The 2012 United States presidential election was called at 5:48 a.m. today (Pacific daylight savings time).
Jamie the Psychic, who describes herself as “the worst person to call when it comes to politics,” announced Barack Obama as the winner while she appeared on The Daily Buzz (or, as the hip kids call it, theDBZ) on KDOC-TV/Channel 56.
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Indeed, everything you need to know about this year's election was covered during the three hours of the nationally syndicated morning news show taped in Florida and carried by Irvine-based KDOC, with the Floridian anchorbots cutting in at times with Orange County (California) traffic and weather.
5:07 a.m.: Stubble-faced hustler Lance Smith, one of the four anchor-horsemen of this televised apocalypse, reports the Democratic and Republican parties will have spent a combined $1 billion this election season, with the Donkeys kicking in about $330,000 more than the Elephants. Interestingly, the punctuation-challenged scroll at the bottom of the screen informs polls show Obama slightly leading Mitt Romney.
5:09 a.m.: The anchors having expressed their mock shock over that much money being spent on an election, big-breasted weather girl Jessica Reyes introduces the next story in her best Bedford-Stuyvesant-yeah-yeah-yeah-boyyyy voice: “If you're having election problems, I feel badly for you, son, but don't fret, because Jay-Z was on the case yesterday.” Under the headline “Jigga's 99 Election Problems,” Beyoncé's husband is shown on tape at an Obama concert in Columbus, Ohio, rapping, “If you're having world problems, I feel bad for you son, I got 99 problems and Mitt ain't one.” The anchorbots react with the kind of unenthusiastic laughter one finds in an old Cosby Kids cartoon.
5:18 a.m.: The first of three monumentally unfunny interviews over the three hours between Daily Buzzer Mark Payton and a bad impression of Obama on the line is held. How unfunny? Told the race is a statistical tie, “Obama” reacts by saying the only tie he knows is the one Romney wears. Actually, that's the funniest of the unfunny lines to come. Makes one long for live footage of hip replacement surgery, which would be less painful to watch.
5:48 a.m.: Jamie the Psychic's quote: “I am the worst person to call when it comes to politics. I am absolutely ignorant. . . . On my way here, I kept asking my boys [points up above her head], my guys, who is going to win. And they wouldn't tell me. So today, right now, I'm going to have to go with Obama.” She explains “her boys” are unseen forces who make her predictions. “I'm a parrot.”
6:14 a.m.: During a rundown of interesting voter initiatives around the country, the Colorado measure that would allow any adult over age 21 to possess an ounce of marijuana and six pot plants comes up, prompting one anchorbot to mention that would make Colorado's law the same as California's. Actually, possession of an ounce or less by anyone who does not have a medical marijuana card remains an infraction in the Golden State, punishable by a fine and fees so long as the busted one has no criminal record. A misdemeanor conviction can be expunged from one's record after two years. If you're caught growing any number of plants in Cali, and you make a pre-guilty plea, you can have the charges dismissed upon successful completion of a diversion program.
6:43 a.m.: Reiterating that “I don't worry much about being right or wrong”–wonder if that's on the jacket of her new book Answers?–Jamie the Psychic is back to say Obama will win tonight. But this time, the spirited one says her boys told her so. Hmmm, sounds like a producer got into someone's ear. Whoever wins, she adds, she sees the next four years as being better than that last four. Something about Obama having planted seeds. Wait . . . are we back on the cannabis question?
7 a.m.: Anchorbot blonde Lisa Spooner–think The View's Elisabeth Hasselbeck without the intellect–reveals, “The Gallup Poll shows Mittens leading by one percent.”
7:07 a.m.: After Smith repeats his story on how much will be spent this election, shocked, shocked Spooner complains, “So let me get this straight: we're facing a fiscal cliff, our country's in debt, and we're spending this kind of money on crap ads?” Smith and token Obama-flavored black white guy (white black guy?) Charles Givins in unison: “YES!” Spooner: “OK, I'm just making sure I've got it right.” Actually, babe, crap ads pay for crap TV like this.
7:17 a.m.: I'm reminded in this, the final fake Obama interview, of another stupid joke from all three hourly segments. Payton, who possesses the comic timing of a first-time open micer, acts as if he voted for Romney but does not want to let the president know it. That prompts the faux Commander-in-Chief to accuse Payton of being “dodgy,” mention Dodge is a car and remind, “I saved the auto industry.” Oof!
7:28 a.m.: A KDOC commercial celebrating the station's 30 years on the air features scenes from several reruns it has aired–and a very short clip of Wally George pushing a pie over a Hot Seat guest's head. Which is weird because we were just talking about Wally at our news meeting yesterday.
7:35 a.m.: Now the story is Jamie the Psychic did not know who was going to win the election until she sat down on the set this morning, when her boys told her it would be Obama.
7:35:01 a.m.: That sound heard throughout Orange County is Wally George spinning in his grave.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.