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10.29.04
Poli-trick or Treat
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Barnstorming Baby
If there's one thing I hate more than a kid in a bar, it's a kid involved in politics. Political activism suggests personal commitment to values and ideas, something inchoate-minded munchkins are not able to accommodate. Hey, let the wee-ones voice their choice on Chef Boyardee vs. Lunchables. But when it comes to children attending political rallies or protests, helping mommy get-out-the-vote -- or worse yet -- donning presidential campaign buttons on their Halloween costumes, it's just plain exploitative.

Case in point: Four-year-old Dorothy Montgomery Gardes. Her imposing dad has decided to use her as a political prop when out trick-or-treating in their Portland, Oregon neighborhood. According to a 10/22 Wall Street Journal piece (I'm SpongeBob, and I Approve This Message by Nancy Keates), li'l Dot will be sporting a John Kerry campaign sticker on her Tinkerbell costume. "She's a walking billboard for our opinions," says her father, Brian Gardes, in the article. If you find that kind of egotistical mind-manipulation scary, get this - the guy's a teacher.

Bush supporter Shannon Barnett plans on adorning himself in Bush-Cheney campaign paraphernalia and might stick a Bush button on his five-year-old daughter, Kelsie. "She's a big supporter," comments Mr. Barnett in the story. Yeah, she's also a "big supporter" of Boobah for VP and eating glue.

Some other jerks mentioned in the story are doling out campaign stickers to trick-or-treaters. I'm not sure what I would have found more obnoxious in my pumpkin-shaped bucket as a youth: campaign stickers or those prayer cards bible-thumpers give out.

Costumed canvassers of the adult variety are going door-to-door to peddle their prattle, too. For those fans of indecipherable costumes that only losers with too much time on their hands can conjure up, the 21st Century Democrats plan on dressing as "children left behind, trees running from lumberjacks and Clean Air Act victims in gas masks" spouting off about "what they call failed policies of the current administration." Personally, I think it'd be more appropriate if they all dressed as gigantic douche-bags.

According to the story, volunteers with The Oregon Bus Project will dress up to collect sealed voter ballots, since Oregonians can cast their votes by mail. Man, as if the electoral system isn't unreliable enough, now people are gonna trust some dolt dressed like Frodo with their ballots?

Of course, big Bush fans will exhibit their own unique brand of lameness this Halloween. The story notes that the Republican Party in San Mateo county, California, is having a "Scary Kerry" party during which they'll toss flip-flops and hold a waffle-eating contest. Hmmm…maybe they should all go bobbing for a life, too….

This type of Halloween hucksterism makes me sicker than a belly full of last year's shoebox stash. Isn't it bad enough that every holiday has degenerated into a hyped-up reason to buy stuff? Now not only are people buying excessive amounts of frivolous junk for Halloween, they're using the once fantastical diversion from the real world to impress their real world politics on unwitting victims. And some are even misusing their own children in the process!

Well, let 'em. Meanwhile, I'll use Halloween in the same way I do every other holiday: as an excuse to get drunk.



Operation Alphabet Freedom
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Tooker? I Hardly Know How to Spell
If you listen to Janeane Garofalo's hyperbolic radio show tirades on Air America, you may have heard her say that ignorance, stupidity, delusion or disregard for humanity are among the few excuses anyone could possibly have for voting Republican. Some Republicans, including the speech-inept pres himself, only help support such preposterous arguments.

Take Dan Tooker. Not only does he have a little trouble with his spelling, he's advertised it all over Ocean County, New Jersey. When Tooker, the owner of Tooker Sign Service, decided to plaster pro-Bush-Cheney messages on his company's billboards, you'd think he would have given the sign copy the ol' American eagle eye before giving it larger-than-life status. But, blindly sure of himself as some would argue most Bush supporters are, Tooker didn't bother to check his spelling. According to a 10/16 AP story featured in The Jersey Journal, the signs ended up endorsing Bush and "Chaney."

I guess this means Tooker did manage to spell "Bush" and "Dick" correctly. A-ha! Apparently, he's not only a "long time Republican," as the story notes, he's also a total perv!

According to the report, Tooker told The Press of Atlantic City, "As soon as it stops raining, I'm going to fix it." Yeah, sure. Comin' from a corporate fat cat Republican, you know what that means: he's gonna tax the poor to buy a new vowel, hire his buddies at Halliburton to do the repair work, and then install a billboard defense system to protect it from weapons he had the chance to secure but never bothered to.



Sign of the Slime
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Defacement of Democracy
A week or so ago I thought I might contact the campaign of a mayoral candidate here in Jersey City for a sign to post on our porch railing. Not two minutes later did I scratch that naïve civic notion after reading in the local paper about someone who'd had another mayoral candidate's sign stolen and her house doused in white paint.

Not surprising, such juvenile behavior is rampant across the country, a sign of the desperate zealotry that this divisive presidential election has prompted from the left and right. A 10/20 Reuters story on Yahoo! News takes account of several incidents, both in swing states and the other 40-some lucky enough not to be pandered to by Bush, Kerry, and their 527 group flunkies.

Aggressors took a hatchet to a Bush-Cheney placard in Michigan. A swastika was burned into a lawn with a Bush sign in Wisconsin. And a couple of Ohio hooligans gave a Bush-Cheney sign the golden shower treatment. Sheesh…you'd think the anti-war, anti-racist environmentalists could have used diplomacy before rushing to attack their adversaries' property using such violent, environmentally-unsound and xenophobic tactics.

When the Bush brigade made off with her "Kansans for Kerry" sign and replaced it with a Bush-Cheney sign, Lis Ross was "outraged." So, she did what anyone disapproving of the Bush administration's tendency towards irrational, hot-headedness would have done: she "ran out there and ripped it into little pieces."

The article also reports a stolen sign promoting the Libertarian presidential candidate, Michael Badnarik. Despite the fact that his name is spelled incorrectly in the article, it's the most press his campaign has garnered all year.

Now some stubborn politicos are taking preemptive strikes against sign defacement and theft. According to the story, "Pennsylvania Democrats have threatened to spread itching powder on signs to keep the opposition at bay, and an Illinois family last week covered their yard sign with petroleum jelly to repel thieves." Well, it's one thing to repel thieves and quite another to attract Log Cabin Republicans.

In Missouri, the Cole County Democratic Party has issued a $1,000 reward to help catch the perpetrators. Wait a minute. What would some Bush campaign turncoat do with a measly $1,000 anyway? I mean, aren't all Republicans evil rich people? Surely that money could be put to better use -- to feed and clothe the poor, or better yet, buy votes.

Richard Valelly, a research fellow at the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics at Princeton University who's quoted in the piece says the sign crime is one way to show, "People really care about this election."

Wow, I'm glad he cleared that up. And all this time all I thought it showed is that they really care about cardboard.


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