This one is about a month old but my excuse is I’ve only recently managed to find it and re-see it. The headline refers to the increasingly bizarre mid-term Senatorial race in Pennsylvania. The contest is between celebrity doctor and alleged Quack, Mehmet Oz and John Fetterman a man who doesn’t appear to have done a proper day’s work in his life and has been so physically damaged by a stroke that he can’t handle taking in information audibly, a bit of of a handicap for a Senator who is expected to deal with the spoken word.

Fetterman relies on teleprompters to make speeches and has appeared to be somewhat incoherent at times. Fetterman is also a candidate whose wife seems to be the brains and the drive behind the Fetterman campaign. I’ve seen some video of Fetterman’s public appearances and the man is plainly not well and has not been allowed or allowed himself to recover from the stroke he suffered from back in May. It’s right and proper in my view that societies include the voices of the disabled in politics but Fetterman doesn’t seem to me to have the necessary capacities to be a US Senator. He strikes me as a puppet of those who want the Senate seat filled by their party and don’t really care that much about who occupies that seat just as long as they vote the ‘right’ way.

Fetterman has been mocked and criticised by a great many American commentators for his pre-campaign failures and support for granting clemency to some pretty nasty murderers, but it was the Babylon Bee who in my opinion came up one of the most gobsmacking and cutting comments on this potential Senator. Referencing a rather large growth on Fetterman’s neck the Babylon Bee said:

“Neck Lump Has Gross Politician Growing Out Of It”

The Babylon Bee continued in a similar vein in the main article which said:

The hotly contested race for the Pennsylvania U.S. Senate seat has had its share of controversies, but none of them compare to the most recent brouhaha, as new photos have surfaced showing a neck lump with a gross, disgusting politician growing out of it.

The neck lump’s campaign office has issued a statement asking for privacy following the virally-shared photo of the fleshy growth of putrid politician protruding awkwardly from the neck lump.

“The hoodie makes sense now; it was there so the neck lump could hide from view,” said one TMZ journalist. “I’d hide my face too if I had a politician growing out of me like that.”

One of the things that fascinate me about the American election culture is that unlike the UK it’s no holds barred. It’s not at all genteel and maybe that’s a good thing as potential politicians have to face an ordeal of campaign fire in order to get their messages across and be elected. The goings on in American political campaigns make something like ‘Growlergate’ resemble a rural vicarage tea party. I can well imagine that if someone like Fetterman with a similar questionable public service record and an obvious unfitness to serve in the legislature had stood in a British Parliamentary election then he would be lauded by the media as ‘stunning and brave’ and there would not have been many queries about his suitability or fitness for office.

It’s an interesting thought that if British political campaigns were as harsh and unforgiving as American ones then maybe we would get more quality politicians in the form of the ones who survive the gruelling electoral process and maybe less lukewarm time servers? Politics is in a way a type of contact combat sport where the most dedicated, resourceful and aggressive candidates get the prizes. It’s worth thinking about whether this style of no holds barred campaigning might, if undertaken in the UK get us better politicians than our current miserable shower of twats.