To the Editor:

In yesterday’s News, Jay Buchanan missed the mark in addressing Mike Huckabee in his column “Doubters should take closer look at Huckabee” (12/6). Although we shared a couch in my common room and sat in front of the same TV, it appears that we were watching two separate debates.

I only saw one simple truth as I watched the debate where Buchanan saw “issues” and “facts.”

It wasn’t my shock that in real life Fred Thompson can speak for more than 30 seconds without using the phrase “a cat in a room full of rocking chairs” or “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.”

It wasn’t that Mitt Romney already has the state of Michigan shaped after him.

It wasn’t anything about the Iraq war, taxes, global warming, abortion or any of the so many hot-button issues.

It was the fact that in a recent campaign video, Mike Huckabee spoke the greatest words ever spoken in the history of American politics: “My plan to secure the border? Two words. Chuck Norris.”

Can we please get that inscribed in the side of the Washington Monument? It will emblazon in all of our hearts the best advice one can give to the American voters: Chill out.

Objectively, a Baptist minister telling Chuck Norris jokes in a campaign advertisement is hilarious. The video has drawn 4,139 comments on YouTube, and a quick glance at the most recent posts include those intellectually stimulating debate phrases: “satanic Anti-American demonrats,” “This is disgusting,” and a four-letter word thrown towards “tax hike mike.”

Why can no one take a joke? As Oscar Wilde sagely pointed out, “Life is far too important to be taken seriously.”

Unless you won the geographic lottery and are a citizen of a swing state, your vote doesn’t even seem to matter. And even then, your odds of getting hit by a car on the way to vote are greater than the odds you will cast a tie-breaking vote.

There are so few people who actually form their own opinion on political parties and just go with (or directly against) their upbringing. So when people draw swords and fight to the death for some marvelously principled position in politics, I can’t help but giggle.

Presuming no other candidate makes me laugh harder (hint hint, Fred Thompson and Sam Waterston commercial), I am going to vote for Huckabee, much to my liberal upbringing’s chagrin. But it won’t matter, because in Illinois we still have a Mayor Daley who will make sure the Democrat wins our votes anyway. And I’m OK with that because there is nothing I can do to change it.

Brian Thompson

Dec. 3

Thompson is a senior in Branford College. He is a Staff Columnist for the News.