"Well, maybe I don’t have a whole buncha
experience flying this sucker,
but that fella over there’s keepin’ an
eye on that altitude thingie,
and this gal in the other pilot’s seat
seems to know what she’s doin’,
so I think we’ll be just fine."
"65 milligrams of sodium pentathol, 1000
milligrams of sodium pentathol; what’s the difference?
Either way, that dude’s goin’ out.
What matters is what’s in ma heart."
"License, schmicense. I can drive a bus just fine Don’t mess with Texas."
"What are you worried about all these fuzzy
numbers for?
We’re not gonna show ‘em that set of books
anyway."
"Your honor, I’m not sure what-all opposing
counsel is talkin’ about with all his
fancy-pants lawyer talk, but I’m a plain-speakin’
man, so let me just say this
about my client allegedededly murderin’
the deceased with a pick ax:
Your honor, that man needed killin’,
he was a major-league asshole.
"Well, I think we oughta just get the best
minds together and see what
we can do about this cancer thing."
Why, then, I ask myself and shake my head whenever I look at or
hear
George W. Bush, have we let this cipher even RUN for President
of the United States?
Ari Fleischer, a spokesman for Governor Bush, said I am
not making this up, he actually said this
"Let’s face it, do you really want your president to be the smartest
guy in the room?"
Yes, you dumb fuck, I do.
ha ha
This country needs to grow the fuck up. We need to get away
from this schoolyard attitude
we’ve been taking these days toward intelligence. When
we were in high school, the smart
kids got picked on. Well, guess what? This ain’t
high school, where the biggest consequence
of being a C- student was that you went to a junior college instead
of Yale (that is, unless your
daddy bought your lazy ass into the Ivy League despite your mediocre
grades). This is the real
world, where the consequences of being uninformed can be a crippling
fuel crisis, a diplomatic
disaster, or a war in the Balkans. In any of these situations,
who do we want at the helm, the
nerd with straight As or the class clown who makes the other
kids laugh by blowing milk out his nose?
Call me crazy, but I want a president who has the good sense
not to pick his nose in public.
Christ, didn’t Bar teach this boy ANYTHING?
Would we pick a doctor this way? "No, I don’t like that
guy, he’s always going on about
how many blood types there are, and what kind of treatment is
right for a burn victim.
I think I’ll go with that other guy, the one who just tells the
sick people to, you know, knock it off."
The New York Times coverage of the first presidential debate featured
the following
utterly inane headline: In the End, Two Candidates Can’t
Help Being Themselves,"
as if the challenge of a candidate is to fool us into thinking
he’s something he’s not
for the purpose of getting elected. I say let Gore be Gore,
and let Bush be a shrub.
If we let the two candidates be themselves, what do we get?
With Gore, we get an extremely intelligent, well informed, highly
experienced man
who, though some may find him a bit wonkish, is clearly ready
to lead this country.
With Bush, we get Mr. Potato Head a rich daddy’s boy who’s
failed at everything
he ever tried and now has the audacity to expect us to elect
him President of the
United States, even though he doesn’t even know what Russia thinks
about Slobodan
Milosevic, just because his daddy was president, not to say a
lousy one.
You think Gore’s boring? Fine. Nobody said you had
to invite him to dinner.
Have Bush over to dinner and let him entertain the kids by sticking
straws up
his nose and sneaking his vegetables under the table to the dog.
Just please, for Christ’s sake, let Gore the grown-up run the
country.
The last thing we need is the international embarrasment of Kofi
Annan
docking a President Bush’s allowance for calling Vladamir Putin
a
major-league asshole on the floor of the U.N.
If we’re offended by the fact that Al Gore seems to know too much,
then he’s not the one with the personality problem. We
are.