The Super Election
Imagine, for one moment, that last December Jon Bon Jovi announced that he wanted his Arena Football team to scrimmage with the Patriots and the Panthers on the morning of February first. Now, Arena Football is a noble profession, and nobody wants to malign the athletes and professionals who make the Arena Football League what it is today, but we are talking the Superbowl here --- the matchup between the AFC conference and the NFC conference of the National Football League. The Philadelphia Soul have about as much a right to compete in the Superbowl - let alone relevance to the NFL - as Janet Jackson's lingerie does. Er, did. Whatever.

However, this is far from a tidy or a just world. It isn't even a remotely logical or moral world anymore, more and more like a trip down Alice's rabbit hole as the years press on. Reality, to warp the phrase, is in the eye of the beholder. And since the presidential election of 2004 is now actually in full swing, out pops our loonies, our pundits and of course our "independent" candidates. You remember them, don't you? California was a virtual Petri dish of political ennui, filled with porn queens, truckers, State assemblymen and every size and shape of politician you could think of. Yet, conspicuously absent from the festivities was dear Uncle Ralphie Nader. I was actually wondering if Ralph was afflicted with some sort of throat cancer, since we've heard nary a word from Unk since his spoiler run in 2000. Thank goodness, perennial as black flies in the heat of August, Uncle Ralphie wants America to take him seriously as a candidate for president. Again. Awwww.

For those of you who just decided to start paying attention, Ralph Nader ran under the auspices of the Green Party last election cycle, a party with noble ideals and a volatile, very, very young political contingent behind it. I remember a then-commonplace exchange with a Green Party member while waiting in line at the Starbucks on Pioneer Square in Portland, Oregon. He had a "Nader" bumper sticker affixed to his messenger bag, which did not appear to be a tool of his vocation. Rather, his dreadlocked girlfriend and he were just going to sit in the square all day, sipping lattes with no apparent jobs, no source of income --unless body piercings are part of some government study I am not aware of -- or even fresh laundry facilities. Not to be dissuaded by appearances, I asked him why he thought voting for Nader was a good idea. He replied with something along the lines of "oh, man, he is the truthful guy" or "he's not in the pockets of the big corporations" or some such sentiment. His many contractural successes in the publishing business aside (and believe me, if there is a group that is planning to secretly overtake the planet it is the publishing industry) I ignored the glaring incoherence of Nader's acquisition of a pop persona and asked if, since Nader was likely to split the vote between liberals and possibly deliver Bush a win, the fellow would still vote Green I got a resounding "H'ya sure!" My friend the the multi-ringed and studded caffeine aficionado said that, essentially, since the parties were exactly the same, the government wouldn't be any different if Bush won.

Wow. Hea--vy. Talk about your instant karma, huh, buddy? One of Bush's first acts as President was to install John Ashcroft as Attorney General. He, in turn, made it a priority to track down physicians following the will of the majority of California voters who wished medicinal marijuana to be available to suffering elderly and ailing Californians. Soon after, Ashcroft decided that the 'Death With Dignity' act passed by an overwhelming majority in Oregon was illegal as well, and has threatened to go on a witch hunt to identify and prosecute doctors who have the gall to end the suffering of their patients when they are begging for relief. Now we hear he tried to subpoena the medical records of woman to identify and quantify who had an abortion. Whoa, Dude, that's one heavy handed Attorney General! One I'm pretty sure wasn't on Gore's short list.

I bet that guy's somewhere in Gresham in his Dad's basement sleeping off the 2000 campaign and looking for a clear patch of skin to get a "Nader" tattoo this weekend at the Saturday Market. The rest of Nader's campaigners may -- if the Gods are with us and the collective IQ of the electorate has not dropped down below 79 -- decide that Uncle Ralph, for all of his invective, is hardly the intelligent choice for President. For one, he has proven he has zero political chance of changing anything except his own pocketbook. Those royalty checks don't just cash themselves, and it's been a while since he's had a moneymaking book deal.

For another, his campaign is immoral. To elevate Nader's grab for attention to the status of an actual campaign is to malign all of the other honest, intelligent and ultimately less popular contenders for the Republican and Democratic nominations. He knows that the GOP will go for a reelection, so he is doing an end run around the political process and announcing his "independent bid" this week. You remember that guy, the one who pushes his way to the front of the line at the Royal Fork on a crowded Sunday afternoon? Well, Uncle Ralphie is trying to take "cuts" in front of Gephardt, Kucinich, Lieberman, Mosley-Braun, Dean, Edwards and Kerry. It isn't his arrogance that irks me so much as his cloak of inviolate morality that he constantly drapes over himself. Where in the heck have you been, Ralph?

When I called his campaign HQ to ask, his campaign manager assured me that Ralph Nader was never silent. I asked about the 9-11 attacks, about the Iraq war, about the Florida recount stoppage. The reply was that "Ralph Nader doesn't exactly get a lot of air time." Oh, well, that's so funny because I seem to remember things a mite different there Jim-Bob. I seem to recall the media reporting that Nader was conspicuously absent from the discussion about Florida and the Supremes decision. When pressed about 9-11 he responded with hushed reverence that "Mr. Nader was in Washington when the attacks happened," as though the rest of the roughly four million inhabitants weren't in equal danger. Well, Sparky, I would think that if Uncle Ralph has such character and such a different and refreshingly original way of dealing with running our country, he might have wanted to actually make -oh- a speech, maybe donate some blood or perhaps even raise some funds, like the rest of those horrible, indecent politicians he loves to go on about as if they were dipped in effluvium.

You know what I think? I think Uncle Ralphie sat somewhere in Georgetown safe as a bug in a rug, munching on his hummus and whole wheat macrobiotic chips and sipping Poland Spring just like the rest of the political elite he claims to have nothing in common with.

Yes, boys and girls, it's election time. The crazies have crawled out from underneath their respective rocks. It isn't nearly as entertaining as the halftime show at the Superbowl, but heck, anybody with a set of shoulder pads and a helmet is allowed to play on this turf. Maybe that's why the last few elections have been such discouraging, limpid spectacles.

the Curmudgeon