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Florida is Hosed
By Bill Zahren
(Posted 11/08/00)
Florida, I weep for thee. I grieve with theeeeee. You’re
so screwed. We’re screwed.
It’s a screwed festival. Even now, many well-groomed men
and women festooned with cell phones, patent leather shoes
and perhaps pinstripes are on their way to Florida. A Legion
of Lawyers. The Mouthpiece Commandos. A few hundred of them,
if what I saw on the TV this morning is correct.
Two hundred lawyers descending on Florida, frightening the
old folks, just to make sure everything is “fair” down there.
It’s not right, I tell you. I’m flashing back to the Iowa
caucuses. At least we had reporters and “pundits” here, not
lawyers.
No offense to my lawyer friends, but combining a whack with
an axe to grind and an insane member of the bar is like mixing
a spark with grain dust (LA and NYC, substitute “match with
gas”). Either way, kablooooooey. Reams of legal briefs that
spew on for hundreds of pages about little or nothing.
Most of all, the besieged American public is hosed on so
many levels:
It’s not Over! Yeah, we’re hosed. The best part about
Election Day was that it would be over by Wednesday. Well
it’s not. We’re going into overtime! We’ll get seven more
days of all day, every day, Elian-Gonzalez-Crisis-like spew
about Florida.
Random co-workers will be in earnest discussions over voting
irregularities in St. Petersburg. The “latest” will be regurgitated
over and over everywhere. Like last night, I’m watching MSNBC,
and they hit us with this news flash: “This just in: In an
extraordinary development, Bush has gone from the hotel to
his home to watch the returns. That’s right, he’s ON THE MOVE.
Let’s go to our panel of mainly white disheveled males for
hours and hours of analysis on the late-breaking development.
Once again, if you you’re just tuning in, Bush is CHANGING
LOCATION.”
Now they’ll be recounting the recount, with each recounter
having six to 10 lawyers perched on his or her back. And,
if Florida goes for Gore, the Bush people might say, “Oh yeah,
we’d like to take a look Michigan!” and the Armani horde of
$300-an-hour attorneys will jet to Lansing. They’ll be like
locusts traveling from state to state, eating the crops.
Black Helicopters Everywhere! The black helicopter
people on both sides will come out of the woodwork like cockroaches,
their Pissed-At-the-World antenna waving defiantly. No matter
what the “final” outcome, someone will scream “rigged!” I
expect Congressional hearings that invest 32 million tax dollars
in a special prosecutor who convenes a grand jury for five
years and then issues a report that says, “something might
have happened, but we can’t prove anything, so never mind.”
Uh Oh, that Pesky Electoral College thing. Looks like
a very real possibility that Bush could win the electoral
college while Gore gets more popular votes. Somebody gots
some ‘splainin’ to do. Talk about screwy.
I was trying to explain this to my 9-year-old daughter last
night. She couldn’t figure out what the little numbers by
the candidates’ names were. Bush 118, Gore 116. “Is that how
many votes there are so far?” she asked. No, honey, because
American has this cockamamie, screwy way of electing presidents
that’s right out of the 19th Century. It’s like points. You
win the state, you get the points. Some states have more points
because they are more beloved or important or something.
If a candidate does win the EC and lose the PV, look for
the winning side to give you the “that’s the law” shrug. They’ll
look like a team that benefited from a bad ref call at the
end of a game. Kind of a thin grin and a “that’s the way it
goes sometimes” look.
The losing side will be doing handstands of outrage for years
to come. When Clinton won with the most popular vote but not
a majority of the entire vote, the Republicans obsessed on
it for eight years.
Shoe’s fixin’ to be on the other foot and then some. Bad
news is, we’ll have to endure the spewing and screeching and
bitterness in the Congress at least for four years. The answer
is obviously to scrap the horsedung electoral college system,
which was devised a couple of centuries ago before electricity
as a safeguard against the people voting in a dead guy as
president (speaking of Missouri, which elected a dead man
to the Senate. Prop him up behind a desk and you got Strom
Thurmond Jr. with better diction.). People have tried to get
rid of the electoral college system for years, but always
gotten voted down. Hey, we have computers and phones now.
We can do a popular vote.
Plus ditching the electoral college will make it meaningless
to “project” states for each candidate. TV last night: “We
predict Florida for Gore or possibly Bush. Maybe Gore, but
then again Bush.” You guys are clowns! Stop it right now.
No wonder the credibility of my former profession is in the
crapper.
Gridlock Redefined. Weep for the next president whether
it’s Gore or Bush. He’ll preside over a bloody political landscape.
It will be like Patton visiting the scene of a gruesome battle,
kissing the survivors. What you got is a government full of
people who think the other side is the Spawn of Satan. Look
for new heights in vitriolic spew.
Even more to Analyze. You have no idea what this is
doing to the hardcore, mostly white male, disheveled political
analysts. They’re frothing at the mouth. They’re high as kites.
Spewing right and left. They’ll be books and TV specials and
made-for-TV movies about this election for centuries to come.
It will be the election that Will Never Die.
At least it’s interesting. I’ll say that for this whole mess.
Maybe Al and GW should just meet on the White House lawn and
flip a coin. Or do rock, paper, scissors. Or compete in that
strange, Scottish log-throwing event. Winner take all. Wouldn’t
be any more bizarre that what we got now.
© 2000 Bill Zahren
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