Before I get to the relative substance of this week's column, I have something I need to say to Attorney General Ashcroft: Johnny Boy, I'm afraid I'm having serious doubts concerning our relationship.
I fear it has devolved into a farcical, one-sided affair, if it was ever anything more than that at all. You see, ever since last Friday, when my Secret Service background check seemingly came back clear of red flags, and I was granted a press credential to attend the second presidential debate, I've been forced to do some re-evaluation.
The key to a healthy relationship, even one built upon visceral disgust for fundamental aspects of another's being, is communication. And Ashcroft, if you had taken merely a moment to turn your prying, loathsome eye my way just once these past few semesters, you would never have allowed my dissent-propagating, evil-doing self such unobstructed access to the most mainstream of political events.
In light of this profound slight, I don't know if I can continue expending the effort to send my stream of small but cumulatively biting print ridicule your way when it has now become quite clear that you have chosen to spurn me.
There, I'm glad that's out in the open.
Now, hyperbolic personal issues with Bush administration officials aside, I'm glad no manner of blacklist prevented me from attending the second debate, as my presence often does, has done a great service, this time to the entire journalistic establishment (assuming it's more receptive than good ol' Ashcroft).
As a result of my spectating--and likely the free libations the fine corporate sponsors at Anheuser Busch served the press beforehand-I have conceptualized an innovative alternative to the tedious \horse race"" analysis that constitutes the only real material available to report on the presidential race from here through Election Day.
It hit me while I observed from the bleachers as Bush's demeanor went from ""squirrelly little prick"" to ""hopped-up spider monkey"" and back again; as Kerry flashed his string of transparently forced, toothpaste-commercial caliber smiles to the cameras and crowd: These two would transpose splendidly to puppet form.
In appearance, voice and repertoire of phrases, the candidates all but cry out for caricature in the noble medium of foam. If news broadcasts began taking the time they now devote to polls, pundits and cruising the campaign trail and replaced it with gleeful little puppet featurettes, nothing of substance would be lost at this point, and all involved would gain.
Bush and Kerry's schedules would be freed up to the point where they could actually run the freaking country or show up for a freaking vote for once. Journalists would no longer need to compromise standards of newsworthiness. Those conspiracy theories about Bush being ""wired"" to Karl Rove would diffuse in the humor of it all.
Hell, it would be worth it just for the chance to see Peter Jennings lead into the story with one of those ""More on the horrific genocide in the Sudan in a moment, but first, the presidential campaign"" lines the networks are so fond of. Because truly, can the state of the world really seem so bad juxtaposed next to prancing puppets?
Holly Noe's column runs each Friday, unless there was just a snag in the Guantanamo paperwork. Write to her at flamingpurvis@yahoo.com.
