A common stereotype about the US is, if you can think it, no matter how odd it is, there’s somebody in the USA who does it.

I apologize therefore that this country still manages to weird me out. Like in the case of the Idahoan Politician who changed his only and legal name to “Pro-Life” (as a way to express his opinions about abortion):

A Senate candidate has legally changed his name to Pro-Life and will appear on the ballot that way this year, state election officials say.

As Marvin Pro-Life Richardson, the organic strawberry farmer from Letha, 30 miles northwest of Boise, was denied the use of his middle name when he ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2006 because the state’s policy bars the use of slogans on the ballot.

Now, though, officials in the Idaho secretary of state’s office say they have no choice because Pro-Life is his full and only name. He says he will run for the highest state office on the ballot every two years for the rest of his life, advocating murder charges for doctors who perform abortions and for women who obtain the procedure.

Incidentally, having seen an Idaho absentee ballot, I can confirm him showing up as “Pro-Life, a person formerly known as Marvin Richardson”.

Ignoring his political agenda for a second: Are you kidding me? Big Superman fan? Name your kid “Kal-el”. Into pork? Why not call the little fellow “I-love-bacon”? (Oops, now I gave Scott an idea for his next child). There’s really nothing crazy enough not to be done over here. Wow.

Vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin never grows tired of telling the public that she’s just an average person, that she’s part of the average American middle class, and other stories from a happy little box of hockey mom fairy tales.

That’s why her party allegedly spent 150,000 dollars on her wardrobe:

Sarah Palin’s wardrobe joined the ranks of symbolic political excess on Wednesday, alongside John McCain’s multiple houses and John Edwards’s $400 haircut, as Republicans expressed fear that weeks of tailoring Ms. Palin as an average “hockey mom” would fray amid revelations that the Republican Party outfitted her with expensive clothing from high-end stores.

“I don’t think Joe the Plumber wears Manolo Blahniks,” Ms. Behar [co-host on ABC’s “The View”] said.

Don’t get me wrong: I agree that a politician with such a high public exposure can’t walk around in sweatpants and t-shirts. But don’t pretend you are just an average person, worse even, try to make people believe you have the same financial situation as the average American middle class family. Unless, of course, the average American goes shopping on Fifth Avenue, in which case, never mind.

After I disabled the “subscribe to comments” plugin yesterday, I found out today that two people already extended the original plugin with a “double-opt-in” feature (Link 1, link 2, both [de]).

So I installed the latter and set it up so it sends you the following email the first time you subscribe to comments on this blog:

Note that this email will only be sent once, ever. If you accept it, you’ll be able to subscribe to additional blog entries’ comments without further hassle. If you ignore it, you won’t be asked again.

“Le roi est mort, vive le roi.” — I hope this is a solution that everybody can live with. I’ll go back to the original subscribe-to-comments if the author adds a double-opt-in solution himself, but until then we should be golden.

Sorry for the confusion