For any company, few politicians would want to be associated with their brand. Of course, this is because politicians are inherently controversial, and gaining the support of someone on the right (or left) risks alienating potential customers on the left (or right). It is best to keep one's political activities as a company to the extent of making large donations, not public appearances, and to keep one's political statements in the public sphere low-key.

But there is another reason. Politicians are, almost without exception, clumsy and obnoxious, and if they associate themselves with your brand, the public may begin to think you are clumsy and obnoxious, too. That is truly frightening.

With that in mind, one can imagine that Wizards of the Coast is not too happy with Donald Trump's would-be runner-up, Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance, who has turned out to be a real combadre, professing right-wing politics and a hard-nosed stage presence. It is not hard to imagine. According to his wife Usha Vance (via Indy100). Does he like the Hatsune Miku set?

Usha Vance was asked by Fox and Friends host Ainsley Earhart about her husband's geek interests. According to Earhart, she hesitated a bit when asked the question, "He would kill me, but it's a card game called Magic: The Gathering. And his sons are obsessed with Pokemon."

How could America accept a second lady who does not understand the myriad obvious and important differences between Pokémon and Magic? But the vice presidential candidate's wife was not making things up; Indy100 astutely points out that JD Vance's memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, also describes his secret love of the game." I could never tell my father that I played a nerdy collectible card game called Magic," Vance writes. In fact, the kids in Vance's church youth group apparently "talked a lot about Magic and its evil influence on young Christians."

As a 40-year-old millennial, Vance grew up alongside Magic, which debuted in 1993. Early editions of Magic had pentagrams on cards like Unholy Strength and Demonic Tutor, but WotC began removing them around 1995. The reason being that TSR, the publisher of Dungeons & Dragons (which would later be acquired by WotC), went into a Satanic panic in the 1980s, and parents believed that games like D&D were recruiting their children into a Satanic cult.

D&D's devils and demons drove parents like Vance into the fray, and WotC wanted to avoid that controversy, so it began removing pentagrams and monsters like "daemons" became "horror."

But that did not seem to reassure Vance's father. Perhaps the influence of that upbringing remains, and he heard about Vance's passion for magic from his wife, not from the man himself. To be "honest" I find that a bit sad. I would rather be in a world where I can be myself than one where I can't live up to societal expectations.

I say this because this is the second time in as many days that the Republican presidential duo has appeared on these pages. Yesterday, we reported, exhausted, that Donald Trump appeared on an hour-and-a-half stream hosted by Twitch's ousted streamer Adin Roth, which climaxed with him sitting in a customized cyber truck while belting out an Elvis love song. I detailed it all. No, really, it was the stupidest thing imaginable.