Article Photos

Fact Box

Andy Heller, an award-winning columnist for The Flint Journal, appears weekly in the Daily Press. He graduated from Escanaba Area High School in 1979. For more of his work, visit his blog at blog.mlive.com/flintjournal/aheller. You can e-mail him at aheller@flintjournal.com.

FLINT - I wasn't feeling well the other day so I went to the doctor.

"What are your symptoms?" he asked.

"Well, doc, I feel stressed and tired all the time. And out of the blue sometimes I'll wanna upchuck even though my stomach's not really upset."

"Peculiar. And how long has this been going on?"

"Oh, about two years now. It wasn't bad at first. But lately it's constant."

"Interesting."

"Oh, and I've noticed that I sometimes scream."

"Scream?"

"Yeah, like this: NOOOOOOOOO! MAKE IT STOP! FOR THE LOVE OF MIKE, SOMEBODY MAKE IT STOP!"

"Hmm. Your wife must find that highly disturbing."

"You're telling me. She's the one who made me come see you. She said, 'Either go find out what's wrong or don't come home.'"

"I see. Tell me, does this scream happen randomly or does it seem to occur at particular moments?"

"Now that you mention it, doc, it's almost always when I'm watching CNN, although occasionally it'll happen when a commercial comes on."

"Any specific kind of commercial?"

"No, not really. Sometimes it happens during a Barack Obama commercial and other times it happens during one for John McCain."

He stroked his chin in thought for a moment then took a remote control out of a drawer and turned on a TV hanging in the corner. Wolf Blitzer's white, fuzzy head appeared, then his voice: "I'm Wolf Blitzer, this is CNN and you're in the Situation Room ..."

The doctor said, "How does that make you feel?"

"Er, well, to be honest, I'm beginning to feel a little green, doc."

"And this?" he said, flipping the channel to a Fox commentator who was talking about startling new evidence that proves that Barack Obama is Osama bin Laden's long-lost son.

"Whoa, I feel dizzy all of a sudden."

"And now this ..." he said, changing the channel to a round-table discussion where the panelists were shouting over one another so that you couldn't make out what anyone was saying.

"Doc, you'd better ... I feel ..."

And then I fainted.

When I awoke, I was on the examining table and the doctor was waving smelling salts under my nose.

"Wha ... what happened?" I murmured.

"Relax, you're fine," he said. "I think you just overdosed is all. Nothing to worry about."

"Overdosed? But it was just TV?"

"Ah, not just TV, but TV election news coverage. You see, son, you're suffering from Election Fatigue Syndrome."

"Election Fatigue Syndrome?"

"It's going around. We start to see a few cases as much as two years before a presidential election but by the time the election rolls around it's nearly epidemic. The symptoms include, as you described, general fatigue and stress, which is brought on by too much election coverage and analysis."

"But the upchucking?"

"Well, you also have a touch of both John McCain pneumonia and the Barack Obama flu. The symptoms are nausea and the inability to stomach any more malarkey, juvenile name-calling or empty promises."

"Is it bad, doc?"

"Oh, it's bad, all right. But it's not fatal to humans, although it has been known to be fatal to TV sets. We're seeing a lot of shoes and remote controls embedded in TV screens right now."

"So what do I do?"

"There's not much you can do, I'm afraid. Short of an official election season, there's no known cure for Election Fatigue Syndrome. The best I can tell you is to turn off your TV set until Nov. 5."