And this.
The US election- Tea Party
"Psssstt! Have you heard the news? Bush is President."
"Really? How did that happen?"
"I've no idea."
That's the world's take on the US election in three lines of dialogue. We knew that voting took place at some point. We know that there is now a new man in the White House. What happened in between will probably remain as much of a mystery as what happened to Amelia Earhart, or where the exact location of the G-spot is. Or, for that matter, where the exact location of Amelia Earhart's G-Spot is. Frankly, CNN might as well have announced that the entire election was decided by the outcome of a game of strip twister played by a pack of pixies. We'd have been none the wiser.
Presumably it made sense at some point, but it all appeared relentlessly surreal and nothing was more surreal than the candidates themselves. Now Al Gore should at least have had the advantage of familiarity seeing as he has been (in theory) the "second most powerful man in the world" for eight years but he's proved to be remarkably anonymous in his foreign profile. Your average British man on the street wouldn't know Al even if his pork sword was in Al's mouth, leaving Mr Gore as potentially the first "Stealth President" in history. Tipper Gore is far better known through her diligence in ensuring that musicians using expressions like "willie" or "furry front-bottom" get saddled with the social stigma of having warning stickers on their records. That'll teach 'em, Tipper.......
My personal problem with Gore is that I have the distinct impression that in the (admittedly unlikely) event of my ever wrestling off his underpants, I suspect that, in the absence of genitals, I would find a smooth expanse of shiny plastic as if he were a "G.I. Joe" doll. I doubt that he actually possesses a full set of family jewels, and if he does I suspect he would have no idea what to use them for. Some might argue that, in the wake of Bill Clinton's chronic inability to keep the Presidential Prong safely wrapped up, this constitutes an advantage but it leaves me thinking that I have nothing in common with the man, and I suspect that if we ever met he would probably take a shower in bleach afterwards. If this view was commonly held it might explain why Gore couldn't get elected. It might also suggest that he couldn't get laid in a brothel.
Next we have to consider George W Bush. At this point I have to confess that the first time I saw him on TV I was left rolling around the floor in hysterics. I couldn't believe that this man was in politics, when clearly he missed out on his intended role of asking "Would you like fries with that?". In many ways he reminds me of my ancestors. Ancestors that pre-date Homo Sapiens, to be precise.
However, I started to warm to "Dubya" after a while. He started at a disadvantage to the perceptions of pinko Europe, because (as we all know well) all Republicans are dog-raping vampires. His media coverage also pandered to the worst sensibilities in us Brits- namely the notion that we possess some inherant form of intellectual superiority over the Yanks, backed up by the fact that we used to bully people in grass skirts and use a few extra redundant vowels in spelling. Being a sucker for an underdog, I started to be a little more sympathetic to the man however afflicted he might have been.
There was something rather touching in his interviews. Unlike Mr Squeaky Clean Gore, Bush looked shifty. At times there was even a trace of fear in his eyes. His habitual expression was one of deeply confused vague anxiety- it's the sort of expression I would have expected to see on the face of a chimpanzee who has just been strapped to a chair, had a thermometer shoved up it's arse, and been blasted into a low earth orbit on an experimental rocket. This comic pathos left me feeling a vague fondness for the unfortunate chump, and I watched his interviews avidly waiting for the moment when he would finally snap and attempt to start sniffing the interviewer's arse. He is an inadvertant treasure.
......but would I trust him to run a country? You must be joking, right?
Vice-Presidential candidates? Well **** Cheney didn't make much impression, although I could easily picture him as a minor civil servant with a vital role in the process of gassing badgers. However, Cheney was "Captain Media Whore" compared to Gore's running mate who's name, face and entire existance escapes me. He must have accidentally blended into the background at some point. Like a WW2 Japanese infantryman on a remote island, he's probably still forlornly campaigning to this day.
Policies? I presume they occurred at some point, but that's just guesswork. At a guess I'd say that the Democrats wanted to spend on welfare and the Republicans wanted to spend on defence, but I never became satisfactorily informed about what the polices were. It's just as well I couldn't vote- but what is scary is that I suspect I was probably as well-informed as was a sizeable proportion of the US electorate.
I'm going to miss the US election. True, we may have a General Election here this year, but British Elections are so stuffy and pompous in comparison. We just can't get that immense pantomime of grotesques to work here. Good luck for the next 4 years, America.
You might need it.....
"Psssstt! Have you heard the news? Bush is President."
"Really? How did that happen?"
"I've no idea."
That's the world's take on the US election in three lines of dialogue. We knew that voting took place at some point. We know that there is now a new man in the White House. What happened in between will probably remain as much of a mystery as what happened to Amelia Earhart, or where the exact location of the G-spot is. Or, for that matter, where the exact location of Amelia Earhart's G-Spot is. Frankly, CNN might as well have announced that the entire election was decided by the outcome of a game of strip twister played by a pack of pixies. We'd have been none the wiser.
Presumably it made sense at some point, but it all appeared relentlessly surreal and nothing was more surreal than the candidates themselves. Now Al Gore should at least have had the advantage of familiarity seeing as he has been (in theory) the "second most powerful man in the world" for eight years but he's proved to be remarkably anonymous in his foreign profile. Your average British man on the street wouldn't know Al even if his pork sword was in Al's mouth, leaving Mr Gore as potentially the first "Stealth President" in history. Tipper Gore is far better known through her diligence in ensuring that musicians using expressions like "willie" or "furry front-bottom" get saddled with the social stigma of having warning stickers on their records. That'll teach 'em, Tipper.......
My personal problem with Gore is that I have the distinct impression that in the (admittedly unlikely) event of my ever wrestling off his underpants, I suspect that, in the absence of genitals, I would find a smooth expanse of shiny plastic as if he were a "G.I. Joe" doll. I doubt that he actually possesses a full set of family jewels, and if he does I suspect he would have no idea what to use them for. Some might argue that, in the wake of Bill Clinton's chronic inability to keep the Presidential Prong safely wrapped up, this constitutes an advantage but it leaves me thinking that I have nothing in common with the man, and I suspect that if we ever met he would probably take a shower in bleach afterwards. If this view was commonly held it might explain why Gore couldn't get elected. It might also suggest that he couldn't get laid in a brothel.
Next we have to consider George W Bush. At this point I have to confess that the first time I saw him on TV I was left rolling around the floor in hysterics. I couldn't believe that this man was in politics, when clearly he missed out on his intended role of asking "Would you like fries with that?". In many ways he reminds me of my ancestors. Ancestors that pre-date Homo Sapiens, to be precise.
However, I started to warm to "Dubya" after a while. He started at a disadvantage to the perceptions of pinko Europe, because (as we all know well) all Republicans are dog-raping vampires. His media coverage also pandered to the worst sensibilities in us Brits- namely the notion that we possess some inherant form of intellectual superiority over the Yanks, backed up by the fact that we used to bully people in grass skirts and use a few extra redundant vowels in spelling. Being a sucker for an underdog, I started to be a little more sympathetic to the man however afflicted he might have been.
There was something rather touching in his interviews. Unlike Mr Squeaky Clean Gore, Bush looked shifty. At times there was even a trace of fear in his eyes. His habitual expression was one of deeply confused vague anxiety- it's the sort of expression I would have expected to see on the face of a chimpanzee who has just been strapped to a chair, had a thermometer shoved up it's arse, and been blasted into a low earth orbit on an experimental rocket. This comic pathos left me feeling a vague fondness for the unfortunate chump, and I watched his interviews avidly waiting for the moment when he would finally snap and attempt to start sniffing the interviewer's arse. He is an inadvertant treasure.
......but would I trust him to run a country? You must be joking, right?
Vice-Presidential candidates? Well **** Cheney didn't make much impression, although I could easily picture him as a minor civil servant with a vital role in the process of gassing badgers. However, Cheney was "Captain Media Whore" compared to Gore's running mate who's name, face and entire existance escapes me. He must have accidentally blended into the background at some point. Like a WW2 Japanese infantryman on a remote island, he's probably still forlornly campaigning to this day.
Policies? I presume they occurred at some point, but that's just guesswork. At a guess I'd say that the Democrats wanted to spend on welfare and the Republicans wanted to spend on defence, but I never became satisfactorily informed about what the polices were. It's just as well I couldn't vote- but what is scary is that I suspect I was probably as well-informed as was a sizeable proportion of the US electorate.
I'm going to miss the US election. True, we may have a General Election here this year, but British Elections are so stuffy and pompous in comparison. We just can't get that immense pantomime of grotesques to work here. Good luck for the next 4 years, America.
You might need it.....
Comment