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The Parties Party's Over?

WASHINGTON DC -- In this election season, the Democrat and Republican parties are feeling corporate America's pain, struggling with slumping productivity, distracted workers and personal abuse of computer assets, as millions of party loyalists engage in the political equivalent of "Fantasy Football."

Fantasy Football has long owned the mind share of tens of millions of obsessive fans, costing employers nearly $1.1 billion per week in lost productivity during the season, with some 37 million people spending an average of 50 minutes per week keeping on top of their Fantasy Football line-ups, according to a recent study.

Fantasy Politics first emerged in the wake of Newt Gingrich's 1994 Congressional coup d'etat, when Republicans were swept to power on the so-called "Contract On America" and disenfranchised Democrats sought an outlet for anguish over the loss of power which their party had held for nearly fifty years.

"This phenomenon is making it harder and harder for the parties to engage and energize their respective bases," said Taft Institute Fellow and Mudcat Falls Community College Adjunct Professor Gunther Uberflassen, who has founded a nonpartisan group called Citizens for Laundering American Politics. "Which is why we see the political discourse in this country becoming ever more polarized, extremist and bitterly partisan."

What began as a harmless diversion during the 1996 Presidential election, with mock conventions, campaigns and electoral college disputes has metastasized into a never ending obsession for some, with players from both sides of the aisle participating in growing numbers.

"You can feel the power and it's a rush," said Buster Higglesbottom, a local fantasy political boss, who likens himself to a virtual James Carville. "Raising taxes and invading sovereign nations is even better than piling up the bodies in Halo."

CLAP warns if current trends continue that in less than a decade, the country's democracy could be in mortal danger as election turn-outs drop to dangerously low levels.

"If we lose another 37 million voters, a clear minority of forty percent of citizens will be running the real government in this country," said Uberflassen, "Then 'turn out the lights, the party's over' as Dandy Don used to say -- and it will all be Newt Gingrich's fault."





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