Who’d have thought No Age had the power to disenfranchise the Republican Party? I mean, they’re great and the DIY ethics of The Smell are commendable, but I wasn’t sure their revolution extended beyond handing out vegan pancakes at gigs. I was wrong.

Yesterday No Age’s Randy Randal sent an email out to his entire address book revealing that at the bands prerecording of the Late Late Show With Craig Fergusson, the musician was forced to cover his Barack Obama t-shirt because it wouldn’t be fair to the other three Presidential candidates: John McCain, George and Ringo…

My initial reaction to this was inquisitive: “Just how late can Craig Fergussons Late Late Show be? Like 2.30? Or dawn?” Then I thought about the t-shirt incident and became jaded: “What good would it have served anyway, I mean how many No Age fans were actually going to vote Republican? I’d reckon a few less than the number of toes on my right hand”. Chortling smugly to myself I looked around the office for someone with whom to share a weary isnt the left hopelessly fucked forever sigh.

That soon passed and I found myself feeling righteous: “How come that pussy took the shirt off? If it had been me I’d have crafted a bust of Sarah Palin out of buffalo turd and shot a member of the production team every minute until they freed the Guantanamo inmates and promised them suites in Freedom Tower”.

And finally, when I realised my high horse had no saddle and was careering towards a ravine marked ‘ill-informed blog twit’, I settled for dignified revulsion.

What’s so lame about this is that it reaffirms the most dangerous of collective assumptions in the political process: that democracy is not a live, fluxing collective of thoughts to be interacted with freely by everyone, but an intimidating concept which is rationed to a bemused public by qualified commentators.

CBS have no more ownership of this election than No Age, but like sport and music, political opinion has become professionalised, changing it from something habitually universal into a rarefied commodity performed by experts and viewed by the rest of us. Everyone talks about how Americans should motivate themselves to vote, but until politics becomes normalised, how can that happen? If the right to consume can be perceived as such a fundamental freedom that people spend more on their cars then their houses (as a non-American, it really weirds me out to see Mercs parked outside Californian shacks), then surely political rights can also cross the class divide? I guess what I mean is that politics should float unannounced through the doors of broadcasting, just as it should through our lives.

I’m pleased No Age didn’t get righteous and storm out of the building. Instead Randy turned his shirt inside out and scrawled a message about free health care. It’s hardly an explosive gesture, but maybe theatricality belongs in televised drama while politics needs to be more DIY.

Here’s a video of the band playing at The Smell in LA where they have lots of fun all age parties and fall over and stuff. Politics not included.

ALEX MILLER