Doing the Election Limbo

Can you believe that another deadline has rolled around since my last column and we still at press time haven’t got a president? Well, that’s not exactly true, we do have Bill until January, so it’s not like the nation has fallen into a chaotic state of lawlessness, lost without a head of state to keep things in line. The windows of the businesses in my neighborhood aren’t all boarded up to protect against riotous looters and roving packs of marauders nor are they protected by vigilante sharpshooters, they’re rather indifferently covered in newspapers as they now tentatively transform from neighborhood eateries and leather accessory stores to Dot.com businesses. Maybe now that so many dot.coms are going down the toilet with national notice and scores of layoffs maybe some of those spaces where other businesses were smugly pushed out will become strange alternative unconventional housing for say artist’s and performers, and maybe a small unusual theater space or some alternative art gallery, creative collective or rehearsal space. Wouldn’t that be full circle! Wouldn’t that be diverse and colorful and artistic! Wouldn’t that create and define a sort of cultural art movement that people from all over the world would flock to and witness and become a part of? Wouldn’t that be like ten or twelve years ago? Wouldn’t that be about as likely as me reproducing or voluntarily checking into The Betty Ford Clinic? Well ten or twelve years ago, I believe there was a Bush in the Whitehouse as a matter of fact. Yes, it was a sort of inconsequential term, aside from a nasty war in the Middle East that we still don’t know much about and are only starting to see it’s effects on those involved. That president Bush was pretty much a schmuck who appeared to have married his mother, a much older looking woman whom he referred to as “the silver fox.” They used to call Country Western singer Charlie Rich “the Silver Fox” as well, before he faded into obscurity well before the Bush Administration. It’s curious, same hair color, same linebacker build, never once seen in the same place at the same time, makes you wonder. Aside from a string of number one C&W hits in the 70’s, Barbara Bush’s list of accomplishments included birthing a brood of six children, writing best-selling children’s books about the presidential dog Millie and other very important humanitarian things to do instead of say visit the AIDS Memorial Quilt when it was on display merely a block from the Whitehouse. Let’s see, what else happened during the Bush administration…what definitive moments or slogans come to mind. “A kinder gentler nation” was his promise at the inauguration yet by the end of his term he had deployed 425,000 American troops to Kuwait and after weeks of constant air and missile bombardment, routed Iraq’s million-man army out of Kuwait and away from Saudi Arabia. It was the first time in many years that the U.S. military launched such a massive assault, and there was nothing kind or gentle about it. But in my eyes the most definitive moment of the Bush Administration would have to be the time when President Bush had a touch of the flu and a mild valium-like pill that caused him to vomit on an honored foreign dignitary from Japan or Malta or somewhere, over a fancy dinner with lots of news cameras catching it from every angle and repeating the footage on newscasts everywhere. The man who never once mentioned AIDS publicly during his entire term in office totally hurled up disgusting bile on some prime minister or representative of some country over dinner no less. No one wanted to read those lips, the lips only a MOTHER could love, if you know what I mean. And to think that a child begat of that unholy union could very well end up as our next president! My god it is so frightening to think about. Who would have ever thought we would have to deal with any more members of this nimrod clan of shit heads again, especially in the realm of the Presidency of The United States. It’s almost as unbelievable as is the fact that an election was held over two weeks ago and the race was too close to call and is still completely unresolved, even possibly further away from a final decision. At first I found myself feeling hopeful that the voter recounts would be over and Gore would be declared winner. Then came the county by county decisions for recounts, followed by the county by county decisions regarding the various conditions of the chad, the little punch-out pieces of paper on the ballots and whether a hanging chad, a window chad, a pregnant chad or a penetrated chad were to be counted as votes. These specific standards for what condition of the chad would be counted as a vote varied from county to county and this really got me thinking. Here in California we had non-chad voting ballots, but what about all the other states that did? If those ballots were scrutinized as closely as the ballots of Florida wouldn’t that change the final tabulation? People who thought they had voted as planned may not have pushed their chad hard enough and therefore are sadly mistaken that they did their part for democracy and cast their votes like good little patriots but they really didn’t. This re-count process in Florida got really lame really fast in my opinion, and it didn’t seem to bring us any closer to a final count. So why in the fuck don’t they just have a special election run-off vote for the entire nation? What is so outrageous about that idea—we know about run-off elections here in SF, why not just a have one for the two candidates nationally? Perhaps it is time to get rid of the electoral college system, and maybe a more simple, less prone to error or misinterpretation voting system in general, from the wiggly little booths in smelly garages on down to the people who volunteer to work for the election. In fact, I’ve often wondered why they’ve never used the two quarter movie theaters on Folsom or any theaters of that nature citywide as polling places. They’re more private and perhaps might provide a bit more incentive to hit that polling place, a hell of a lot more than the bowls of stale Halloween candy offered at my polling place. In fact, while I was voting I noticed that almost everyone around me in neighboring booths was having a difficult time figuring out what to do and the polling place volunteers were mostly concerned with keeping people from talking with each other about how to vote. It suddenly struck me just how near to illiteracy a large swath of the population really is.

It’s been a very perplexing and unprecedented election indeed. In spite of the fact that for the first time ever there was a candidate I would definitely have sex with, this re-count nonsense has ultimately made me care less and less about who actually wins. I know there are going to be plenty reasons on down the line if it is a Bush administration, like for instance my own health care and how difficult it will become to get what I need and what I’ve been used to, but this limbo is creating an apathy that is swelling and as the candidates are taking the matter to court at this point, it’s negating their original campaigns and goals and popularity and image. Face it, if this goes on much longer America will prefer The Grinch or Britney Spears for president. They might even be thinking, “Golly it’s been a long time since there’s been an assassination.”