I am trying to find the humor in this whole election fiasco. The chain of events is truly remarkable: the media calls a state, then retracts its call, only to call it again and retract it again; one presidential candidate concedes and then retracts his concession; a dead Democrat beats a live Republican for a Senate seat; and the First Lady wins a Senate seat. The list actually goes on. I am waiting for Ronald Reagan to accidentally enter the race just to make things more interesting.
A while back I wrote a Viewpoint ("The Age Gap," 9/13/00) stating that the elderly voters have hijacked this election from younger generations. That Viewpoint, if I may flatter myself a bit here, was right on the money, because the entire election now hinges on the votes of the graying Florida population.
Part of the controversy centers on a ballot in Palm Beach County which, according to www.voter.com, confusedelderly voters so much that they accidentally voted for Pat Buchanan instead of Al Gore. It's strange, but the same thing happened to me in a Swampscott, Mass. voting booth, where I accidentally voted for Satan instead of marking off "Al Gore and Joseph Lieberman."
I called a few of my elderly Jewish grandparents' contacts in Palm Beach County and found out that the ballot really was a problem. The perplexing ballot, combined with the age factor, tilted a Jewish precinct towards the less than tolerant Patrick Buchanan. Here is what my contacts told me:
"Are you kidding me, I can't even work my answering machine, let alone read a ballot as confusing as that. Oy, I knew everything would turn out badly. God willing I will live through this day."
"Yeah, I'm bloated, what's it to you? What? Speak up! I can't hear you! What? .... Oh, yes, I voted. Confused? Of course I'm confused, I'm 90 years old and forgot to put on my pants this morning. I voted in my underwear. Wait a minute, you're not my wife. Who are you and why are you calling me at work?"
"No, I didn't vote because my golf game ran late, then I had to meet the girls for dinner in Boca, and by the time I got back it was already dark and I can't drive at night. Actually I can't drive in the day either, but don't tell my wife that. She's blind as a bat and didn't notice that I drove into an orange grove."
In an effort to get at the bottom of this ballot business I analyzed a copy of the controversial Palm Beach County form:
"President/Vice President: Vote for ONE choice. You must press in the corresponding hole of the party with the corresponding hole of the candidate(s). If you fail to punch the right holes, then we will be forced to track down your grandkids and kill them and then you will be removed from your retirement village and placed in a nursing home, where all you will eat is sugar-free Jell-o."
The words are written so small that even healthy people could not read them, and the hole-punch system looks pretty messed up as well. For example, Democrat corresponds with Patrick Buchanan, and Republican corresponds with Ralph Nader, and the Natural Law Party matches the selection "who are these people and what do they want with me?"
I am no expert, but I think there may have been some manipulation of voters in this Florida precinct. This problem is to be expected, when one considers that it is the elderly who are voting in this location, and we all know that they cannot drive and that they all fall asleep watching Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Perhaps I mentioned this in the Viewpoint, but my grandmother blames Ed Sullivan for everything that is wrong in this country. In her words, "He should never have brought the Beatles into this country, with their drugs and their sex. Oy I'll tell ya, it's terrible." Don't get me wrong, I love my grandparents, and old people in general are very cute, but it doesn't sit well with me that their votes are determining this election.
Are the elderly Floridians that valuable? I say let's throw out the Florida vote altogether. Most of the state's inhabitants are not going to survive through the term of the new president anyway, and besides, the state looks like a penis, so there really should not be a contest here. Let's just forget it, and call the Sunshine State and tell them that because they can't make up their senile minds, they are out of it!
Another factor in the Election Night (now stretching to an Election Week) has been the media's inexplicable ineptitude. The theme of the coverage has been retraction: evidently neither the media nor the candidates have heard of the grade school playground mantra of "no backsies." The media called Florida early on for the Gore camp, and then took it back to the no man's land of "too close to call," then gave it to Bush, and then back to too close to call. This flip-flopping is driving the pundits crazy. The trio of Bernard Shaw, Judy Woodruff, and Jeff Greenfield on CNN has been quite amusing as they say things like, "This election just gets interestinger and interestinger," and "I don't know how this will turn out, but George W. Bush has just won the election. Wait, I misspoke. I meant to say, we in the media are all on crack. Yeah, that's the ticket." I was even more disturbed when Greenfield said, "As it gets later and later my sex appeal gets greater and greater. What do you say we do it on the Electoral College map Judy?"
Even the Former President's News Network (FPNN) screwed up on this one. They aired George Bush Sr.'s expos?©, "How to Sleep with Barbara to Create the Next President," and ran the inaccurate election results underneath it. Later in the night the fledgling network abandoned covering the election altogether and reran an episode from "Ford's Folleys," a segment of "Nixon's Investigative Reports," "This Week in Social Security with FDR," and the ever popular series, "Nancy, When Was I President?" with Ronald Reagan.
My favorite channel, The Weather Channel, stood out among the large press pack and succeeded in giving its usual impeccable coverage, calling for "partly sunny skies in Florida with high temperatures in the mid to upper 70s."
