Only fools discuss religion and politics.

Having been forewarned but, with the assurance that God looks after fools and children, I’m going to tiptoe into politics just long enough to say that I’ve had a belly full of it.

Every time I see the faces of John McCain and Barack Obama or hear their voices I want to grab a handful of my frizzy hair, pull it to its limits and scream.

What’s it been now, about two years that the 2008 presidential election has dominated our lives? Why, you can’t turn on the television or the radio without hearing the “P” word or open a newspaper or magazine with out it popping right out at you.

I’ve reached the point that, when I turn on the television, I close my eyes and surf the channels until I hear the slow, drawling of Andy Griffith’s voice or the twanging of County Music Television.

I just can’t take it anymore … these candidates and their groupies, who don’t know any more about what “their” candidate is going to do or not do – or can do or can’t do – than the man in the moon.

How can any of us know? They’re both as wishy-washy as a wringer washing machine. One day they say this and another day they say that and, if the truth were somewhere between them, they’d even stretch it.

Both “camps” should take the advice of my, then 6-year-old daughter.

She and several other adventurous young’uns left firecrackers smoldering in the corncrib. During the night, the hay ignited and the crib burned to the ground.

Miss Mattie Hughes, who was my adopted grandmother, was a wise woman.

“If you don’t want your chil’un to tell you a lie, don’t ask them any questions.”

So, I didn’t ask.

Instead I tried to put the fear of the law in them.

The next morning, they were all playing in the yard so, in a matter-of-fact way, I said that since they had been in the corncrib, the police might come and ask them a few questions.

Through the open backdoor, I heard my daughter say in a whisper, “Now, we’ve all got to get together and tell the same lie.”

Both “parties” would be wise to do the same. Just stick to the same “lie.” That’s all we ask. Just tell us one lie and stay with it. We, the voters, are big boys and girls. We can handle that. We can decide between an elephant and a donkey.

Or we could have. Before the news “entertainment” media took it away from us.

The media has already “appointed” Barack Obama to the nation’s royal seat. The nation’s first African American president will be fine future fodder for the media mill. And who better than Obama?

After all, he really is African American. His daddy was a black man from Kenya and his mama was a white woman from the Dust Bowl of America. You can’t get more African American than that.

But what puzzles me is why it’s necessary to designate exactly what kind of Americans we are. I kinda think that we’re all “Americans.”

I never consider myself anything but American. But I guess if I had to put a tag on it, I’d have to say that I’m Redneck American because that’s the way Southerners are perceived.

So, with things the way they are this Election Day – not knowing what to believe from the candidates and the media having already made the election results known – I think this ol’ Redneck American just might spend the day sitting on the front porch with a dip of snuff and a jar of homemade wine and singing hillbilly songs.

Jaine Treadwell is features editor of The Messenger. She can be reached via email at jaine.treadwell@troymessenger.com.