palatable and revolutionary. You can root for the young upstart or the filthy foreigner, or the black-ish one! It'll be just like the last two years never ended, which to us sounds like a heaping plate of misery, but you crazy Obamanation people just might lurve it. Yes we candied yams!
Ol' Gramps McBiplane lost, yes. But you can still find the shambling, confused elderly on the TV! First there's Barbara Walters on The View, who, especially when dealing with crazed idiot Elisabeth Hasselbeck, looks increasingly like your wacky old Aunt Minerva did that time the whole ostrich-farm-in-New-Mexico idea squawkily blew up in her face. There is also Colonel Tigh on Battlestar Galactica (a very good show ABOUT POLITICS that returns this winter) who looks exactly like McKrang. Also sometimes Jessica Walter shows up, drunk and glorious, on the abysmally dreadful 90210 redux, and Anne Archer (who is 61! she now counts as an old!) is on that show about rich people or something, Privileged. I'm sure she gets befuddled sometimes! And, of course, there's the ultimate rage-simmering-just-beneath-the-surface old person, Larry King. Who is still on primetime! Yeah it's sorta newsy, but suspenders! You can also remember McCain's Navy days on the show NCIS, which is about grizzled Navy people solving crimes and blowing things up. Much like McCain's administration would have been. Sigh.
Are you someone who is sad that "Inuit Legend" Barbie Doll Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin won't be tarting up the Capitol with her folksy views on making rape victims construct the courthouse in which their case will be tried with their bare hands or sending all gay people out onto an ice floe and then setting the whole pile ablaze with a flaming arrow? Well, fret and boo hoo no more, because there is still The Hills! The blubbery reality sluice features Heidi Montag, who, much like Ms. Palin, is a hollow, media-tested husk of a McCain supporter from the frozen North. There is also Stylista, a disastrous competition show in which a woman of importance laboriously spews wooden catchphrases and buzz terms, to the cold delight of her clueless, adoring public. Those ought to hold you over until 2012, when the Empire (Waist Inaugural Gown Now Gathering Dust In The Closet) Strikes Back.
Um... Della (Reese), where are you? If you liked Biden a lot, you'd probably enjoy Brothers & Sisters, which is about decent people saying decent things while the hint of a murderous glint flickers in their eyes.
If you are scared of married gay people because they will buttsex your children while teaching them about evolution and then burn down your church and put your minister in rape jail if you aren't careful, then you might enjoy Grey's Anatomy. You see they had a lesbo character on the show (played by the endlessly talented Brooke Smith) but then they kicked the dyke off 'cause she was just too darn gay. See, it's fine when they exist in your periphery and you can nod your head in approval in front of your more enlightened friends so you seem like a good person, but when they start stealing airtime from your precious McDreamy/Whispering Idiot lurve story or the People With Annoying Names Club (Izzie!), then it's gotta stop. Enjoy the H8terade.
So there you go. Television that's just like the political campaign that you and the cable news nets are going to miss so dearly. It's not the same, I know. But hopefully it'll do. Which is exactly what they said to Howard Dean when they asked him to chair the DNC! Politics!