AMA WARNS OF MEDICAL RISKS IN TRADITIONAL CAMPAIGN SMOOCHES

CANDIDATES KISSING BABIES THIS YEAR?

(San Clemente, CA) If you’re running for office in 2012, don’t bother to pucker up! That’s the message from the American Medical Association, which is attempting to ban the practice of kissing babies, while regulating other expressions of affection in government. Since the first knowledge of homo sapiens on the planet, glad-handers have attempted to convince their constituency of their righteousness by planting a smacker on an infant’s forehead. Often the infant cried and everyone laughed all the way to the polling place. Of course, no one kept records indicating general health and survival rates of those kissed.

“Sure I voted for Cal Coolidge, and why not? He kissed my boy Elrond!” said a New Englander in 1924. “Lyndon Johnson gets my vote”, echoed a woman from Silver City, New Mexico, in 1964. “He not only smooched my baby daughter Erline, but he said she had cute little dimples.”

While choosing a leader on the basis of his/her tenderness extended to one’s off-spring is no sillier than other reasons often given by the electorate, it may be a whole lot less sanitary.

According to the AMA, “With 15-syllable embryonic organisms constantly cropping up in every shade tree microscope, we have the technology and hopefully the good sense to avoid passing potentially harmful germs through direct human contact in the electoral arena. We plan to release a list of politicians that have been screened by the membership and are approved for contact with the voting public very soon.”

“This way people will know who to touch and who to avoid,” said Dr. S. Lackluster of St Roscoe’s Idyllic Seaside Clinic here. “We all learned as children not to pick up objects and put them into our young mouths since we `didn’t know where they’d been,'” he whisked. “The same thing goes for office seekers, whether they’re running for senator, mayor, dog catcher or even coroner/mortician.”

Lackluster went on to assure the public that a politician’s stated views on subjects, such as socialized medicine, gay marriage and the deregulation of drugs, would have absolutely no bearing on his status with the AMA.

“I, myself, was kissed by Richard Nixon in 1952 when he was running for vice president with Dwight Eisenhower and I’ve never been sick a day in my life, although, come to think of it, I did have a nasty case of ringworm a few days later,” he reflected. “No matter what the campaign posters say, the rule of thumb is to leave it at a handshake.”

 -Dinty Moore