Half the people I know, including me, had a truly gruesome week. But there was one bright moment in the last 24 hours, and it's something I might normally write about on my blog but I can't because... well, you'll see in a second.
I was checking email yesterday evening and saw a notice that someone had donated to my Barack Obama fundraising page, a link to which is on my blog.
That someone was my father.
My wealthy Republican businessman father who lives in a gated enclave and who I have seen once in the last six years even though he is in San Francisco frequently and lives just a couple of hours away.
So setting aside the small moment of dissonance I experienced when I realized my father was reading my blog, I picked up the phone and called him.
"Hello," he said, somewhat unimaginatively but understandably.
"Who are you and what have you done with my real father?" I asked without any other greeting.
Beat of silence. "He's in the cage and resting comfortably."
He explained that he'd seen that my fundraising was falling behind (I'd actually just increased my goal after meeting it already twice, but at the moment it does look sad) and thought he'd give it a boost with a hundred bucks. "And that's a hundred bucks more than I gave the other guy."
"Good," I said. "See that it stays that way."
"He's just stupid."
"Yeah," I replied, "and we've already had eight years of stupid."
"No," my dad said. "We've had eight years of super-stupid."
"Ooooh, that's John McCain's new campaign slogan: Slightly Less Stupid than George W. Bush!"
He laughed, I laughed. We vowed to have coffee the next time he was in San Francisco.
And that concludes this chapter of How Barack Obama Saved the Universe.