Last year a loon-bat by the name of Jonathon “The Impaler” Sharkey gained a modicum of national press coverage when he ran for Governor of Minnesota as a representative of the “Vampyres, Witches, and Pagans Party”. Several articles followed his quixotic attempts, and some intrepid filmmakers even created a documentary about his run. One might think that would just about extinguish his 15 minutes of fame, but it seems the mainstream media isn’t done with Sharkey yet. ABC News recently featured his Impale-ness in a story concerning the hundreds of small-timers who try to run for President.

“He calls himself a “vampyre” (the Romanian spelling, he says) and claims he’s been drinking blood since age five. He also wants to be your next president. Jonathon “The Impaler” Sharkey is running unchallenged for the Vampire, Witches and Pagan Party 2008 presidential nomination. Most Americans would have a hard time naming the 19 more-or-less official candidates, but, in fact, there are hundreds of Americans running on third-party and independent tickets. Sharkey is running on an “impale criminals” platform.”

I suppose this is a success story of sorts, it isn’t often that a former wrestler who (possibly) tried to fake his own death achieves this much notoriety (legally). But I must confess that having read through the first wave of “Impaler” news, I’m hoping this particular “human interest” well has run dry. For more Sharkey-related material you can look at his Presidential MySpace profile.

Tags: Jonathan "The Impaler" Sharkey, Paganism, politics, Presidential election, Vampyre, Witch