I watched most of the recent Democratic National Convention. I also watched parts of the Republican Convention several weeks ago. If you watched any of either convention, I’m sure you had the same reaction I did: How did political conventions become fashion shows where otherwise “sane and sensible” people become models for funny hats? And even more importantly, what can we do as a nation to make them stop?
Solving the disturbing hat problem of political conventions presents a challenging “chicken or the egg” question: Do political conventions attract the sort of people who are naturally inclined to engage in sartorial abasement of that sort, or is there something about being at a political convention that triggers an irresistible urge in otherwise “normal” Americans to slap on their head a tiny pink sequined cowboy hat, a round of Styrofoam cheddar cheese, a plastic ear of corn or a comically oversized red, white and blue stovepipe hat accessorized with hundreds of rhinestones and tiny toy cars stapled to its brim?
I was watching the two conventions largely for entertainment value and out of a vague sense of civic duty – discovering the silly hat fetish situation was an unexpected bonus. But the truth is that I already know who’s going to win the 2024 presidential race.
As I have in other elections, I deduced the winner through application of the sure-fire Amazing Presidential Anagram Analyzer. An anagram is the rearranging of a word or phrase into other words or phrases using the same letters to form that different word or phrase. I’ve offered my proprietary Analyzer to each of the major political parties at what I consider to be a reasonable price, assuming we’re talking about what a reasonable price would be to Elon Musk. Today, to see who is going to win the White House, I ran the names of the candidates from both major parties.
On the Democratic side, if you rearrange the letters of Kamala Harris’ name you can spell A Rakish Alarm, Karma Has Lira and Ask Hair Alarm. And if you run Tim Walz’s name through the analyzer you get Waltz Mi and Malt Wiz. Although it is technically pushing the envelope of International Anagram Analyzer Protocols, I also ran the name ‘Timothy’ Walz and got Wily Matzoth, Hazy Mint Owl, Malt Whiz Toy, Malty Hot Wiz and My Total Whiz. All in all, the results are a solid collection of largely feel-good results.
On the other hand, if you run the names of the Republican candidates, you may wish you had saved your Y2K bunker rather than turn it into a wine cellar. For Donald Trump, the Analyzer produced Ton Lard Dump, Damn Turd Pol, Damp Nut Lord, Don Turd Lamp, Dud Malt Porn, Mold Turd Nap, Tan Dump Lord and Lord Mud Pant. There were more results, but they were not as flattering.
The analyzer results for JD Vance are downright disturbing. The Analyzer could not come up with a single anagram for his name. The hairs on my neck have been standing at attention since I received that news. Having no anagram for your name is like standing next to someone on a sunny day and realizing that they are not casting a shadow. It’s like seeing Linda Blair’s head spin around or like being picked up while you’re hitch-hiking and later finding out that the driver of the car died several years before.
The beauty of the Analyzer is that it doesn’t take a nuclear scientist or a Hollywood celebrity to interpret the results: A White House of Karma Has Lira and Hazy Mint Owl is undeniably better than a team of Tan Dump Lord and JD Vance. The Analyzer has predicted that the Harris – Walz team should win and who are we to argue with the mysterious but infallible science of re-arranging letters?
Tom Tyner of Bainbridge Island writes a weekly humor column for this newspaper.
