America's greatest reality show heads for grand finale

    
Like most Americans, I'm dying to watch tonight's season finale of "Presidential Election 2012."
No reality show has ever generated such passion or cleaved the country so sharply in two. It's like "American Idol," only with worse singing and something actually at stake and a lot less of that guy from Aerosmith.
Vying for a chance to perform for four years on the country's biggest stage, all eyes will be on the finalists, Mitt Romney and Barack Obama. But a surprise ending can never be ruled out.
Could a tie vote result in the coronation of Donald Trump as King of America? Could MSNBC's Chris Matthews and Fox News' Sean Hannity be called in to wage a proxy arm-wrestling match to decide the winner? No, those are not even remote possibilities, but as a member of the news media I'm required to speculate and draw out the drama of this INCREDIBLY DRAMATIC NEWS EVENT!!
What's certain is that the fate of Presidential Election 2012 — or PE2012, as fan boys like myself call it — is in the hands of every reality show-loving citizen who will cast a vote, I assume, by dialing an 800 number or sending a text message.
It'll be an appropriate end to a televised — and talk-radio-ized and blog-ized — event that has captured the country's imagination and bolstered its increasingly negative opinion of politics. Consider just a few of the compelling moments that have unfolded over PE2012's yearslong run.
There was the epic Republican tsunami of 2010, when the GOP gained 63 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. That's when members of Team Obama got a sense that their contestant might not be able to sleepwalk through the competition.
Would the Democrats up and dump Obama for a different candidate, recasting with a strong female lead, maybe a Hillary Clinton? Could Vice President Joe "Uncle Joe" Biden get the boot in an effort to shake the ticket up?
Then there was the GOP primary — must-see TV at its finest. You had Herman "9-9-9" Cain and Newt "Moon Colony" Gingrich and enough intraparty heat to keep Sarah Palin warm in Alaska. There was the unexpected surge of Rick Santorum and Rick Perry's down-home inability to complete sentences during debates.
Ah, but those episodes flew by. Soon Romney was the clear winner and it was GAME ON! — Mitt vs. Barack for all the marbles, and America was on the edge of its seat.
The twisted facts and scurrilous accusations came fast and furious. It was like someone distilled a soap opera down to its basest essence and we were hooked on the drama-juice.
There were great, gut-busting gaffes. If we weren't catching Obama saying something over a microphone he thought was off we were hearing Mitt speaking off-the-cuff at an event he thought was private. Each misstep was analyzed for days, with poll watchers watching how a mistake might ping the polls.
Speaking of polls, there were polls and there were polls of polls and there were pundits who opined on polls, all keeping the narrative chugging, carrying us swiftly to this one explosive night.
And now it's here and we can only hope it lives up to expectations.
Maybe if we're lucky it'll be a cliffhanger, like Presidential Election 2000, that classic season when the presidency was decided by a dance-off between George W. Bush and Al Gore. (Who knew Gore would refuse to dance for fear his salsa moves might contribute to global warming? And who knew Bush could tango so well?)
Or perhaps the loser will contest the vote, sending the show into a weekslong overtime and the cable news networks into media nirvana.
Enough speculation. The only thing that really matters now is that people do the one thing that really matters.
PE2012 has been analyzed to death. We have yelled at our television screens, posted fiery opinions on Facebook and broken up friendships over people rooting against the guy we want to win.
We have consumed information from every ideological spigot, be it MSNBC or Fox News or the Drudge Report or The Huffington Post or the Twitter feed of our crazy Uncle Hal.
So now, as with all good reality shows, we get to intervene in the action. We get to decide who wins and who goes home and in whose hand we place the keys to our rather important future.
We vote by the millions for other reality shows — "American Idol," "America's Got Talent," "America's Next Inexplicably Famous Obnoxious Chef." We line up by the hundreds to peruse the latest Apple products. We stay up all night to catch crack-of-dawn Black Friday sales.
This is our chance to prove that our willingness to get involved in things that don't really matter can be matched with involvement in things that do.
If PE2012 is a reality show, your right to vote is the most fundamental aspect of that reality.
Embrace it. Be part of it. Make the most of this season finale.
Cast your vote. PLEASE cast your vote.
And then get ready for more excitement. Because the next season will start right after Election Day ends.

Posted in: America Election