Visual: Heroic sequences of David Murray, ripping pages triumphantly out of 1923 Underwood, motorcycling, golfing, shadow boxing in his underwear.

Voice over:

I’m David Murray, and I approved this message.

I normally pride myself on the breadth of my associations, but around this time during an election year—especially this election year, as the Republicans get more and more peevish—I wish I only hung around other Democrats.

Or at least, that I was black.

If I were black, Republicans wouldn’t pick on me like a scab on their own elbow. They’d know—or at least they’d think they knew—exactly why I was voting Democrat.

Same would be true if I was gay. Republicans don’t fuck with gay guys, don’t try to tell them that it’s really the Democrats that threaten their “lifestyle.”

Why’s he voting Democrat? Well because he’s friggin’ gay, Dummy.
End of conversation.

Even if I was a white woman—Republicans don’t pick on women who are voting for Democrats. They dismiss them as emotion-driven. (May I be dismissed?)

If I was a trucker or a teacher or even Joe the Plumber, most Republicans would acknowledge: I’ve got to vote with my union, as a practical matter.

The Republicans would leave me alone if I were very young or very old. They’d leave me alone if I were unemployed or disabled. (Unless I was mentally disabled, in which case they’d point out that Sarah Palin’s my advocate. But I’d be too smart to buy that.)

But no: I’m a comfortable-class, 39-year-old white dude, and I’m a sitting duck for Republicans, who bark at me like dogs, and all because I’m one of them, and yet I'm voting for the blacks and other minorities, gays and other oppressed groups, women and other underpaid workers who must find their strength in numbers.

I must be a real disingenuous asshole to do a thing like that.

I’m really looking forward to the Election Day. I’m tired of my opinions, I’m tired of your opinions, I’m tired of all opinions.

I’m voting for Barack Obama because he thinks more like I do about the United States and its people and their problems than anybody I’ve ever had a chance to vote for, anybody I ever thought I’d ever have a chance to vote for.

What’s not to like?

Anybody wants to talk to me about the election from now on, I’m going to tell them:

Go read my blog.

I’ve got to conserve my words about the motorcycle adventure weekend for the magazine story, but here are two images that speak, and a video that roars. The first photo shows your author. It is a self-portrait created to express the fact 39 I still have nagging fantasies—as silly today as they were at 15 when I was trying on Jim Morrison pants and the girl at the leather store was laughing at me—that someone, someday, might see me as cool. Second photo is of our trackside campsite, and my pal Tom Gillespie’s bikes, a ’65 and a 2006 Triumph.


And the movie—turn up your sound—is a Saturday morning in the pits.

You're not having an acid flashback, but you are, after a brief interruption, having Corporate Hallucinations again. Brought to you, of course, by my old pal Steve Crescenzo, who's not with Ragan Communications anymore but who is, thankfully, still with all of us. Bookmark his new blog.

(Less heroic is my own return, from a wild motorcycle ride through Dixie. Once I dig out—I've sent 60 e-mails today and counting; Jesus!—I'll write an account.)