Ho-hum…another wannabe for the presidency has announced his candidacy in the way that has become popular now…on a comedian's talk-show. This time, Fred Thompson announced on the Jay Leno clambake that, indeed, he would be a candidate. There was polite applause, but one was left wondering why the former Tennessee senator didn't announce his candidacy in the state that sent him to Washington 1994-2003 or perhaps in the state of his birth – Alabama.
Okay, Thompson's better known in Hollywood for his TV-Movie roles than for anything he ever did in the Senate…but on the Jay Leno show! Egad! Maybe he'll see if he can borrow the MGM logo and replace the Lion's face with his own…snarling at those squirrely democrats. He can put that logo (lions anything but bald) on the side of his campaign bus or plane or helicopter, complete with sound effects (maybe borrow Hitler's snarl from a 1933 speech), and show enough macho to make the lady voters swoon at the ballot box.
The comedian-gimmickry can backfire, of course. Senator Chris Dodd picked the Don Imus morning-obscenity-hour to announce his candidacy back about January, only to have the I-man hit the skids when he referred to that woman's basketball team as nappy-headed hos, thus no doubt giving Dodd some palpitations about being accused of racism by association, never mind that black rappers refer to their own grandmothers as nappy-headed hos, a term in common usage in the African-American community, along with the n-word, which the rappers and other idiots use to refer to each other.
Queen Senator Hillary Clinton pulled the best one, probably. She announced in a sort of fireside chat, thus cozying up to the suckers dumb enough to watch the quintessential con-game pro in action. One would have thought she might have picked a village for her announcement, since she says it takes one to raise a child, but there might have been pesky reporters there to ask her embarrassing questions such as, "Do you know where your husband and all the children are at ten o'clock p.m.?"
In announcing his candidacy, John Edwards decided to stiff the state that sent him to the Senate – North Carolina, where he says at least ten times a speech that his dad was a poor working stiff – in favor of announcing his candidacy back about December in a backyard down in New Orleans. New Orleans? The crime capital of the world? Where reporters probably had to use a porta-john? Where an afternoon thunderstorm turns the streets into rivers? Anybody dumb enough to believe that little gesture meant anything to a voter with enough sense to get in out of the rain lacks the brainpower to find Slick Willie's personal orgy-room just off the oval office in the White House, let alone make life-and-death decisions.
Republicans have gotten in on the act, too. Rudy Giuliani, former New York mayor who has made no secret of his heroism on 9/11, managed to officially announce for the presidency on the Larry King Live talk show back in February. One thinks he would have taken this serious step while standing on an NYFD fire-truck at the site of the WTC ashes, but, no…who would have paid any attention to that? Besides, all he knew he would get from LK were powder-puff questions not having to do with wives, mistresses, cross-dressing, shady friends/business-partners, etc.,…or did he? I didn't watch.
Mitt Romney was the republican governor in Massachusetts until this year and is quick to recount the good things he did for the state, especially with regard to health issues and his change of mind about abortion. Perhaps his greatest accomplishment was simply becoming governor in a state boasting of three of the farthest-left people ever to inhabit Congress (or the earth, for that matter) – democrat senators Kennedy and Kerry and Representative Barney Frank, always the highest-profile homosexual in the land (okay, at least until the Larry Craig thing blows over).
So…naturally Romney announced his candidacy in the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, last February and not on the steps of the Massachusetts capitol. He was born in Michigan, once governed by his father, so maybe that was the reason. His father, George Romney, also made a run for the presidency (1968) but made the fatal error of claiming to have been "brainwashed." He probably had been, but he should never have admitted it. Tricky Dick came out the winner.
Congressman Tom Tancredo announced his presidential aspirations officially on Iowa Talk Radio Station 1040 WHO on 02 April. Fellow Congressman Ron Paul announced his candidacy on the Washington Journal/C-Span outfit in March.
So, where once the candidates donned their Sunday best and made announcement-speeches from meaningful locations, they now do it mostly the "informal" way, thus trivializing the office and making questionable their abilities to run the country. Now, it's the warm-fuzzy, politically correct mode in keeping with the wimp-mongering of the society…casual sweaters, house-slippers, a cozy fireplace on the Internet, boob tube, or some comedian's talk-show wherein the comedian spends most of his time putting down the country and giggling after the candidate takes his leave. As candidate Joe Biden said of candidate John Edwards' every pronouncement – FLUFFERNUTTER! So say I.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
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