Curtis Dahlgren
Election 2012: What would Buchwald, Rooney, or Jim Murray say?
By Curtis Dahlgren
MURRAY and Art Buchwald were boyhood heroes of mine, and I once wrote an imaginary interview between Abe Lincoln and Andy Rooney (the latter interviewing the former). Writing is fun, but doing the homework for it sure isn't. The pay stinks too, but let's take a light-hearted look at the election while we still can.
If I were the Republicans, I would keep the choice of the Presidential nominee under the hat for as long as possible; make the other side lie about everybody; it will waste a lot of their money if they have to target four or five people. Let them spread the slander around so we can all feel the pain. Like, who is pushing whom off the "cliff"?
If I had my druthers, election campaigns would be a lot shorter. Ideally, the GOP would announce its choice on the weekend before the November election. And like, "BY THE WAY, we nominated Sarah Palin for veep again. Just kidding; she's actually at the top of the ticket!" This would give the Left less than 72 hours to slice and dice her. Yes, I know; I'm dreaming, but —
Such a scenario would be impossible, of course, given all the early absent-minded fraudulent voting (Blago and Rezko have probably already voted for next year's election). One guy in Wisconsin wants to get rid of Governor Walker so badly that he signed the recall petitions 80 times. Shoot — Illinois has never had any trouble getting rid of governors. They just send them to prison for getting out in front of the Daley machine.
Well anyway, I wonder: by summer convention time, maybe neither party will want the White House job anymore. The campaign might sound like an argument between a shortstop and a center fielder during a high major league pop-up in the sun:
"You take it." "No, you take it!"
Both parties would run ads saying what a "nice guy" (or gal) the opponent "is." They could return half of the money raised by their cronies, or give it to the Red Cross — or the Treasury (I'm dreaming again).
I'm working on my third book. I may title it "The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant, Elections Became Civil, and the Braves Went Back to Boston."
Speaking of entitlements, you Lefty speech writers and ad writers, what makes you think you're so smart and deserve to get paid for that stuff? You AIN'T, and you don't. If you refuse to talk about spending cuts, don't even think about buttering up the taxpayer. Between the 17th and 18th hole the other day, the Prez complained about a do-nothing congress (I think he was referring to the House of Representatives, since he controls the Senate).
The House is getting so tired of being accused of doing "nothing" that it's thinking about impeaching the Attorney General, who was asked, "What's the difference between lying and misleading congress?" He said that it's a "state of mind"; that's what we were afraid of)!
It all depends what IS "is." And they can always change the name of Fast and Furious to "The Quick and the Dead." Stonewalling worked so well for Richard Milhous Nixon, didn't it? Cover-ups are worse than the crime, but covering up the cover-ups is unforgivable.
P.S. It's getting downright vicious out there. Scott Walker is compared to Adolf Hitler and Mitt Romney is being compared to (gasp!) Ward Cleaver. Seriously. The only dirt they can find on him is that he once told a joke, and forgot the punch line. The kook fringe of the Democrat party is asking Romney, "When are you going to start beating your wife?'
Nixon said, "I am not a crook"; Oboma says "I am not naive"; Michael Moore says "I am not a millionaire or a billionaire. YET" What's good for General Motors is finally "good for America"! With or without the Volt (ha ha).
PPS: We hear so much about "civil discourse," but passing falsehoods off as fact isn't a very civil thing to do either. Abraham Lincoln said, at the Cooper Institute in 1860:
"If any man at this day sincerely believes that . . any part of the Constitution forbids the Federal Government to control . . slavery in the Federal Territories, he [can] say so . . [but] he has no right to mislead others, who have less access to history, and less leisure to study it . . . "
He was making the point that while the Rebels were pointing to States Rights and the Founders, in fact George Washington had banned the spread of slavery to the Northwest Territory. The larger point is: just tell the Truth!
[By the way, not long ago I was talking to guy who was slamming the Founding Fathers, and I informed him that Washington banned slavery in the Northwest Territory, and he not only didn't believe me, he said, "We didn't even have the northwest territories then!" He must have been thinking of Oregon and Washington.]
What's worse, a "do nothing" Congress or a know-nothing house for a presidential address? Anyone who thinks it's justifiable to tell a lie or cheat for political causes has one big argument with Lincoln (and Theodore Roosevelt too).
www.renewamerica.com/columns/dahlgren/051028
"HELLO? Is anyone out there?"
© Curtis Dahlgren
December 10, 2011
MURRAY and Art Buchwald were boyhood heroes of mine, and I once wrote an imaginary interview between Abe Lincoln and Andy Rooney (the latter interviewing the former). Writing is fun, but doing the homework for it sure isn't. The pay stinks too, but let's take a light-hearted look at the election while we still can.
If I were the Republicans, I would keep the choice of the Presidential nominee under the hat for as long as possible; make the other side lie about everybody; it will waste a lot of their money if they have to target four or five people. Let them spread the slander around so we can all feel the pain. Like, who is pushing whom off the "cliff"?
If I had my druthers, election campaigns would be a lot shorter. Ideally, the GOP would announce its choice on the weekend before the November election. And like, "BY THE WAY, we nominated Sarah Palin for veep again. Just kidding; she's actually at the top of the ticket!" This would give the Left less than 72 hours to slice and dice her. Yes, I know; I'm dreaming, but —
Such a scenario would be impossible, of course, given all the early absent-minded fraudulent voting (Blago and Rezko have probably already voted for next year's election). One guy in Wisconsin wants to get rid of Governor Walker so badly that he signed the recall petitions 80 times. Shoot — Illinois has never had any trouble getting rid of governors. They just send them to prison for getting out in front of the Daley machine.
Well anyway, I wonder: by summer convention time, maybe neither party will want the White House job anymore. The campaign might sound like an argument between a shortstop and a center fielder during a high major league pop-up in the sun:
"You take it." "No, you take it!"
Both parties would run ads saying what a "nice guy" (or gal) the opponent "is." They could return half of the money raised by their cronies, or give it to the Red Cross — or the Treasury (I'm dreaming again).
I'm working on my third book. I may title it "The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant, Elections Became Civil, and the Braves Went Back to Boston."
Speaking of entitlements, you Lefty speech writers and ad writers, what makes you think you're so smart and deserve to get paid for that stuff? You AIN'T, and you don't. If you refuse to talk about spending cuts, don't even think about buttering up the taxpayer. Between the 17th and 18th hole the other day, the Prez complained about a do-nothing congress (I think he was referring to the House of Representatives, since he controls the Senate).
The House is getting so tired of being accused of doing "nothing" that it's thinking about impeaching the Attorney General, who was asked, "What's the difference between lying and misleading congress?" He said that it's a "state of mind"; that's what we were afraid of)!
It all depends what IS "is." And they can always change the name of Fast and Furious to "The Quick and the Dead." Stonewalling worked so well for Richard Milhous Nixon, didn't it? Cover-ups are worse than the crime, but covering up the cover-ups is unforgivable.
P.S. It's getting downright vicious out there. Scott Walker is compared to Adolf Hitler and Mitt Romney is being compared to (gasp!) Ward Cleaver. Seriously. The only dirt they can find on him is that he once told a joke, and forgot the punch line. The kook fringe of the Democrat party is asking Romney, "When are you going to start beating your wife?'
Nixon said, "I am not a crook"; Oboma says "I am not naive"; Michael Moore says "I am not a millionaire or a billionaire. YET" What's good for General Motors is finally "good for America"! With or without the Volt (ha ha).
PPS: We hear so much about "civil discourse," but passing falsehoods off as fact isn't a very civil thing to do either. Abraham Lincoln said, at the Cooper Institute in 1860:
"If any man at this day sincerely believes that . . any part of the Constitution forbids the Federal Government to control . . slavery in the Federal Territories, he [can] say so . . [but] he has no right to mislead others, who have less access to history, and less leisure to study it . . . "
He was making the point that while the Rebels were pointing to States Rights and the Founders, in fact George Washington had banned the spread of slavery to the Northwest Territory. The larger point is: just tell the Truth!
[By the way, not long ago I was talking to guy who was slamming the Founding Fathers, and I informed him that Washington banned slavery in the Northwest Territory, and he not only didn't believe me, he said, "We didn't even have the northwest territories then!" He must have been thinking of Oregon and Washington.]
What's worse, a "do nothing" Congress or a know-nothing house for a presidential address? Anyone who thinks it's justifiable to tell a lie or cheat for political causes has one big argument with Lincoln (and Theodore Roosevelt too).
www.renewamerica.com/columns/dahlgren/051028
"HELLO? Is anyone out there?"
© Curtis Dahlgren
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(See RenewAmerica's publishing standards.)
