Union Square Station
Malone
12/3

No Believing Gore; Honest Joe's Best Crisis

Don't believe Al Gore when he reassures that it will all be over "by the middle of December." Back a few weeks he promised to abide by the results of the hand recounts completed at the new deadline (now one long week past) set by the Florida Supreme Court.

That's a simple one to figure out: He didn't really mean the deadline, he meant if he had somehow pulled ahead in the count by the deadline. Likewise, several days ago he offered that he would certainly have to abide by any decision handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court. Now he has signaled that he'll just keep going if the high court rules against him.

How far will he take it? Start with the meeting of the Electoral College on December 18. Anyone can write Gore's revised script and hear his condescending voice at this point: "I have no power, no one does, over the conscience or the choice of any elector who might switch his or her previously committed vote?" Particularly not when it comes to Larry Flynt-style sexual blackmail threatening to ruin a life, or a suddenly fat offshore account offering eternal serenity.

If you think such a scenario is impossible, just stop for two seconds and take a look around at the scene as it already is. Do you remember Honest Joe Lieberman, the New Conscience of the Senate? Well, he's now so consumed by his craving for power that he engages personally in Big Lie methods that make the great Clinton Agit-Prop Machine of the impeachment interregnum look like a Girl Scout troop planning the annual cookie drive.

The best Honest Joe Moment of the past week was his cracked voice condemnation of the decision by the Florida Legislature to hold a special session (to consider appointing a slate of electors) as "unprecedented," followed with the subtle threat that it would provoke a "Constitutional crisis." Honest Joe should know something about "unprecedented" moves, particularly election contests based on voter error where the working principle is to scare up loose votes in Democratic strongholds while moaning on about the "will of the people," most of whom live in the other 63 counties in Florida.

And if no electors can have their consciences worked on by shadow operatives for the power mad Gore, how about Congress in January, with bloodbaths on the floor of both the House and the Senate as the Florida electors are challenged.

Then that Constitutional crisis that Honest Joe agonized over could work nicely to Joe's benefit, of course. Why, he might even be willing to, say, accept the Senate making him Vice President, per the Constitution, if the House, in "partisan madness," votes to make George Bush President. It's the kind of Constitutional crisis Honest Joe could spend four years savoring as "The regrettable consequence of a wrongly decided presidential contest, yet I'm proud to serve as vindication that the true voice of the people has been at least partially heard."

That's one it-can't-go-beyond Inauguration Day scenario, but indeed it can go beyond Inauguration Day. If a stand-off occurs in the House and the Senate, or between the House and the Senate, then an Acting President must be appointed to start serving on January 20th until the situation is worked out, per the Twentieth Amendment. Then, of course, we'll hear about the only man who could bring credibility to the role, a man who has established himself as a world statesman, and is still young enough to take on the great burden during this great national crisis, Jimmy Carter.

11/28

Playing the Margin of Error; Boy Cries Wolf

My attorney passed on to me from another source the best bottom-line analysis of what Al Gore and his cohorts have been up to. In the name of fairness, Gore & Co. want to reduce the margin of error only where it would be most favorable to them. Let's say that the margin of error in the presidential vote nationwide and in Florida is 2% or more--that would be undervotes, overvotes, in sum, all the votes that were not countable by the standard method.

The "fairness" that Gore is proposing is to reduce the margin of error specifically in those places where it will do him the most good, and thereby win the entire state of Florida by an act of gross unfairness.

Gore, presumably when the manifest absurdity of his plan becomes clear even to him, pays momentary lip-service to the idea of a statewide hand count, but he didn't ask for a statewide hand count after the election. He only asked for a hand count in known Democratic strongholds.

Watching Gore last night during his appeal for support in pressing his case was five long minutes of television indeed. Time was stretched to the snapping point, and had it snapped it would have come in second to Gore himself in crossing that line.

He seemed to have lost his mind completely when he complained about "intimidation" of vote counters in Miami-Dade County, apparently unimpressed by the ability of armed cops, sheriffs, and federal marshals to police a crowd of noisy demonstrators waving signs while breaking in their new Topsiders.

For Gore to assert such nonsense shows that he is less than a man, really, making himself a boy who cries wolf.

One can only imagine how a President Gore would react to chanting demonstrators outside his White House. Would he feel intimidated? Would he feel that the right of the people to peaceably assemble to air their grievances was, as his running mate Joe Lieberman blurted out on Sunday, nothing less than mob rule?

The good news for Democrats in all this is that they can be done with Gore once his challenge is properly defeated. The bad news is that they won't have anyone standing between Hillary Clinton and their 2004 presidential nomination.

11/26

No Rest for the Weary; No Mercy for the Afflicted

I had seen everything, I thought, after the segment on Miracle Pets (the PAX network, on Channel 31 here in Manhattan) where the young crow nurtures a lonely kitten back to health, but then along came the Presidential election 2000. Barely an eyelash has been batted, a drink lifted, a sigh exhaled, or a word exchanged for 18 days now in this town, or any town, that has not been chilled in the shadow of this dark extravaganza.

On the day of the election itself I experienced a satisfying if vague euphoria from being certain that the stilted, remorseless contest between Weird Al and Woozy Dubya would be decided by nine or ten that evening. But no, it wouldn't end. It lives on like a bad smell rising from the basement of an old house. It's not suspenseful, but a deep annoying anxiety. It's not a civics lesson, unless that means a living handbook on Chicago ward politics passed on orally by the late Boss Richard Daley to his son, Bill Daley, the chairman of the Gore campaign. 

Throughout the agonizing process it became apparent that Al Gore was keeping his promise that he would do anything to become President. He's weird, nasty, and frankly possessed of a monstrously ill-concealed confusion of character the nature of which flew right over the head of virtually every commentator but Camille Paglia. 

George Bush, on the other hand, is bedeviled by the English language itself, and while not appearing, as his frightening opponent does, to have been made up by the make-up artist at the local mortician, nonetheless seems incapable of expressing himself in a full three dimensions.

This spectacle promised no relief, with recounts and long counts and no accounts merging into one spasmodic, endless "Breaking Story." On MSNBC, the official cable news organ of the Gore campaign, the terror in the eyes of the likes of Ashleigh Banfield was palpable every time some loose quantum of news jumped in Bush's direction, despite the best efforts of the entire MSNBC staff to reach down into death itself and resurrect their man's chances each and every time they so much as dimmed.

On Tuesday night, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that the long count could continue for five more days, creating more confusion than clarity, as one county gave up on Wednesday morning, saying that wasn't enough time. Also on Wednesday morning Dick Cheney, who pulled off the one miracle of the campaign by retaining his dignity, had a heart attack, which was entirely appropriate to the occasion. Later on Wednesday the Bush team made it known that they were headed for the U.S. Supreme Court.

See Lynette Warren's excellent The Great Florida Vote Hunt elsewhere in Union Square Journal for more details on the long count in the Sunshine State. 

Back at the beginning of November I witnessed an omen, unrecognized by me at the time, that it would be one of history's strangest months. Curiosity sent me to a reading and book signing by Karen Finley at Barnes & Noble on the Square. I had of course heard about Finley many times over the years, often in the context of her having smeared chocolate over her body as part of one of her performances, but I had never seen her in action.

Finley is wiry thin with smoldering red hair and she employs a deep reading voice that is how one expects a drunk madwomen to sound, veering it occasionally into the outer fringes of a black dialect. Between pieces, when she makes comments to the audience, her normal voice is, well, normal, not unlike the careful, pleasant intonation and diction of a steadfast arts and crafts instructor. But back into a reading and three more clicks would put her in Linda Blair range.

The subject matter of the reading was a blur of sordid references, to a father molesting his daughter, to self-hatred, suicide, a variety of sexual recriminations and recreations, all in the mad drunk's voice. And between the outpourings of the heavy, almost dorky, readings, it was right back to the normal, almost sweet everyday voice.

"I guess I am angry," she says in her real voice. I wonder, did she just find that out?

It's quite an act. It goes on so long about pain so deep and so adolescent that the execution of her parents without trial would no doubt find supporters in the audience.

Just as I had convinced myself that it was all a simple concoction of art, a mere performance, the questions from the audience begin. 

"Where do you get your inspiration?"

"From my relationships," Finley answers. And I wonder about the unsuspecting soul who might slip off into the evening with the arts and crafts instructor only to be introduced to the drunk madwoman circa 4:00 a.m.

"Were you spying on my childhood?" asks another friendly member of the audience.

"I want to write about unresolved childhood traumas," says Finley. No kidding.

"Licorice is my overall favorite candy," she announces.

I've kept some in my coat pocket ever since.