Election 2000 Memories--Part Two (November, 2000)

To the citizens of the United States of America:

In the light of your failure to elect a President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective today.

Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchial duties over all states, commonwealths and other territories. Except Utah, which she does not fancy. Your new Prime Minister (The Rt. Hon. Tony Blair, MP for the 97.85% of you who have until now been unaware that there is a world outside your borders) will appoint a minister for America without the need for further elections. Congress and the Senate will be disbanded. A questionnaire will be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed.

To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:

1. You should look up "revocation" in the Oxford English Dictionary. Then look up "aluminium". Check the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it. Generally, you should raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels. Look up "vocabulary". Using the same twenty-seven words interspersed with filler noises such as "like" and "you know" is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication. Look up "interspersed".

2. There is no such thing as "US English". We will let Microsoft know on your behalf.

3. You should learn to distinguish the English and Australian accents. It really isn't that hard.

4. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as the good guys.

5. You should relearn your original national anthem, "God Save The Queen", but only after fully carrying out task 1. We would not want you to get confused and give up half way through.

6. You should stop playing American "football". There is only one kind of football. What you refer to as American "football" is not a very good game.The 2.15% of you who are aware that there is a world outside your borders may have noticed that no one else plays "American" football. You will no longer be allowed to play it, and should instead play proper football. Initially, it would be best if you played with the girls. It is a difficult game. Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed to play rugby (which is similar to American "football", but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour like nancies). We are hoping to get together at least a US rugby sevens side by 2005.

7. You should declare war on Quebec and France, using nuclear weapons if they give you any merde. The 97.85% of you who were not aware that there is a world outside your borders should count yourselves lucky. The Russians have never been the bad guys. "Merde" is French for "poo".

8. July 4th is no longer a public holiday. November 8th will be a new national holiday, but only in England. It will be called "Indecisive Day".

9. All American cars are hereby banned. They are crap and it is for your own good. When we show you German cars, you will understand what we mean.

10. Please tell us who killed JFK. It's been driving us crazy.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Here's a second joke that came all the way from Russia via Daniel, a Russian who's a fellow graduate student of my husband's at the University of Maryland. (Daniel got this joke from his loved ones back in Russia via e-mail.):

When Russia found out that the United States was having a hard time with counting the ballots in Florida, the government immediately offered to send a few envoys to Florida to act as observers in the hand counting of the ballots. The U.S. government accepted and the envoys closely observed the ballots being hand-counted. When the hand-count was done, the Russian envoys called a press conference where they announced the winner: Putin.

(NOTE: For those of you who didn't get the joke, Vladimir Putin is the current Russian president.)

Here is a third joke that was posted on alt.fan.jennicam newsgroup:

WASHINGTON D.C. - Following an emergency meeting Tuesday morning, Congress unanimously voted to excise Florida from the United States of America. The move was a reaction to the confusion and irregularities in the state's voting numbers that have totally disrupted the 2000 Presidential election.

"This is the last straw," said Utah senator Orin Hatch. "First Elian Gonzales, now this."

Several congressmen told reporters the decision has been a long time coming. "We're all pretty much sick of Florida," said representative Barney Frank. "They've been a constant embarrassment for too long now." Added Frank, "They had Dan Marino for a while, but what have they done lately? Oh that's right, screw up our entire democracy. I forgot."

In a speech on the Senate floor, Massachusetts senator Ted Kennedy commented that the loss of Florida's sizable elderly population will free up billions of dollars in Social Security funds. "These are valuable funds which can now be redirected toward national defense. We can finally rebuild our demoralized, weakened military," said the Senator to roaring applause.

From her New York campaign headquarters, freshly elected Senator Hilary Clinton echoes the sentiments of her future colleagues on Capitol Hill, calling Florida "a hurricane-addled hellhole full of scheming Cuban immigrants." "Learn English already, you banana boat bums," Clinton added.

As a result of the Florida screw-up, the House and Senate decreed a new election will take place in early December. This time, ballots in each state will be tabulated by robots.

"It is clear that our human vote-counting system is too inherently flawed,"said Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert. "The presence of these new, superior robot mast - err, I mean - tabulators will ensure 100% accuracy." "Remember," said Hastert, "every vote counts, especially if it's counted by robots."

Dynamiting will begin in Florida next Wednesday, after which the state will be completely geographically separated from the United States. "After that, they're on their own," said Hastert. "I hope they sink."

On a more serious note, the Florida State Supreme Court has just ruled that the hand-counting must continue, despite George W. Bush's wish that the hand-counts simply stop and he be declared the winner of the elections. I can understand the frustration but I feel that it's better to do a thorough job than to hastily declare a winner. If the tedious hand-counting weren't done then whoever is declared the winner would have to deal with this big cloud for the next four years that included whispers and jokes about how this person was elected under shady conditions. In fact, if the hand-counts were to be stopped now, then this could haunt the new president for the next four years in the same way that Bill Clinton's womanizing came back to haunt him.

On that note, I'm going to bed.

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: Cowboy Junkies' "Common Disaster"

A few days ago I had an idea for a new Unicorn With An Attitude QuickTime parody. I thought that the election could be decided if Al Gore and George W. Bush would become contestants on the upcoming new season of the CBS game show Survivor (which is being filmed in the Austrailian Outbacks as I'm typing this). It makes a nice complement to the online Florida re-vote that I also have posted on the site.

The last couple of days were pretty stressful for me as I was creating this QuickTime movie. For one thing, there was always the possibility that the election mess would be abruptly resolved with the new winner being declared. If that had happened while I was creating that movie, the movie would've been mostly dated, except for the Survivor references. (The presidential inauguration is scheduled for January 20 while the Survivor show is scheduled to debut on January 21 following CBS' broadcast of the Super Bowl.)

Lately my Unicorn With An Attitude QuickTime movies have been more topical. It's good in that it provides new sources of material for me. But there is a downside in that I have to pound out a new movie as soon as I get the idea because if I wait too long then the movie will eventually become dated before I finish it. In the short-run the topical movies will encourage new people to check my site out. However in the long-run, the topical movies will eventually become very dated.

I intend the Unicorn With An Attitude QuickTime movie series to be a mix of topical clips (like the new Survivor parody) with more general clips that aren't topical but pokes fun at the excesses of the human condition (such as The Funeral QuickTime movie, which shows what happens when a funeral is held for someone who was known as an alcoholic skirt-chaser who neglected his family and angered family and acquaintances). The non-topical material tend to date slower than the topical material so it's in my interest to mix in non-topical as well as topical material. Lately my QuickTime clips have been so topical that I've been putting pressure on myself to get them finished and out on the web as soon as possible. I'm tired of that so I'm going to pull back a little bit. I hope to revert back to non-topical material so I can take my time creating them and stop putting so much pressure on myself.

Another disadvantage of doing topical material is that right now I'm working on promoting this entire site using tips from William R. Stanek's book Increase Your Web Traffic in a Weekend. I found the book's schedule too arduous to do in an entire weekend. (I have a dial-up account with a 56K modem so I can't move from site-to-site as quickly as someone with a direct DSL or T1 connection.) I've been spending about an hour a day checking out the tips mentioned. However, everytime I have an idea for a topical QuickTime movie, I have to drop my marketing efforts in order to churn out the movie. This site is a one-person operation and I can't afford to hire a marketing person to do the marketing end while I focus on the creative end. If this site ever turns a huge profit, I'll consider hiring outside help. Until that happens, I have to do everything myself.

I'm going to hold a temporary moratorium on new topical QuickTime movies until I'm done with the book. Right now I'm only halfway through the book. I've thought about doing a new Christmas-themed QuickTime movie. I've done them before and they are fun to do because I tend to make the stories less cynical than usual. (I personally don't like to be cynical at Christmas.) But I'm so tired from churning out so many topical parodies that I have no idea if I'll do a Christmas movie this year or not. If I have an inspiration, I'll do it. Right now I don't have any ideas.

Doing the last movie has made me so focused that a couple of nights ago I cheered when I heard on the news that the outcome of the elections would not be known for at least another week or two due to all of those lawsuits filed by lawyers working for both Al Gore and George W. Bush. I had a selfish interest in keeping this controversy going just long enough for me to finish my QuickTime movie. My husband laughed when he saw how happy I was at the news. When he pointed out the absurdity of my enthusiasm for the country being in a political mess just so I can finish a multimedia movie, I started to laugh hard as well. Now that I'm done with the latest QuickTime movie, I wouldn't mind if there is a fair resolution to this crisis.

Speaking of the elections, they are in such a morass that I can't even keep track of all the charges, counter-charges, and lawsuits. I received the latest issue of Time magazine in the mail and there is a small article that has a laundry list of what's been going on since Election Day. So much has happened in the last couple of weeks that it's mind-numbing just to read the list. It would take a separate entry just to recoup what's been happening.

Until this week I thought that the worst thing that happened was the old people in West Palm Beach who were confused by the confusing design of the notorious "butterfly ballot." (What added to the confusion is that the night before the elections the local papers had printed a sample ballot that had a different design from the one that was actually used. So it was useless for a local resident to study the sample ballot and make notes so he/she could carry that sample ballot to the polling place.) The Republicans were talking about how it's just a bunch of old people so who cares if the design of the ballot was so confusing that they couldn't make it out. (I've heard worse things in the newsgroups from Republican sympathesizers who were calling them "old bags" who were "too stupid to read" so their vote shouldn't even count.)

Recently the overseas ballots arrived. Many of them came from U.S. military bases abroad. The Democrats are seeking to have a number of servicemen's ballots thrown out because they lack a certain postmark and some of unpostmarked ones didn't have a signed witness (which is required for mail-in ballots in order to prevent voter fraud).

I can understand throwing out the ones without a signed witness. But to throw out the unpostmarked ones with a signed witness is just plain wrong. I've read in the newspapers that the military post offices are notorious for sloppy mail handling (including not stamping postmarks on envelopes). Why should a serviceman or woman who followed the rules be disqualified because he/she used a military post office with incompetent personnel?

I'm pretty sensitive about this issue because I have two people in my family who used to serve in the military and I heard plenty from both of them about the frequent problems plaguing the military from needed equipment not being shipped somewhere because paperwork got lost somewhere in the bureaucracy to certain incompetent officers who should be dismissed from the military but they aren't because these people have important connections that shield them from being forced to accept responsibility for their own actions. I can easily write several separate long entries in this journal about military incompetence.

I've heard on the news that the reason why the Democrats are so picky about the military ballots is because many service personnel favor George W. Bush over Al Gore. If the unpostmarked ballots are disqualified, then this would favor Al Gore.

So first we have Republicans who would like to immediately stop the hand-counts and ignore the protests of the elderly residents of West Palm Beach because the vote would favor George W. Bush. Now we have Democrats who want to disqualify military votes because many of those votes favor Bush and disqualified votes would favor Gore more.

What's worse is that the Republicans are crowing about how it's wrong to discount the votes of those servicemen and women who are spending a huge part of their current lives defending the country. Yet the Republicans would discount the votes of the West Palm Beach elderly--many of whom include veterans who served with honor in World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War and probably saw some of the worst fighting in those wars.

If all this wasn't enough, George W. Bush's running-mate, Dick Cheney, is currently in the hospital because he suffered a heart attack, which was brought on by all the stress surrounding those elections. This is a man who has a history of heart trouble. If he can't take the stress of those elections, how can he take the stress of being Vice President (which includes the possibility of becoming President if the current President can't serve the entire four-year term due to things like death or severe illness)? I think George W. Bush should've selected someone with better health and if I was him, I would seriously consider replacing Cheney.

Yesterday was Thanksgiving Day. My husband and I visited my parents' home for the occasion. The media has been reporting on how the elections morass could put a damper in Americans' celebration of Thanksgiving. My family decided not to let the elections ruin the holiday and we all had a good time.

Recently my husband forwarded me two more election parody poems. Here's the first one, which can be sung to the "Hokey Pokey" tune:

Nov. 24--It's getting harder and harder to believe one's eyes and ears as George Bush, James Baker and the Republicans grow ever more brazen in their effort to seize the presidency with or without a lawful mandate. As amazing as this sounds, it is distinctly possible that the 2000 election will be decided by a bunch of riotous thugs, operating under the direct control of the Republican Party.

What was an uninspired campaign for the presidency has become an absolutely critical fight for democracy. Gore and Lieberman must ignore pundits and party hack who say they must surrender.

The most significant outrage occurred Wednesday, when ABC News correspondent Bill Redeker discovered that Republican operatives, working out of a Florida-based mobile home, had sent in busloads of hooligans to shut down by force the court-ordered Miami-Dade recount at the Stephen P. Clark Government Center. Republican operatives also set up telephone banks to urge their footsoldiers to join in the riot. Miami's most important Spanish-language radio station, Radio Mambi, issued a summons to all pro-Republican Cuban-Americans to come stir the pot further, with charges of anti-Latino racism against the canvassing board.

The mob chased down Joe Geller, chairman of the local Democratic Party, because they falsely believed he had tried to steal a ballot. He required a police escort to escape. Louis Rosero, a Democratic aide, says he was punched and kicked by the Republican goons. Others were trampled to the floor as the mob tried to break down the doors of the room outside the office of the Miami-Dade Supervisor of Elections where the votes were being counted.

When it was over, the rule of the mob was triumphant. The three canvassers voted to walk away from the recount whose tally would likely have led to Al Gore's victory over George Bush in Florida and in the presidential election. One of its members, David Leahy, acknowledged the protests were a factor in his decision. The other two, perhaps fearful of their safety, declined all interviews. As the mob celebrated its victory, its Republican Party masterminds transferred their mobile home/base of operations to Broward County, where they employed the same tactics against that county's canvassers on Friday.

Some conservative pundits have gone so far as to celebrate the triumph of mob rule over democracy and rule of law. Paul Gigot, a commentator for PBS's "Newshour" and the Wall Street Journal editorial page, praised what he termed the "bourgeois riot. " Gigot reporting from the scene, witnessed John Sweeney, a visiting GOP monitor, telling an aide, "Shut it down," and thereby inspiring what he called the "semi-spontaneous combustion" that forced the counters to "cave in."

There was no mention or unaware of the fact that the riot had been pre-arranged by Republican operatives nearby. Nevertheless, he got the sequence he observed right. "The Republicans marched on the counting room en masse, chanting `Three Blind Mice,' and `Fraud, Fraud, Fraud' let it be known that 1,000 local Cuban-American Republicans were on the way."

The same post had a second article, also written by Eric Alterman:

Sen. Joe Lieberman calls on what he calls GOP-led protesters in Florida to back down.

What's amazing in the few reporters other that ABC's Redeker, that have covered this explosive story is the lack of outrage at these tactics? Not until Joe Lieberman came out on Friday afternoon and denounced this dangerous development did the networks and most newspapers even notice the story. Most of the press reports seemed to believe that the Miami-Dade counters had simply changed their minds for no reason at all.

In fact, Wednesday's Republican-sanctioned riot is merely one facet of a campaign that has been remarkably unabashed in its willingness overturn democratic practices and ignore the rule of law in pursuit of victory. House Majority Leader Richard K. Armey has announced that the Republican-controlled House of Representatives reserves the right to overturn the entire election should it decide it does not like the result. "We in the House must be aware of one fact: In the end, when the final analysis is brought to the House, it is our duty to accept or reject that," Armey told the Associated Press. " He is joined in these anti-democratic threats by Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, who has indicted the Florida Supreme Court for allegedly ignoring "the most fundamental principles of our democracy," promising, "This cannot stand."

Meanwhile the Bush campaign at the very top has been encouragingly exactly these kinds of irresponsible threats. On the night of the Florida Supreme Court's unfavorable (from its standpoint) decision, James Baker greeted reporters and intimated, "One should not now be surprised if the [Republican-dominated] Florida legislature seeks to affirm the original rules." As E.J. Dionne observed in The Washington Post, "Baker's statement could mean anything from an ex post facto law overturning the court ruling to a legislative decision to ignore the vote counting altogether and unilaterally send a Bush slate to the Electoral College. The message: Nice little electoral system you have here. Too bad if anything happened to it."

While Al Gore won the popular vote nationwide and would easily have won the Florida vote were it not for the vagaries of the "butterfly ballot," he is clearly fighting from a disadvantage in this odd electoral aftermath. His party and many of his supporters are of two minds as to whether they even want him to win the presidency. He is being portrayed by the Republican-leaning punditocracy as a sore loser who does not know when to quit. This despite the fact that Gore has abjured many of the avenues open to him through which he might fight the Republicans' fire with fire, and has called on his opponent to make a joint public appearance and to tone down the rhetoric on both sides.

But Bush and Republicans want none of this. They can win, they have decided, because they alone are willing to do what's necessary: This includes mob intimidation, public attacks on the judiciary, and, if it comes to this, a willingness to discard the people's vote should it eventually be counted in their opponent's favor.

What was an uninspired campaign for the presidency has become an absolutely critical fight for democracy. And it is for that reason rather than his own political prospects that Al Gore must ignore the calls from the pundits and the party hacks that he and Joe Lieberman surrender. History has finally given the hyper-cautious Gore a chance to become an authentic American hero. All he has to do to become one is take his own advice: Stay and Fight.

This really sucks that this is happening in America. It's hard to believe that the Republican Party was once the same party that advocated the abolition of slavery and was progressive on a number of issues. For years I've seen the Republican Party increasingly dominated by radical right-wingers (especially by the Christian Coalition types) who will circumvent the law in order to get its own way. As a child I saw what President Richard Nixon did in the Watergate scandal and I still view him as a total disgrace. Sure Bill Clinton sullied the dignity of the Oval Office by having Monica Lewinsky perform a blow job on him in that office but at least he didn't attempt to trash the Constitution like Nixon did.

I personally know Republicans who are increasingly alienated by their own party. These Republicans are conservative on fiscal matters but they are liberal on social issues like privacy. They believe that politics and religion don't mix and are uncomfortable with the Christian Coalition trying to get the party to conform to its own version of morality.

I'm now hearing that this issue may even extend into Christmas. So much for Peace on Earth and Good Will to All.

Current Mood: cynical
Current Music: Michelle Shocked song "When I Grow Up"

I finally started reading today's Washington Post and I found out about how the elections are affecting this country.

First of all today's Post had a small sidebar giving a brief run-down the things that had happened up to the time when the paper was printing. They include:

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear Texas Gov. George W. Bush's challenge to the Florida Supreme Court's hand recount decision.

Vice President Gore gained votes in Broward County [Florida], but lost votes in other counties that reviewed ballots. Palm Beach results were unclear.

Democratic vice presidential nominee Joseph I. Lieberman said demonstrations in Miami-Dade County, which abruptly called off its recount Wednesday, "were clearly designed to intimidate."

Republican vice presidential nominee Richard B. Cheney was released from the hospital.

It looks like the last item is the only positive news in the entire Florida election mess. (Especially to Cheney and his family.)

Another article in today's Post mentioned that there is a possibility that sales for the holiday shopping season will be lower than last year, despite the high employment rates and a strong economy. One factor is that the stock market has been taking a nose dive lately (especially among the dot-coms listed on the NASDAQ) so those who have been playing the stock market don't have as much money to spend on extra presents as last year. Another factor is that credit-card debt is 10 percent higher than last year. A third factor is that people are too worried over the uncertain outcome of the recent elections to do much holiday shopping.

Then there is a third Post article that caught my attention. It's about the rise of election parodies that are circulating over the Internet. The Washington Post printed a still picture that is similar in content to my recent QuickTime parody. Bush and Gore are on the original Survivor island (I can tell that the setting is from last season's Survivor because of the lush jungle background) and there is a caption that reads "Don't Vote Me Off!" At least my Bush/Gore/Survivor parody is an animated QuickTime parody and it's set in Austrailia (the site of the new Survivor contest).

The article is really interesting to read. I decided to post it here in its entirety, even though I know that I am violating the Post's copyright in doing so. (Right now The Washington Post is among several other big-name newspapers that is suing a small right-wing political website because it took the articles from the publications involved and reposted them on its own site while inviting visitors to write scathing commentary about the mainstream media's alleged "liberal left-wing" biases that could be spotted in those articles.) But this is my own journal. If I was writing this down on paper, I would take that particular article, cut it out of the paper, and tape it into my journal pages. To me it's really not that much different from clipping news stories except that more people are likely to read this entry online than if I had written it on paper. In addition, the Post only keeps its stories online for two weeks before transferring them to an archive where you have to pay to retrieve it. Since I'm writing these entries about the elections as they are unfolding, I would like to keep a copy of the article here for posterity so that anyone who is reading this entry one, five, or ten years later will know why I found that article interesting enough to write about it here.

Chances are you've never heard of Mike Collins, a 26-year-old civil engineer with the Elmira (N.Y.) Water Board. By now, however, you've probably seen his contribution to the American electoral process.

The day after the presidential election, as the Florida results began their slide into confusion, Collins dashed off a little one-panel cartoon and e-mailed it to a few friends. "I thought it might be good for a little chuckle," he says.

Little did he know. Within hours, the "Official Florida Presidential Ballot"--showing a spaghetti-like tangle of lines and arrows designed to confuse everyone but George W. Bush's supporters--was passing from computer to computer. Within a day, Collins was getting hate mail, congratulatory notes from as far away as Japan, even offers of dates, as his e-mail made its way to thousands, maybe millions, of strangers.

The near-instantaneous spread of Collins's work illustrates one of the startling dimensions of modern computer culture: It no longer takes a hit movie, TV show or best-selling book to lodge a joke or image in the national consciousness. With enough people-to-people power, even anonymous Joes and Janes can create instantly recognizable icons.

Never has this been more true than in the election's messy aftermath. A torrent of underground wit, if not always wisdom, has been flowing through the world's computer networks. Like few news events before it, the post-election's twists and turns have inspired a buzzing electronic store of doctored photos, cartoons, jokes, song parodies and essays--the very stuff of folklore--commenting on the candidates and the process.

Although new types of software make it possible to count the number of first-time recipients of an e-mail, it's hard to know exactly how many people ultimately see one, says Paul Saffo, director of the Institute for the Future, a Silicon Valley think tank. That's because popular e-mails tend to get altered as they pass through generations of users. Typically, he says, a small, original group passes the message into ever-widening circles, sometimes multiple circles.

"Is this just political junkies talking among themselves? We have no way of knowing," says Michael Cornfield, research director at George Washington University's Democracy Online Project, which is in the midst of a survey to determine voter e-mail use.

The potential is certainly vast. Some 116 million Americans were online in August, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce, which also estimates that 41.5 percent of all U.S. households are connected to the Internet. That means a joke that used to travel the country by word of mouth over a period of months or years can now be virtually everywhere within days.

"We normally used to say that folklore existed after three generations. We don't say that anymore because the process of creation is so speeded up," says Alan Dundes, a professor of anthropology and folklore at the University of California at Berkeley. "People used to think that technology would kill folklore. In fact, it has created more folklore."

E-mails are so easy to forward that one can ping around the continent in a matter of minutes. Brian Kaye, a physician who lives in Piedmont, Calif., has been exchanging humorous election e-mails with a circle of about 10 to 15 friends around the country. But that's nothing compared to Steven Travers, a writer in Hermosa Beach, Calif. Travers periodically sends out e-mails containing a potpourri of quips, comments and articles on politics and other subjects to friends, acquaintances and strangers. He keeps nine separate e-mail lists--containing about 1,300 names. "You're limited only by your ability to type in more names," he says. Sometimes, items Travers sends out come back to him several generations removed, as if the sender believed the material was original.

The last great spasm of national e-mail wit may have come last spring, when the Elian Gonzales saga climaxed with a raid by federal marshals on his relatives' home in Miami. The famous photo of a frightened Elian in a closet instantly became fodder for parody. In one, the head of the gun-toting federal agent was replaced by that of Attorney General Janet Reno. In another, the agent was shown with a thought bubble reading "Drop the chalupa!" One animated e-mail had Reno, Elian and the agent spouting the dialogue from the "Whaazzup!" Budweiser beer commercial.

This time around, there's "Sore Loserman2000," a letter-perfect parody of the Gore-Lieberman campaign sign. There's "Voting for Dummies" (subtitle: "A Reference for Florida Residents"), allegedly written by Gore campaign chairman William M. Daley. There's "The Palm Beach Pokey" ("You bring your lawyers in / You drag the whole thing out . . .") and mock ballots aplenty. There's a takeoff on the TV show "Survivor," with Bush and Gore depicted as bare-chested contestants under the legend "Don't Vote Me Off!"

Republican parodists have hammered on the alleged stupidity of Florida's voters and the "unfairness" of the recount (one popular e-mail uses a familiar folkloric joke form: "How many Palm Beach voters does it take to change a light bulb?").

Democrats alternately suggest that the Florida ballot was confusing, or that it was part of a Republican plot to steal the election. One popular piece created by artists at BET.com shows an interactive "ballot" that always registers a vote for Bush even if a user tries to vote for another candidate.

"The Internet isn't just a publishing medium or a medium for commerce, it's a social medium," says Howard Rheingold, the author of "The Virtual Community," a book about social communication in cyberspace. "Communications is what humans have always done, but now the human need to communicate intersects with a new medium that makes every desktop a broadcasting station. We used to pass information by word of mouth. Now we can pass it around the world."

Rheingold says passing e-mails about politics is merely a variant on old personal communication forms, such as the Colonial practice of gathering at the tavern to exchange news and gossip about those in power. In both cases, this is information that is unmediated by political, economic or media elites, he says.

E-mails offer the same kind of diversion and social lubrication as a chat over a backyard fence with neighbors or a water cooler discussion at work--with the principal difference being that one can now remain anonymous and address thousands of people almost simultaneously, says Dundes. "Just as people sang songs or told stories hundreds of years ago, we're doing the same thing with e-mail--venting feelings, expressing anger or satisfaction or outrage, passing judgment on a situation," he says.

There's a fancy name for this: empathic communities, or groups that form online to express and find emotional support, usually over health issues. Computer scientist Ben Shneiderman, the founding director of the Human-Computer Interaction Lab at the University of Maryland, notes that chat boards and e-mail groups light up after some fearful news story breaks, such as the recent crash of a Concorde jet and revelations about faulty tires on Ford Explorers.

"The emotional exchanges are extremely important," he says. "The driving force is people's desire to speak out and share their feelings or listen to others. It's like talk radio. But talk radio had its success with a limited degree of interaction. This is mega-talk-radio."

Unlike totalitarian societies, American politics hasn't traditionally generated a great deal of folklore, electronic or otherwise, Dundes adds. This may be because folklore tends to be about the taboo and profane, rather than something that is widely discussed and debated such as politics.

Yet, given the opportunity, and just a little bit of computer expertise, anyone can become a political satirist these days.

With just a few minutes of tinkering on his personal computer, Rich Taylor, 38, of Muskegon, Mich., was able to transform the Democratic ticket's campaign sign from "Gore Lieberman 2000" into "Sore Loserman2000." Taylor posted his mock sign on the conservative Web site FreeRepublic.com a few days after the election. Now the thing is ubiquitous--on the Internet, on TV and at Republican rallies protesting the delay in the election results.

Last weekend, Taylor's sign was featured on the main screen greeting millions of subscribers to America Online. And, yes, there are T-shirts, coffee mugs and buttons to come.

Taylor had been reading comments posted on FreeRepublic "and someone said, 'Gore's a sore loser,' and someone else said, 'Yeah, he's a loser, man,' and it just came together," said Taylor, who develops electronic products. "I've never seen anything spread so fast."

So fast that Taylor is having the same problem that Mike ("Official Florida Presidential Ballot") Collins is having with his cartoon: People keep trying to sell their copyrighted designs. Says Taylor: "Everyone seems to be making money off it but me."

I'm only disappointed that I didn't get my QuickTime parody out before The Washington Post decided to do a news story about the rise in election parodies over the Internet. It would've been cool if my latest effort had been noticed. Oh well!

Current Mood: hungry
Current Music: Depeche Mode's "Everything Counts" song

Last night the Florida Board of Elections have certified that George W. Bush is the winner. Never mind the fact that there are disturbing alegations of African-Americans being discouraged from heading to the polling place on Election Day by the police. Never mind the fact that Miami-Dade County abruptly suspended its hand-counts after facing a protest mob that stormed offices, which was orchestrated by the Republican Party and whose participants came from out-of-state (as documented in a report that aired on ABC News). In the meantime, Al Gore has decided to challenge the decision and he plans to go on television tonight to explain himself to the American people.

Today on the Trust the People mailing list I found a thoughtful analysis on the elections from an Independent voter who is a registered Republican that I liked. It reads:

I, too, am an Independent voter. I voted for McCain in the primary. When Bush slandered McCain so visciously during the campain as to force him out, I changed my vote to Gore. I despised Bush for what he did to McCain. McCain is ten times the man Bush will ever be. Bush bought the White House, plain and simple. When you vote next time, make sure you get all the facts before doing so. Do not vote for someone because you like the way he looks or acts. Do not vote for someone because of only one issue, like the religious right voting for Bush because of abortion. Look at all the issues because there are many more very important issues to consider. Watch the candidates and research them and see how many dirty tricks they pull along the way. Keep up with the way they handle things and see who uses the lowest, dirtiest tricks and ask yourself, would I want this man representing me to the rest of the world? People say Gore stole this election, but anyone with any brains can see that Bush is the real thief. He stole votes in Seminole county, had mods refuse Blacks the vote, had mobs threaten and intimate a legal and justified hand count until it was stopped. Bush bought Florida and Katherine Harris was promised a job in his administration for making sure he gets Florida. This is all fact, check it out. Harris's job is being eliminated this term and she desperately needs the position Bush promised her to move up in her political career. Katherine Harris should have removed herself like Jeb did. At least Jeb acted like a man and excused himself from this mess. If you have questions about any of this please let me know. Trust your heart when voting for a candidate not media lies and candidate lies.

The local Trust the People group is talking about holding a vigil outside the Supreme Court, which is considering the case, this Friday. I may or may not go depending on how this idea develops, what is going on in the next few days, and if I have the time.

In the meantime even though there are Greens involved in the protest against the recent Florida shenanigans (including prominent supporters like filmmaker Michael Moore), little has been heard from Ralph Nader, who ran for President on the Green Party platform (even though he isn't a member of that party). There were mumurms on the mailing list as to why he is so silent. Well, according to a recent article in The Denver Post, Nader explains himself. Here are a few excerpts (as posted on the Trust the People mailing list):

Third-party presidential wannabe Ralph Nader has a simple solution to the stalemate in Florida: Toss a coin.

He's not being flip.

"It sounds kind of arbitrary. But I'm not joking," the Green Party candidate told The Denver Post on Tuesday. "There's really no other way to end this. At this point, no one's ever going to know who really won Florida."

Speaking from his office in Washington, D.C., Nader said that, ideally, a team of nonpartisan volunteers should recount by hand all votes cast in all Florida counties. But, given the Dec. 12 deadline to pick a winner, he acknowledges that's not a remedy the Florida Supreme Court likely will hand down.

Speaking before Tuesday night's decision, Nader said a ruling to accept hand recounts in only a few Democratic counties would be perceived as biased because most of the justices are Democrats. Likewise, he said, a move by Florida's Republican-majority legislature to name Republican partisans as that state's electors would be unfair.

Meantime, Nader added, the longer the standoff continues, the more ballots will be mishandled and tainted.

"It's razor close, and the margin of error is bigger than the margin between them," he said. "Whoever wins is going to have half the nation against them. It's going to leave a bad taste in the American people's mouths."

So, with all the earnestness that only the nation's original consumer advocate can muster, Nader proposes that Al Gore and George W. Bush settle the standoff with a coin toss. The event would be televised live across the globe with "the biggest audience in world history."

He claimed to be following the Florida standoff "only casually," saying he doesn't much care who wins.

"They're just two lookalike candidates from two lookalike parties that are looking more and more alike. Whoever the winner, he'll just keep hijacking the American governmental system," he said.

Ironically many of his supporters are involved in this current movement out of the priciple that there should be a fair and free election. They don't necessarily support Gore, they think that the winner of an election should be decided fair and square. It's almost a cop-out that Nader doesn't at least support the idea of electoral reforms (which could potentially help the Green Party in the long-run). I used to admire Ralph Nader, especially for his frequent fights for consumer safety but slowly I'm becoming disgusted with him. While I still admire his past accomplishments, I really question what he's done in the past few months.

The same mailing list also had a link to an article that's posted on the World Socialist Web Site. The Green Party is supposed to be a progressive left-wing movement. Here is a stinging critique of Ralph Nader and the Greens made by a left-wing website:

Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader has maintained a deafening silence on the political crisis surrounding the results of the US elections.

During his campaign, Nader correctly criticized corporate domination of the American two-party system as tantamount to the disenfranchisement of the broad masses of the American people and an affront to democratic rights. Yet in the face of a concerted effort by the most reactionary forces within the political establishment, who are lined up behind the Bush camp, to use patently anti-democratic methods and appeals to right-wing sentiment to gain control of the White House, Nader has not uttered a word of protest.

It is remarkable that a presidential candidate who won 3 percent of the national vote—including nearly 100,000 votes in Florida—and presented himself as a progressive alternative to the Democrats and Republicans should have nothing to say about the events of the past two weeks. A public statement from Nader denouncing the attempt of the Bush campaign to gain the White House through the suppression of votes would undoubtedly strengthen popular opposition to the Republicans' machinations.

Yet in several public appearances and television, radio and newspaper interviews since the election, Nader has said nothing about the election controversy. A spokesman at Nader's Washington, DC headquarters confirmed that the Green Party candidate had issued no public statements on the subject. When this reporter asked why, the spokesman said, “We're not deeply involved in what is going on down there. This is just a political battle between the Democrats and Republicans.” When asked how Nader could remain silent about widespread charges of Republican vote-rigging and intimidation of minority voters, in which fundamental issues of democratic rights were at stake, the spokesman said, “It's Mr. Nader's prerogative to do so.”

How is Nader's silence to be explained? As his spokesperson indicated, he considers the electoral impasse to be nothing more than a dispute over the spoils of government between two identical corporate-controlled parties. It is something that ordinary people need not particularly concern themselves with.

But how could that be? How could working people adopt an attitude of indifference toward political forces on the right prepared to ride roughshod over their democratic rights, as part of an effort to take full control of the levers of power?

The working class must oppose the attacks on basic rights, but it must do so from its own independent standpoint and with its own methods. Opposition to the Republican right does not imply giving political support to Al Gore and the Democrats. Experience has shown that this party is incapable of seriously defending democratic rights against the reactionaries in the Republican Party. What this crisis poses to the working class is the need to construct it own political party, based on a democratic and socialist program, to defend the interests of the vast majority of American people.

Nader's refusal to oppose the Republican-led attack on democratic rights demonstrates that his organization has no real independence from the ruling elite. His “plague on both your houses” position may appear radical, but in reality it is a form of adaptation and capitulation to the extreme right-wing forces that dominate the Republican Party. Precisely because the Greens are not based on the working class—in fact, they reject the very notion of the class struggle—they are incapable of mounting any resistance to the overt attacks on fundamental rights.

Nader's silence on the current crisis is consistent with his mechanical and false conception that, because in an absolute sense an identity exists between the two parties—insofar as they both represent the interests of American big business—there cannot be any relative differences. But, of course, such relative differences exist, and in times of political crisis they can play a critical role in developments that affect broad masses of people.

It is true that corporate interests dominate both parties and that the political differences between them have narrowed as the political spectrum of official politics has lurched to the right. But it is also true that over the past decade a ferocious battle has been under way between these two parties. This must have an objective source in conflicts between different sections of America's economic and political elite.

The struggle within the ruling elite has escalated from a series of phony investigations against the Clinton administration, to the shutdown of the federal government, to the first-ever impeachment of a sitting president, to the current effort by the Republicans to hijack the election. To pretend that these events have no political significance is to deny reality.

The Republican Party is controlled by extreme right-wing forces, which speak ultimately for powerful sections of the corporate establishment who consider even Clinton's conservative policies an obstacle to the far more extreme right-wing agenda they seek to impose on the country. They are determined to lift all restrictions on the accumulation of personal wealth and the exploitation of the working class. To achieve this, the Republicans and their religious right, racist and fascistic supporters are prepared to overturn democratic norms and constitutional rights.

The Democrats, who have increasingly turned their backs on the workers and minorities in whose name they once claimed to speak, represent other sections of the ruling elite and more privileged social layers, who seek to defend the interests of American capitalism through the more traditional channels of bourgeois democracy.

For working people to sit idly by while this battle is fought out within ruling circles is to court disaster. The basic issue involved here is not the fate of Gore or Bush, but the fate of the democratic rights of the American people.

Nader's banal and complacent views were highlighted in recent remarks about the results of the election. In a November 17 interview on National Public Radio's Talk of the Nation program he said, “What's next? I don't think anything is going to happen regardless of whether Bush or Gore is elected. They will be deadlocked. It's too evenly divided. I don't think there are going to be any major changes in direction.”

Nader also told The New York Times that if Bush prevailed, his very narrow margin, the closely divided Congress and the Texas governor's own personality would limit the damage he could do. “He doesn't know very much,” Nader said of Bush. “He is not very energetic. He doesn't like controversy.”

This is an utterly false assessment. Does it make any sense that the forces behind Bush, who have been prepared to throw the country into a constitutional crisis and raise the specter of divisions not seen since the Civil War, are suddenly going to opt for a more moderate course once they take the White House? On the contrary, sensing that their position is increasingly weak and unpopular, they will push ahead with their reactionary agenda.

Nader, of course, does recognize that there are differences between the two parties. That is why he spent much of his time answering arguments that he was taking votes away from the Democrats, not the Republicans, and calling on the Democrats to return to their “progressive roots.”

Much more is involved on Nader's part than a theoretical error or a false appraisal of the dispute between the two parties. His silence is also bound up with political calculations of a reactionary character. Nader has said nothing about the Republicans' actions in the election campaign because he does not want to alienate right-wing forces whose support he is courting.

This is not new. In his acceptance speech at the Green Party convention in June, Nader counseled Green members to appeal to conservative voters by saying his campaign championed “traditional, not extreme values,” such as opposition to the “voyeurism of the media.” He made no secret about appealing to supporters of Senator John McCain and backers of even more right-wing political figures.

He made common cause with Reform Party presidential candidate Patrick Buchanan, joining the ultra-right politician in protectionist campaigns against trade agreements with Mexico and China, which Nader declared were “subverting American sovereignty.”

Finally, Nader expressed support for the Republican impeachment drive against President Clinton. In the course of his presidential bid he said he opposed the Senate acquittal of Clinton, and declared that he would have voted to remove Clinton from office. He reiterated this at a New York press conference before the election, saying, “Clinton should have been convicted by the Senate. He disgraced the office and lied under oath. Matters like these cannot go without sanction.”

By siding with the forces behind the impeachment campaign and in remaining silent during the present political crisis Nader has, in objective terms, aided and abetted the camp of right-wing reaction.

While I'm not a socialist, I do agree with most of what that article says. This makes me glad that I got out of the Green Party movement when I did back in the mid-1980's (of course I only got out of it because the Greens--then-named The Citizens Party--were less interested in forming a grassroots movement that could challenge the two-party system in favor of just having high-profile people run for president on its platform every few years). Like I've written earlier, I do believe that we need a real progressive grassroots movement that could challenge the two-party system. I just think that the Green Party is not capable of doing that. If the Greens would do organizing between elections by fielding candidates for local, state, and congressional races, then they would make great headway. But the Greens seem to prefer to just field a prominent person for president every few years because a president campaign is more exciting and sexier than having some unknown run for county office somewhere in the midwest.

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: Buck Cherry song "Lit Up"

With every passing day, our dueling presidents-in-waiting look less and less presidential. Each over-choreographed, under-whelming public appearance and painfully inept sound bite only serves to further diminish their already lilliputian stature. It's Honey, I Shrunk the Presidency!

Last week provided the stunning juxtaposition of the banal and the momentous, with the two candidates hard at work on competing essays: "How I spent my time while waiting to see if I was going to be the next Leader of the Free World."

Al Gore's entry featured jogging with "close adviser" Karenna on Thursday, a little touch football with Tipper and the kids on Friday, a post-Shabbat double date with Joe and Hadassah on Saturday night. (Probably just a coincidence that the film they saw was "Men of Honor," as opposed to "Charlie's Angels." But it was definitely a good move to have skipped "Lucky Numbers.")

Sunday morning found the Gore clan in Virginia's Mount Vernon Baptist Church, listening to a sermon entitled "Kingdom Economics" -- about measuring success not by what you have but by what you give. Though apparently not by what you give up. The problem was what to do on Monday: "Do I go into the office and run the risk of trying too hard to look presidential? Or do I spend another day goofing around with the kids and risk looking like a guy with no life and no place to go?" Note to Al: If looking too presidential is your worry, don't worry.

George W. Bush was less-peripatetic with his limbo time, but he'll be relieved to know statistically dead even with Gore in goofiness. He basically spent the week lying low at his ranch outside Austin. He should have lain lower. His only appearance was a cringe-inducing press conference at which he could barely keep his dog quiet long enough to tell us about his "severely infected" boil.

Still unclear is just what message was meant to be projected by his meandering Q&A. That a 54-year-old man calls his pet pooch "Spotty" and his wife "First Lady Bush"? That all questions more taxing than "What's the deal with that aircraft-carrier-sized bandage covering half your face?" should be referred to Daddy's fixer -- or "Mr. Baker" as W., sounding a lot like Beaver Cleaver, insisted on calling him? That Dick Cheney's idea of casual wear is more Brooks Brothers than L.L. Bean? He lost the tie, but what setting would it take to get him to unbutton the jacket -- a cattle run? Note to W.: Get Mike Deaver on the phone and ask him about the importance of visuals.

Most grating of all were both men's attempts at feigned good humor -- Profiles in Nonchalance -- as if the bare-knuckles ballot brawl down in Florida was little more than an amusing distraction. Bush joked that his dog's relentless barking was a canine commentary on the election imbroglio: "What she says was, 'Let's finish the recount.'" Gore, meanwhile, told reporters he felt confident he would prevail, quickly adding: "I'm talking about the touch football game." Nudge, nudge. Wink, wink. Retch, retch.

This cloying, not-a-care-in-the-world pose reached its nadir with Gore's chuckle-filled claim on Monday that he "would not want to win the presidency by a few votes cast in error or misinterpreted or not counted." Equally disingenuous was his assertion at Wednesday night's "Let's Make A Deal" press conference that "what is at stake here is not who wins and who loses ... but how we honor our Constitution." Please -- even if Gore were the last person on Earth, he'd still want to be president. And still might manage to lose.

One judgment we don't need the courts for is this: Both these guys are so untalented they aren't even able to follow the directions they've given themselves. Stanislavski might say that their problem lies in not knowing their motivation -- for both these princes of privilege, the run for the White House has been little more than an exercise in career placement. Which is why neither will heed the voices urging them to put first "what's best for the nation."

There was a time when a leader like Charles de Gaulle would withdraw to Colombey-les-deux-Eglises, his home in the country, and wait until the nation caught up with his vision for it. But these two? What would they do? Perhaps Gore could continue practicing looking presidential, perfecting an image that must have first occurred to him as he toddled around the Fairfax Hotel. And Bush could go back to losing other people's money.

If it is essential in a democracy that the presidency is seen as an honorable -- and not merely an unavoidable -- profession, our pair of presidents-elect is doing it serious damage, symbolizing as they do the wretched gospel of mediocrity and triviality that has become the distinguishing characteristic of our political life.

Thank god for the patience of the American people. If we are willing to wait this long just for a president, I suppose we can wait four more years for a good one.

I wish I could disagree with her on that last sentence but I'm afraid she's correct. I'm hoping that during the next four years a real reformist progressive movement can start that will put the two political parties on notice that they have been listening too much to rich corporate types at the expense of the majority who are not rich and don't have political and econonmic connections.

Current Mood: calm
Current Music: Cypress Hill's "I Wanna Get High" song

For the past couple of weeks I've been subscribed to two Trust the People mailing lists. One is for events in the Baltimore-Washington, DC area only. The second one is more of a general discussion list where people submit ideas and opinions. I found that the general discussion list is getting to be a bit much for me because so many e-mails are posted there. Even on the digest version I have to sift through more messages than even the DC Web Women mailing list (and I thought that one had a lot of messages). What's worse is that some people on the discussion list tend to write really long messages. When you get five or six people writing such long messages on a regular basis, it can take an hour or more to read everything in the daily digest.

Plus there are a lot of strange people on that discussion list. There is one person who is involved in a movement to make the radio airwaves more accessible to smaller low-powered community-based radio stations. Now there's nothing wrong with that movement because I feel that the airwaves should be opened up to more diverse viewpoints that simply don't get heard on the larger corporate-owned broadcast stations. However this person is so fervent in his belief that low-powered radio stations are the key to making this country more democratic that he has been known to post that same message at least two or three times a day (sometimes more often than that). At one point someone else on the list asked the low-powered guy if he could just cut back on the number of posts because they were so repetitive and he risked turning people off to his message because he kept on making similar posts over and over again. He quit for about a day or so but now he's back with his frequent posts calling for low-powered radio stations. Ugh!

There are also people on that list who feel that the movement should go underground because of the possibility that there are staunch pro-Bush Republicans who are on the mailing list who only subscribed to that list because they are spying on the movement and they want to hold counter-demostrations at every single pro-democracy demostration. I disagree with that because I feel that in order to have converts to our cause we should be functioning out in the open. Sure the Republicans may be spying on us, but let them do it and just ignore them. (The big irony is that there are people on the Trust the People mailing list who say that they have subscribed to mailing lists that deal with the other side and they urge fellow Trust the People members to do the same so we could spy on them.)

At least the DC mailing list doesn't have as many messages to sift through. Also that list has messages that contain final plans for marches instead of just preliminary ideas that someone threw up on the discussion list. So I plan to unsubscribe to the discussion list and remain on the DC list.

It looks like people on both sides of the issue are being more polarized. Here is a column from today's Washington Post that describes the scene of a series of protests that are being held at the U.S. Naval Observatory (the location of the Vice President's home, whose current occupant is Al Gore):

Not that this election has hardened the divisions among us, but at 34th Street and Massachusetts Avenue NW, where Bush and Gore partisans shout across the street at each other and the Bush folks have set up large canisters of hot water for tea, a sign on the containers says, "Bush Supporters Only. Gore Supporters Already Receive Enough Handouts." Ouch.

Here outside the vice president's residence, Bush folks chant, "Na Na Na Na, Hey Hey Hey, Goodbye," while Gore loyalists sing "God Bless America." Separated by a dozen bored D.C. police officers, each group sticks to its corner and its well-worn arguments. The other side is wrong, deluded, pigheaded, power-happy. Our side has already won, can't you see?

What's clear even on a misty night is that nothing is over. The dull campaign in which each candidate tried to distance himself from the overamplified sniping of the Clinton-Gingrich years has been supplanted by the bullhorns and venom of the impeachment era. "I'm a uniter, not a divider," and "I stand before you as my own man" are nearly forgotten slogans.

Instead, we have the needling, "Hey Hey, Ho Ho, The People Voted Al and Joe," and the taunting, "Ambassador Harris, Ambassador Harris," a gloating reference to the strong-arm tactics of Florida's secretary of state.

On the Bush side, Kristinn Taylor, an avid follower of the conservative Web site www.Freerepublic.com, and the Northern Virginia Republican Party have recruited much of the crowd. Taylor has distributed "Rules for Protesting," including, "Do not give the middle finger, call people jerks, tell them to go home or get a job." Who says Americans no longer cherish civility?

Taylor, who lives in the District, expects to be here for a long time. "For those people behind the fence," he says, pointing to Gore's house, "this is a death march." If Bush prevails, Taylor is certain, "Democrats will set out to undermine him" and it'll be four more years of Government Smackdown.

But for a scuffle Sunday in which a 13-year-old boy heading home from the Bush corner crossed to the Gore side and took a punch in the gut, this standoff has been peaceful. Yet neither side foresees a coming together.

Philip Niedermair, father of that boy, is a marketing consultant who came late to the Bush side, committing only after learning that the son of a president had not tried to pull strings when he was arrested for driving under the influence back in 1976. "My God, I thought, here's a man who didn't use his famous name to protect himself," he says.

On both corners, partisans crave honesty, hunger for integrity. Each side, of course, finds it in its own man. On the Gore side, where protesters were recruited by e-mails from the Democratic National Committee, Peter Umhofer, a Clinton appointee working in the Interior Department, waves a Gore sign, finding hope in the honking horns of passing motorists.

"People dedicated blood, sweat and tears for 18 months for this, and those feelings aren't going away soon," he says. After a month on the road for Gore, Umhofer is happy to fight on. But he senses the nation's patience is limited. "People are willing to see more counts for the next month, but then, people will want it to be over."

This is a clear difference between the two crowds. No one on the Bush side can see Gore prevailing, whereas many on the Gore side say their man may have to give in. Are Gore supporters more flexible? Or do they just realize the game is up? Are Bush's people more hard-headed? Or do they simply have the facts on their side?

Sheilah Hill, who was spending Thanksgiving with her brother in Springfield and for complex reasons happened to have a Statue of Liberty costume with her, hopped a cab as soon as she heard about the certification of the Florida vote. She stands on the Gore side, her pointed crown glimmering, singing patriotic songs.

Widow of a Baptist minister, Hill cannot fathom why Gore, a Baptist, and Bush, a Methodist, do not meet "to find the unity of the spirit." She has Republican and Democratic children, and her holiday featured "strong debates," but all survived.

Hill wears a sign saying, "Dare always to love and to hope, and to expect good eventually to triumph." But when she tried to cross to the Bush side to unify the spirit, police said no. Too dangerous.

I fear what could happen if this election uncertainity extends too long. Especially if it drags out into Christmas and even early next year.

Current Mood: complacent
Current Music: Morrissey's "Every Day is Like Sunday"

Election 2000 Memories--Part Two (November, 2000)

Election Humor: Originally Posted November 21, 2000 at 11:29 p.m.

New Election Stuff: Originally Posted November 24, 2000 at 8:06 p.m.

More Election News: Originally Posted November 25, 2000 at 11:38 a.m.

Still More Election News and Humor: Originally Posted November 25, 2000 at 6:56 p.m.

More Election Stuff: Originally Posted November 27, 2000 at 7:24 p.m.

Another Opinion About the Elections: Originally Posted November 28, 2000 at 5:17 p.m.

More Election Opinions: Originally Posted November 28, 2000 at 9:46 p.m.

Election 2000 Memories--Part One

Election Memories 2000--Part Three

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