Janet Reno dance party at the Hotel California?
California is the most progressive state in the union, quite unorthodox at times. I think its citizens would welcome having a smut peddler who cares as their governor.
Dear (God/Allah/Buddha/other entity of your choice), we ask you to afflict Bill O'Reilly with a brain aneurysm that will lead to his slow and painful death. O, Lord, may his blood vessels bulge out of his head and explode without mercy. May he writhe in agony on his office floor at Fox Studios right after taping The O'Reilly Factor. O, God, may he reach for the phone to call 911 and accidentally dial 411. May he desperately gasp for breath and recall all the people he shouted down with no mercy. May he lay on the floor and twitch uncontrollably as he contemplates his worthless life. O, Lord, may he lose control of his bowels in those final moments so that the last and only warm feeling he ever experiences is his own shit. We ask this in all sincerity and humbleness. Amen.
What do you get when the political process becomes a parody of itself? That's easy; you called it the California gubernatorial recall election. It may be entertaining, but it's bad political theater, and it certainly is not going to improve California from a public policy perspective.
This is turning into a scenario in which, while everyone is laughing, you're the only one in the room who fails to realize that the joke is on you.
LOS ANGELES -- The art of political parody died Saturday. Cause of death: suffocation -- widely believed to have been brought on by the crush of candidates in the Oct. 7 California recall election.
All day at clerks' offices across the state, candidates for governor -- including a 23-year-old porn star and a 100-year-old hospital volunteer -- rushed to meet the 5 p.m. PDT deadline for filing papers and paying fees to appear on the ballot to replace Gov. Gray Davis if he is recalled.
The last-day candidates were full of proposals. They called for more beer promotion, flexible building codes, tax-deductible lap dances, a ban on salaries for legislators, public nudity, marijuana legalization, longer names, slot machines, a closed border with Mexico, an ash tray exchange program for smokers, the transfer of all paper transactions to the Internet, dispute resolution modeled on TV sitcoms -- and, perhaps, a carefully thought-out combination of tax hikes and spending cuts to resolve California's budget crisis.
TV writer Bill Prady, 43, was among some three dozen who filed his papers at the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder's office. He lashed out at the state's politicians for contributing to parody's demise.
"As a person who makes a living off of making mockery," he said, "I resent them intruding into my world."
The comic relief potential here is through the roof, and it will no doubt continue in that vein through De-Election Day. The humor and ridicule will mask some serious issues and problems facing California, but most of the problems are self-inflicted.
Even if Arnold Schwarzenegger cannot fix what is ailing California (and I'm not sure that ANYONE can), at least Californians will be entertained, and to them that is at least as important as anything else. Perhaps Gray Davis' greatest crime is an almost total lack of charisma.
It just might take an action film star to sort of what needs to be done to right the state's political ship. Of course, it's not like Arnold Schwarzenegger would be the first politican to become Governor....
