This weekend my friend and webmaster Dave visited
me at Winter H.Q. in New York. On Saturday morning, as we were walking from
my place in the East Village up to Music Row on 48th street, we saw police
officers and news vans lining Madison Square Park, and remembered that there
was to be a march that day to mark the first anniversary of the invasion of
Iraq. (Let me mention here, tangentially, that the police dogs we saw did
not appear to be particularly well-disciplined members of the K-9 corps; we
saw one barking uncontrollably at another passing dog, the way ordinary dogs
in the park do, and another one just going completely apeshit in the back
of a cruiser. This does not seem to me to bode well for the Republican National
Convention.) We joined up with the march for a few blocks on our way to get
lunch and a pint of Guiness, as a gesture of halfhearted solidarity and to
ogle hippie chicks. And as we got closer to the densely crowded epicenter
of the demonstration the usual suspects inevitably appeared: the drummers,
the giant puppets, the impassioned supporters of Mumia. We edged around a
circle of hippies dancing hand-in-hand to a really irritating cacophany of
pounding drums and clanging makeshift percussion that was drowning out a dixieland
jazz band nearby. And among the undulating ring of hippies Dave and I both
found our attention momentarily caught by girl whose face was transfixed with
self-righteous ecstacy--a serene and joyful certainty that the positive energy
of her dancing would soon bring The Man to his knees and all his infernal
devices of oppression crumbling to the ground. I unexpectedly experienced
a wave of loathing. I felt the unkind urge to let her know that she was accomplishing
nothing. The best sign I saw at the march was a small sticker showing George
Bush's smiling face, with the simple caption: NOT HELPING. I am sorry to say
that the same could be said of many at that march. This is the Dipwad Vote:
a broad-based coalition of dipshits, fuckwads, doofwads, fuckwits, and the
elusive jagoff. Later, over Guinesses, Dave and I lamented the fact that we
despise so many of the people with whom we are forced to agree.
If anyone out there is contemplating voting for Ralph Nader in November, I
really must insist that you do not. Sorry, but you really must not. I know
he is right about everything; that isn't the issue. I voted for Nader in 2000
because I belived that there was no substantial difference between the two
major parties. And there is some truth to that; they're both so indebted to
their corporate campaign donors so that neither one is likely to do anything
dramatically or unexpectedly good for the American people like, say, offering
universal, single-payer health care, cutting defense in favor of education,
lowering perscription drug prices, or reducing greenhouse emissions. But I,
like many people, had been lulled into a slightly unreal sense of complacency
by ten uneventful years in which the biggest news story was a blowjob. Also,
of course, it must be said that the Bush administration was not entirely forthright
about its plans during the election campaign. I seem to recall the big debate
being over the fine points of Medicare perscription drug benefits, not whether
constitutional democracy should be dismantled or the entire world conquered.
In the time since then, however, certain differences in specific policy and
general political philosophy have become clear. Kerry may be just another
colorless pro-business Democrat but he does, at least, appear to be an American;
he seems to have taken an eighth-grade civics class and to believe in the
corrupt, apathetic, and inefficient form of representative democracy that
each one of us would gladly die to uphold. Bush, and the shareholders and
technocrats for whom he is the spokesmodel, however, are Fascists.
Not that anyone cares, or should, but I personally squandered my vote on Kucinich
in the primary, not because I particularly like Kucinich but because I refused
to vote for anyone who voted for the Patriot Act, and by the time Maryland's
primary rolled around Howard Dean had already gone shrieking into oblivion.
Kerry and Edwards voted to let John Ashcroft look up my library records: fuck
them. No way. In other words I voted out of spite. But the primary election
is where you're supposed to vote out of quixotic whims or petty vengeance.
In the general election I will dutifully vote for John Kerry, as I would for
Terry Nichols or O.J. Simpson or Blackbeard's ghost if any of them were the
Democratic nominee. The only hope for 2004 is that the outrage and the travesty
that is George W. Bush will finally force us liberals to vote the way conservatives
always have--in monolithic, mindless, obedient lockstep, straight down the
party line.
Personally I would've liked to see John Edwards elected, if only because he
looks so much like me and it would've made my job as political cartoonist
a lot easier, if sort of confusing for my readers. For the last few weeks
total strangers--clerks at Saks 5th Avenue, passerby at a Kerry rally--have
been asking me whether anyone's told me I look like John Edwards. I always
tell them that I am John Edwards, taking my secret mistress shopping, or waiting
to heckle Kerry. The day after Super Tuesday some guys at an Irish pub bought
me a Guiness as consolation for my defeat. "Aw, John," they said,
"Has it already come to this?"
My friend Jennifer Boylan sent me the following e-mail
from a hotel room in Hartford, Connecticut, were she was speaking at some
writer's conference along with Morely Safer, whom she hoped to seduce:
you won't like this, but I have been thinking about the "dipwad vote"
in your cartoon of about a month ago, and I'm glad that you acknowledge
that in fact, you your own damn self voted for Nader in 2000. I am sorry
to make you have to receive my invective, but I have to say, YOU ARE NOT
SORRY ENOUGH. Oh sure, you allow as how things turned out much worse than
anybody thought, and I agree with you there. But let's just say this one
more time-- the whole reason the world is as fucked up as it is right now
is because of everybody who voted for Nader in 2000. Without PEOPLE LIKE
YOU, there would be no war in Iraq, there would be no "mister cheyney,"
who knows, the deal for peace between israel and the palestinians which
clinton had almost brokered would be signed. We would have a surplus and
health care. And so on.
Instead of this.
Now I understand that humor-wise, Bush jr. is a godsend,
and a gore presidency would have gotten us exactly nowhere on that front.
But if you wonder who the dipwad vote is, It is you. I will not be satisfied
until there is a billboard in times square that says, "WHY IS GEORGE
BUSH PRESIDENT?" and next to this a huge picture of you, with your
Nader button. and then big letters that say TIMOTHY KREIDER DID IT. IT'S
THE FAULT OF TIMOTHY KREIDER THAT GEORGE BUSH IS PRESIDENT. TIMOTHY KREIDER.
And then your phone number, which everyone who voted for Gore can call,
whenever they like, and say, "Mister Cheyney told me there wasn't any
difference between the parties."I hope you are sorry, Tim Kreider,
for making George Bush president. Very, very sorry. Let's review: why is
george bush president, the fuckface, the idiot? BECAUSE OF YOU. You, you,
you.
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