American Cheese: The Senator Hits Wisconsin

Every slice of the McCallister campaign agenda can
be found in this cheese hall.   

Kenosha, WI -- September 20

It's ninety degrees, I haven't had a vegetable in weeks, and I nearly dropped my video camera in a vat of Wisconsin cheese fondue this afternoon.

All of that aside, the big picture looks bright like Ike: I'm working on Clay Adamson's campaign for president.  And I'll wager my entire J. Press collection he wins.

Sure, it would probably be more fun to travel with the Adamson campaign.  Being sequestered with the enemy can get lonely. 

But following McCallister around on Gov. Adamson's behalf makes me feel like a CIA agent during the Cold War heyday...except that my transmissions come from places like Skokie and Lake Geneva instead of Irkutsk and Riga.

(Incidentally, a bowl of cold borscht would beat all the cheese fondue in the world right now.)

These McCallister supporters are rabid and hardcore.  Hand to God, I saw a thirty-something woman tear up when the senator kissed her newborn earlier at his afternoon rally.  She might as well have been at a Michael Jackson concert on the Bad tour. 

Call me crazy, but when you connect with people emotionally, it doesn't matter that your immigration policy is half-baked and impractical, that you have essentially no concrete position on the war, or that your idea of family values is to the left of Bill Clinton -- they're listening to you anyway.

I do have to hand it to him, though:  McCallister has the politician thing down to a science.  Combine that with his squeaky-clean living and war hero status, and my job isn't getting any easier. 

I need to get something juicy on him soon or Karen will have my head.  Our numbers are dropping in several key Midwest states according to the most recent polls, released earlier in the week.  Knowing the first primaries are less than six months away (!), we're taking this very seriously.  Hence Karen pressing me harder to dig the dirt on McC and company. 

I've been paying more attention to his fiancée and communications director, Kitty Walker.  She appears all tough and perfectly composed on the surface, but she's bound to slip up sometime.  They all do.  And when she does...I hope my trusty camera isn't dripping with barbecue sauce!

Tomorrow takes us -- McCallister and me, that is -- to Chicagoland for some luncheon with the Northwestern University Young Republicans club.  I haven't been to that city since my seventh grade field trip to the Shed Aquarium.

I'm really excited to meet up with my sister and brother-in-law downtown afterwards.  She won't stop raving about this great pizza joint where they encourage you to write all over the restaurant's walls.  I'll leave my Sharpie in my hotel room, though; it's the authentic deep-dish pizza that I'm there for.  A hundred bucks and the keys to my dad's Prius says it's 3,000 times better than anything I can get back home.

I gotta go capture some footage or Karen will wonder what she's paying me for.

  ‘till next week.....
 
  Leonard

Comments

[steve mcpherson]

This is the funniest thing I've ever seen. Pure genius!

[Timothy Stanton]

BRILLIANT! Kudos to ABC for this, I look forward to the next. (and keep your eye on that Kitty, Leonard!)

[Steve]

maybe you would have been better off staying in that vat

[amii]

eh ich bin confuzzled (ma bestest shot at german) anyhoo a coodnt b boverred readin it coz its soooo long but i coodnt read it if a wanted tu coz da ritin is squished

[arul vigg]

nice work, enjoyed it thoroughly keep it up mate!!
by arul vigg.

[Naomi]

Correction - you have 6 readers! keep this up, I love it.