Political Pranksters Put Fun into Politics

It doesn't have to be dour, humorless, vicious warfare all the time

Reading what Democrats did in West Michigan in the summer of 2022, I can sympathize with the temptation to perpetuate a "dirty trick" on a political opponent. I don't exactly agree with James Carville, who said, "when your opponent is drowning, throw him an anvil." But you do have to seize opportunities that will inevitably ruffle some feathers. 

Instead of tribal warfare, eternal grievances, constant grudge matches in a blood sport among pompous and self-important windbags, I believe in a politics of fun and humor, where opinions are intensely discussed but lightly-held, so that we can laugh at ourselves and our mistakes. Sometime in the future, it will be clear that we were wrong about some things and right about other things. Few of us are always right or always wrong. We shouldn’t take ourselves so seriously.

In 2002, exactly 20 years ago, I was an Internet consultant and volunteer for Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland state senator who was in a tight Democratic primary contest for Congress against Mark Kennedy Shriver, a member of the Maryland House of Delegates. With the intense baby blue eyes of both his uncles John F. and Robert F. Kennedy, with the flowing locks of Uncle Teddy and cousin John-John, he was initially the front-runner. A lot of Democratic party activists were backing Shriver, star-struck by invitations to the Kennedy-Shriver estate in suburban Maryland. Polls showed Van Hollen and Shriver neck-n-neck. Shriver was ostentatiously backed by the vast worth of the Kennedy family and the political muscle of Uncle Teddy, who urged his Senate staff to take time off to help elect Mark.

A third candidate, congressional staffer Ira Shapiro, seemed to hold the balance of power in the race.