Drowning in the mainstream.

• Author: Durst, Will
• Position: Off the Map

During, election years, its impossible to escape politicians invoking the legendary "mainstream." Chapter 4 in every campaign manager's well-thumbed Politics for Dummies. Right after "Red, White & Blue Forever" "God's Will Is Mysterious," and "We Never Switched Positions, Our Philosophy Evolved."

The message is relatively straightforward. Inside the mainstream, you will rub elbows with everything that is good and right and true and just about America. All the families have 2.4 children, none of whom sport barbed wire piercings or dragon neck tattoos or ever talk back. Lawns are broad and green and crabgrass free. And children are cheerfully shuttled to school in orderly processions of gray and beige minivans.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The place to be.

Outside the mainstream, red turbo hybrids prowl discordantly with hip-hop-infused rock and roll blasting from aftermarket Korean stereo systems. Pregnant teenagers flaunt uncomfortable shoe choices, and Steve Jobs's subversive band of acolytes encourages impressionable minds to "think differently," disrupting the herd mentality.

The place to flee.

As you probably guessed, this little missive is coming straight at you from outside the mainstream. And not the close proximity of some leafy protected cove of a major tributary, either. Way way outside the mainstream. So far outside, we've probably annoyed NASA by interfering with satellite traffic.

Until recently, our equanimity was bolstered by a calm certainty that both feet were planted in the soft squishy loam lying at the bottom of the slow churning current of the mainstream, but according to remarks from the ferry captains of the Republican Party, not so much. The likes of you and me are as welcome as a bloody football cleat on a white shag rug.

Newt Gingrich castigated Ron Paul for being "totally outside the mainstream of every decent American." Then Mitt Romney went and said pretty much the same exact thing about Newt. And President Obama? Gingrich and...