Pressing Election Questions from the Gray Lady

As everyone in the smart set well knows, The New York Times is a serious newspaper. Perhaps, we suppose, not as serious as The New York Post, Rupert Murdoch’s incessantly highbrow tabloid, but serious nonetheless.

Accordingly, dear reader, one might expect the editorial eminences at The New York Times to offer their readers only the very finest reporting from the world of current affairs. This is the self-proclaimed Paper of Record, for crying out loud: We should think it would eschew tabloid-style high jinks, or similarly flimsy palaver.

And this, dear reader, is exactly what we found upon recently turning to the “website” of the esteemed Gray Lady. Amongst the usual rants of Gail Collins and Paul Krugman, we stumbled upon “What Would Alex Keaton Do?,” a deeply important take on the presidential election from the pen of one David Goldberg.

Who, you may reasonably be asking yourself, is David Goldberg? Well, he was a writer for the feculent 1980s television clunker “Family Ties”—the program that launched the undersized Michael J. Fox to the undersized limelight. And, though the folks at the Times have highlighted his article as “comedy,” Mr. Goldberg doesn’t offer any laughs. Rather, his is a serious rumination on fictional character Alex Keaton’s presumptive choice for President of the United States.

It turns out that Mr. Goldberg believes that the arch-conservative Alex Keaton (were he a real person) would plump for—wait for it—Barack Obama. And the Times appears to have considered this really, really noteworthy.

As, we need hardly add, do we. Yet the Gray Lady’s dipping into the likely voting choice of a fictional television character leads to another important—nay, crucial—question: What about other television characters? For whom would they pull the lever?

Ah, you needn’t have troubled yourself with that vexing—and, we hardly need say, crucial—query. We, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” have already done our darndest to answer it.

Without further ado, we present to you the following list of television characters and their likely presidential picks:

Tootie Ramsey (from “The Facts of Life”): Barack Obama
Benson (from “Benson”): Barack Obama
Stanley (from “The Office”): Barack Obama
B.A. Barracus (from “The A-Team”): Barack Obama
Erkel (from the show with Erkel on it): Barack Obama
Fred Sanford (from “Sanford and Son”): Barack Obama
Lamont Sanford (from “Sanford and Son”): Barack Obama
George Jefferson (from “The Jeffersons”): Barack Obama
The Entire Cast of “Good Times”: Barack Obama
The Entire Cast of “What’s Happening”: Barack Obama
Mr. Magoo (from “Mr. Magoo”) Ron Paul

Well, there you have it: News which, as they say, you can use. Maybe you didn’t know that Mr. Magoo was a hardcore libertarian?

Perhaps such insight can land us some column space in the Paper of Record?