The 2000 Presidential Election
by JCH
Monday September 25, 2000
Coming down from Charlotte day before yesterday, I was listening to Dan Starks on WBT. He was interviewing Charlton Heston, basically foaming all over him. One can imagine that he was sitting with his legs crossed. See, to Starks, Heston is a great, great man. To me, he's just some guy who was a Hollywood actor at one time. (He was in the CBS version of the Stuart Woods book Chiefs which was filmed here in Chester, SC in 1983. But that's neither here nor there.)
But Chuck said something interesting. He said that if Gore wins the election this year, then America will "turn Socialist." Holy Moses, Charlie! Are you totally nuts? I dropped my jaw, but I was not really that surprised to hear someone say those words. Rush Limbaugh and Richard Spires spew that kind of garbage on a daily basis.
Starks then said that within four years, "we" will be having to register our firearms. Heston didn't think it would take that long. One gets the felling that we'll all be marching in step under a giant Marx billboard within the year. (If the governor of Texas is reading this, that's Karl Marx. Not Richard Marx.)
The point I am trying to make has nothing to do with firearms and gun control, though maybe it should. I'm talking about the shit that the Republicans keep churning out. It reminds me of a Will Rogers quote from 1928: "If the Republicans will stop telling lies about us, we'll stop telling the truth about them."
The Republicans are doing what they do best: they're fighting dirty. Willie Horton is alive and well and working on another Bush campaign. One example of this is the recent commercial that was pulled from the airwaves. You know the one I'm talking about -- the bureaucRATS ad. The word "bureaucrats" pops on the screen just a split second after the "rats" part of the word.
Another commercial talks about when Al Gore claimed he invented the internet. The only problem with this one is that Al Gore never actually said that.
Here's what Gore did say on CNN's "Late Edition" with Wolf Blizter in 1999: "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet." The question was in regards to what seperated him from the man that was running against him at the time, Bill Bradley.
Here's what the Bush ads use: "I took the initiative in creating the Internet."
That changes the meaning of what he said. And then with wordsmiths such as Rush Limbaugh and Neal Boortz, now they have him saying, "I invented the internet." Now I could sit here and explain to you what I think he meant. I could pick his words apart and then tell you that the Republicans know good and well he did not mean he INVENTED the internet. I could do rather well actually, because the Republicans have pissed me the hell if over this.
Instead, I'll let Newt Gingrich do that for me.
Gingrich, the ex-Speaker of the House, appeared on a panel for the American Political Science Association. The panel was broadcast live on C-SPAN. Which probably means there were more people at the panel than were watching it on TV. Speaking about the 1996 Telecommunications Bill, Gingrich had this to say:
"In all fairness, it’s something Gore had worked on a long time. Gore is not the Father of the Internet, but in all fairness Gore is the person who, in the Congress, most systematically worked to make sure that we got to an Internet, and the truth is -- and I worked with him starting in 1978 when I got there, we were both part of a 'futures group' -- the fact is, in the Clinton administration the world we had talked about in the ’80s began to actually happen. You can see it in your own life, between the Internet, the computer, the cell phone."
Now remember who's saying this. It's Newt Gingrich, boys and girls, Father of the Republican Revolution. "Gore is the person who, in the Congress, most systematically worked to make sure that we got to an Internet." Hmm. Isn't this what the Vice President said in the first place?
Gore: "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet."
Gingrich: "Gore is the person who, in the Congress, most systematically worked to make sure that we got to an Internet."
Someone in the GOP obviously needs to tell Mr. Gingrich to stop telling the truth. If he keeps this up, we're not going to know when they're lying now. Although, as always, we will be able to just assume that anytime a Republican opens his or her mouth, a lie is about to come out.
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