Former Presidential Candidate
Well, here we are, gang.
This morning America woke up and found we’d elected as president an overgrown bully, a huckster without a drop of decency in his pizza-dough body. “How the heck did we get here?” I’ll bet you wondered. “What the heck happened?” Well, there’s a lot we don’t know yet about this election, but I’ll tell you this: Maybe you shouldn’t have made fun of my exclamation point.
Yeah, remember the exclamation point? The big ’n’ red mark plopped next to my serifed-up name like a trout on the counter? We put that logo out, and you people laughed. Oh, how you laughed. “Hey, looks like ol’ Wonder Bread Jeb’s trying to squeeze some enthusiasm out of his limp little campaign!” You think I didn’t hear you? You think I didn’t see what you wrote? Of course I did. The taunts, the memes, the novelty Twitter handles, typed with a sneer. I saw all of it, and it hurt me. It hurt Jeb.
You turned me and my exclamation mark into a big dippy joke, and look what it got you. Dread. Defeat. Humiliation. Feel that despair in your gut today, and now imagine if you had “JEB!” in your life right now, splashed across every TV and touchscreen. Hey, there’s some punctuation that’d put pep in your step! But nope, the guy who sticks his neck out to make electoral politics just a keystroke more exciting gets ribbed, roasted, raked over the coals, and hung out to dry.
Look, I wasn’t a perfect candidate. I know that. But that doesn’t mean you had to steer this country straight into a xenophobic hellhole.
That exclamation point was plain fun. It stood out from the pack. It even looked nice on a T-shirt or a coozy. You made a huge mistake the moment you collectively decided to rip my exclamation point to shreds.
I was up all night coming up with it, you know. That “!” was a John Ellis Bush original. I’d already tried out a question mark (too uncertain), an ellipsis (too ambiguous), even two exclamation points (too forceful), so when I hit on the idea of an exclamation point I really thought I had something special. I was so excited to share my excitement with you. Turns out I might as well have slapped my thick, pink matte dick into my hand and waggled it all over Facebook Live like a dang date palm frond, for all the love you gave me.
Look, I wasn’t a perfect candidate. I know that. But that doesn’t mean you had to steer this country straight into a xenophobic hellhole. All you had to do was be nice about that exclamation point for a few months. But you couldn’t leave it alone, could you? You just could not resist having a good, old laugh! Well, take a look around and tell me what you see. A divided nation headed for the falls with a dipshit at the helm, belting out one last drunken shanty before it all goes to chunks and splinters. You bullies deserve it all.
Goodbye, America. I would have been delightful.
