October 3rd, 2012Top StoryButt-Chugging the Election: Your 2012 Presidential Debate Drinking GamesBy Mobutu Sese Seko
If many of the pundits are to be believed, this is Mitt Romney's chance to introduce himself to America. Or seventh. Romney's like the coworker a friend keeps inviting to hang with your group, mistakenly thinking his appeal is transferable. ("You should hear the cracks he makes about our supervisor, Mr. Werner! He's the funniest guy in the break room!") Except in this case the friend introducing Mitt Romney is Mitt Romney, which makes it weird. Just to be on the safe side, though, don't believe the pundits. Treat this event with the respect it deserves: settle in front of the TV and your favorite wiseass's Twitter feed and get thoroughly polluted. What tonight holds in store for everyone will only be certain 48 hours later, via political time-dilation, and there will be a truth unique to each party anyway. Being sober for it only increases understanding, which only reifies the need for drink. There are two problems with presidential debates. One, unless one side magnificently fucks up, each can plausibly claim a victory, leaving the fight to their war rooms. (Al Gore was credited with a win during the first debate in 2000, but weeks of spin about his "sighing" made him somehow un-win it.) Two, since the "scoring" of a debate has zero bearing on how the country is actually run, the facts crediting wins and losses are drawn from an amorphous pundit fog of trivialities. The pregame shows are worse for this. They reward the pundit who can subtly throw as many predictions at the wall as possible, allowing him to later claim the one that stuck. The pundit's task is less to outline a strategy for a candidate and conduct an accurate debate postmortem—because both of those things could later turn out to be wrong—than to maintain the illusion of having always been for whatever it was that happened. Anything you hear today about what "needs" to happen during the debates will probably either include dozens of ideas or hew to one safe standard. On the former, you'll get segments like, "The Three Things That Romney Needs to Do Tonight," with enough conditional arguments that the three things functionally swell to seven—while at least one political-advice fantasy boils down to, "Mitt Romney needs to align his campaign's deflector dish to aim a reverse-tachyon beam at the middle-American disturbance to undo the vote wormhole in Freedom Subspace." Meanwhile, the safe latter option will be something about "managing expectations." You know how this works. A pundit says that his candidate needs to "manage expectations," while the other guy has to have the debate of his life. The other guy always has to play like 2007 Tom Brady, while your brand is so assured of its success with America in general that it can get away with playing as "reasonably sober-looking Kyle Orton." PROTECT THE FOOTBALL. DON'T SAY SOMETHING NICE ABOUT KIM JONG-IL'S POMPADOUR. ("He looked like the Asian Morrissey." BAD!!! AVOID THIS!!!) Since tonight stands a good chance of not mattering, it's best then to manage your expectations, and there's no finer vehicle for that than drink. Especially a debate drinking game. Twitter is liable to be aflutter with suggestions for vinous self-destruction, so check back throughout the day to plan your night to the fullest. For now, I've done what little I can to help. PLAN A: You're Going to DieI've never much understood drinking games. Most people play them to get drunk. Why would you let rules stand in the way of becoming thoroughly shitfaced? YOU'RE AN ADULT, JUST GO FOR IT. There's no way the circumstances of a drinking game are going to elicit approving nods from people, anyway. "Why am I so hungover that I just threw up in that bowl? Well, I established these rules where I took a shot when someone on TV used a specific word. So, naturally, Reverend, I had no choice but to soldier on. Keep going, don't mind me, this baptism is fucking amazing." The best drinking games are ones where drink is merely a prerequisite and lubricant for participation—"beer die" (a/k/a "plunk") or other tests of skill. But if you want the polite fiction that you're not just getting thoroughly crocked for no reason, these criteria ought to make the presidential debate a night unremembered. Take one (1) drink every time:
PLAN B: Shoot the MoonIf you declined to take part in the game, you are alive, while all your friends who tried the above are dead! (Congratulations, you stiff.) Now is the time to take money out of their wallets, check their smartphones for private nudes and stick at least a few fingers in noses. Use the smartphones to commemorate the occasion. Don't be afraid to improvise! Okay, so you're sober and boring. But there is a way to make it to work on time—and with a human pallor—while still gambling with your future and America's. Like shooting the moon in a game of hearts, you can go contrarian. Assume that things won't happen. The trick is, in order to avoid the consequences, you need everything to not happen. Make a series of bets that you will never see or hear any of these phenomena:
If any of that shit happens, you have to butt-chug an entire bladder of Franzia. Cabernet. Tonight is democracy in action. WHO ARE YOU TO RESIST? Good luck, and God bless. Many thanks to the fantastic writers @Arr and @mallelis who contributed some jokes to this piece. Image by Jim Cooke.  |
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