Original Message
From: Doe, John
Sent: Friday, December 01, 2000 6:54 AM
To: airbeagle
Subject: Palm Beach Video
Funny, slightly mean:
« Confused Palm Beach Voters »
AirBeagle’s Rant:
Says Steve, in his typically verbose manner showing that he’s fiddling while his company burns down around him (NorthPoint is 50 cents a share today!):
Yes, John, the cartoon is funny. Yup, repeatedly making fun of elderly Jewish voters who were supposedly confused enough by the ballot to punch chads for Pat Buchanan, a man who admired Hitler, could certainly be defined as “slightly mean,” as you put it. But funny, nonetheless.
I do like the other cartoon on the site above where Al and Dub duel it out in Tennessee with a banjo and guitar, a la Deliverance, then go to Texas and try to have a shootout, a la Wild West, but Al’s gun has a trigger lock and Dub can’t shoot straight enough to hit him. Hilarious. I’m not being sarcastic, now, either.
I honestly also like the following other laughable aspects of Indecision 2000:
- Election night TV/Internet/News coverage. Laughable if it weren’t completely disheartening and ridiculous.
- The Sore/Loserman 2000 posters. Brilliant.
- The BUSH/CHEated 2000 posters. Cute, but a weakish response to Sore/Loserman.
- Ralph Nader – “screw all you guys.” Pat Buchanan – “well, Hitler did have his good points.” Reform Party – “Are you ready to rumble?” Harry Browne – “Yes, we should make all drugs legal and get wasted out of our minds.” The REAL Florida ballot confusion – you could vote for the Socialist party or the Socialist Workers party.
- Republican “rioters” chasing that poor Demo lawyer down the hall screaming, even though he’d just taken a sample ballot.
- Thinking that Minnesota Governor Jesse “The Body” Ventura should be taking the oath of office on Jan. 21. Can we still draft him? Jesse “The President” Ventura?
- The picture of Dub holding up three fingers and Dick holding up two fingers and the caption, “How many times have you been arrested?”
- America imputing tremendous significance in Al kissing Tipper on stage in Los Angeles. Retch.
- The religious right having no problem with their candidate’s drunk driving or using a highly pejorative, scatological term to describe a member of the news media. Jesus may have changed his heart, but the mouth still needs some work. Can you say major league hypocrisy?
- Speaking of major league bald-faced lying: Lynne Cheney hotly denying that her daughter, Mary, is a lesbian, when said daughter lives in Conifer, Colorado, with her lover and spent 1998 touring the country with Mr. Leather USA, while she was the official Coors Beer representative to the US gay/lesbian community, a post that she only quit shortly before the campaign season began.
- Joe Lieberman looks a lot like the father on TV’s ALF, who was always being foiled by the hairy alien puppet, doncha think?
- The blinking, deer-caught-in-the-headlights look on Dubya’s face as he stands in front of flags telling the nation what his handlers wrote that morning, praying that the teleprompter doesn’t break down or that he disappoints Poppy and Bar – clearly so far out of his league that he looks more like an emir of Kuwait in 1990 praying to Poppy, Dick, Colin and Norman to come rescue him and the oil wells from the great satan Saddam.
- The sense I have that before Al-bot speaks to the nation that Joe is behind the screen winding him up and pointing him towards the cameras.
- And speaking of cameras, I just wanna tell Tipper to stop with the Japanese tourist routine, already!
- James Baker telling everyone that the election shouldn’t be decided in the courts, then watching the Republicans file the first lawsuit and subsequently filing twice as many suits as the Demos.
- Hearing Gore’s campaign manager curse Republican “g-damn guerilla tactics,” then saying that if Gore is not elected, she’ll be fine at McDonald’s – “Girl! God will provide!” she said. Quote, unquote. (Maybe she should have been flippin’ Big Macs instead of running Al’s disaster of a campaign.)
- The deep wrinkles on Laura Bush’s upper lip, from where she’s had to clench her teeth and lips together so tightly over the years in that disapproving librarian scowl while dealing with either her incredibly over-bearing mother-in-law or her drunken frat boy husband. She’s even having to take on Bar’s old First Lady cause: Literacy. Probably isn’t going to be allowed to have one of her own.
- Hearing that the networks ran hours of video of a lone yellow Ryder truck speeding up the Florida interstate like OJ in the white Bronco runnin’ from LAPD.
- And speaking of OJ, hearing him call in and compare the two events.
- Hearing that, in Florida, Dems say every vote must count, even if handcounted and that voter intent has to be determined and “this number of undervotes is suspicious,” while the Repubs say everything’s been counted, and handcounts aren’t reliable and the election’s over; while in New Mexico, Repubs say every vote must count, even if handcounted and that voter intent has to be determined and “this number of undervotes is suspicious,” while the Dems say everything’s been counted, and handcounts aren’t reliable and the election’s over (regarding the election in Roosevelt County, NM). Yeesh. Now THAT’s major league hypocrisy.
The mean-spiritedness and nastiness of the last month is just part of the American experience. Thank god for the First Amendment. We can all scream as loud as we went one way or the other. We can also choose not to listen, too. I’ve been tuning out most of the news out this week. My opinion, bottom line: If the Supremes rule against Al, he should concede and come back in 2004 to send the drunken frat boy and Poppy’s Posse packing. In the meantime, he can help reinvent the internet or help Tommy Lee Jones shoot a remake of Love Story, where, he and Tipper play the leading roles themselves, he tells Tipper he needs a personality transplant and then engages her in the longest recorded movie screen kiss. I’m sure there’ll be a Buddhist and an ailing dog in need of prescription drugs in there somewhere.
Let Dub run around the White House for four years like he used to when he was a kid, tossing the baseball up in the air, sniffin’ and learnin’ to say “strategy” instead of “strategery.” Just pray that Dick’s heart attacks only come yearly and are never fatal.