Jimmy Peanut and Hanoi Jane join Obama

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama received two more high-profile endorsements this week. One, at least at this point, is technically unofficial and mostly irrelevant anyway. The second however could come to bite Obama in the butt. (If you're in to that sort of thing.)

Let's start with the non-controversial one.

Former peanut farmer and president of the United States Jimmy Carter made an announcement earlier in the week that went as far as words can go to throw support at a candidate without actually endorsing them. In an interview with the Nigerian newspaper This Day he said on behalf of himself and his wife:

"We are very interested in the primaries. Don’t forget that Obama won in my state of Georgia. My town, which is home to 625 people, is for Obama, my children and their spouses are pro-Obama. My grandchildren are also pro-Obama. As a superdelegate, I would not disclose who I am rooting for but I leave you to make that guess."

Though off the record, I have it from a reliable authority that Carter's mailman is pro-Obama, too. And his barber, his dogsitter, his acupuncturist, his hangnail, and his two cats, Goobers and Jelly.

And get this. According to Ben Smith at Politico, Carter was in Nigeria apparently for a Guinea Worm Eradication Awards dinner.

Dinner?! Seriously, what kind of food do you serve at a banquet honoring the eradication of a parasite that lives in your body for a year and can grow up to three feet in length before exiting painfully through a blister or open wound? Spaghetti Marinara? Pigs in a blanket?

Now that I got you good and hungry, let's move on to the other endorsement, the one that might fester in Obama's craw like a Guinea Worm in an enflamed digestive tract. (Okay I'll stop.)

I'm talking of course about good ol' girl Jane Fonda, who gave her unofficial endorsement of Obama outside a Los Angeles restaurant. As reported by the Los Angeles Times' Andrew Malcolm:

"Fonda was eating out last night and exited the restaurant, ignoring as celebrities often do the assembled press contingent.

But a video camera was rolling as she approached the street and someone, perhaps just trying to get her to turn around for a picture, shouted out at her back, “Who are you going to vote for?”

There was a moment of silence. Then, the actress did turn around toward the cameras, paused and with a smile said simply, “Obama!” Then she got into a car and drove away."

Here's some video.

This is bad news for Barack. If some of you need a reminder why—or were not born before 1972—here's a brief history on Hanoi Jane.

Jane Fonda has been pissing people off her entire life, WAY before she used the "C"word on the Today show. She's so good at it that she can piss off one group of people, and then a couple decades later, turn around and piss off the people who were originally supporting her pissing off the first group.

In the late 60's, the Workout Queen endorsed the Alcatraz Island occupation, which was supposed to raise awareness for Native American rights. Then she married Ted Turner. But that wasn't what pissed people off. It was when she accompanied her husband to a Atlanta Braves baseball game—a team that Turner still owns and which plays its home games in a stadium in his name—where she was seen doing the "Tomahawk Chop," an ignorant little gesture that would seem at least a little bit distasteful for a supporter of Native American civil rights.

Anyway, a few years after her Alcatraz moment, Jolly Jane somehow found her way to Hanoi, Vietnam where she was seen talking to a group of Viet Cong and resting her buns on an NVA anti-aircraft gun—a gun that shoots down the planes of her home country. The year was 1972, right smack dab in the middle of a violent, unpopular war; a war in which a soldier by the name of John McCain was being brutally tortured not too far away.

You see what I'm getting at? 

Somewhere, Hillary Clinton is clapping her hands in delight while sweating her way through Jane Fonda's Light Aerobics and Stress Reduction video.

It's probably a smart move for Mrs. Clinton to be working out. 

I heard that Ivan Drago is itching for a rematch.

And to learn more about Guinea Worm and how to eradicate it, please visit the Carter Center website.