Off the Stump

Dear Fellow Voters:

Well, I'm breathing easier again. How about the rest of you?

The gubernatorial campaign just past had all the charm of the drunk guy at the party who thinks he went to college with you. Every time you turned around, he was there, poking and prodding you, laughing inappropriately, and looking ominously as though both you and he might be reintroduced to the veal piccata he'd had for dinner about 12 Smirnoffs ago. As LBJ once put it in another context, you couldn't run, couldn't hide, and couldn't make it stop.

But it did stop, and the sun rose, and people went on with their lives. Some lucky folks got to do this sooner than others. It's been almost two months now since Chris Gabrieli and Tom Reilly went back to their regular professions of Being Rich and Being Dull, respectively. And what have we learned? That Christy Mihos in a suit was sort of frightening to those of us who are used to seeing him in a pointed hat and lederhosen, squatting amid the azaleas in our gardens. As for me, well, it's enough that I feel as though I can safely park in public garages again. Kerry Murphy Connemara O'Coonassa Healey spent a lot of money trying to persuade me that if I went into a parking garage, I ran the risk of being devoured by wolves, robbed by the Bloods, murdered by the Crips, sung at by the Dixie Chicks, or confronted by Deval Patrick, talking to me again about hope, which is a thing with feathers. Sooner or later in a campaign, someone shoots it and makes it into a hat.

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