Strange Bedfellows It’s been a Personal Lifestyle Choices theme month in the Democratic presidential contest. On November 14, for example, John Kerry opted out of the federally financed system of primary-phase “matching funds”–a decision apparently intended to shore up Kerry’s image as a steely-eyed fighter willing to make the tough call, come what may, even if the missus hasn’t given her okay. In an interview published the following day with Patrick Healy of the Boston Globe, Kerry “emphasized that he did not seek his wife’s permission to make yesterday’s move.”
Early last week, not to be outdone, Dick Gephardt, THE SCRAPBOOK has learned, did not seek his wife’s permission before agreeing to a live interview with “Hardball”‘s Chris Matthews immediately following a multi-candidate debate in Des Moines, Iowa. Gephardt’s wife, Jane, is a woman, incidentally. Which means that she’s involved in what her husband–responding to a Matthews question about homosexual civil unions–would refer to as a “non-same-sex marriage.”
Same-sex couples “deserve to have all the rights that people do that are in a non-same-sex marriage,” Gephardt argued. Including, presumably, the right to engage in non-non-traditional behavior like not consulting your mate about campaign strategy.
Then there’s Dennis Kucinich, who has had not one but two non-still-intact marriages and is currently participating in a vote-by-Internet sweepstakes designed to find him a third non-same-sex opportunity for bliss.
“As a bachelor, I get to fantasize about my First Lady,” Kucinich mused aloud during a New Hampshire candidates’ forum on November 5. “And I certainly want a dynamic, outspoken woman who was fearless in her desire for peace in the world and for universal single-payer health care and a full employment economy.” Responding to the poor man’s plaintive appeal (“If you’re out there, call me,” he said), two websites, PoliticsNH.com and Liberalhearts.com, have since teamed up to sponsor–with Kucinich’s approval–“the Search for a Mrs. Kucinich.”
The Akron Beacon-Journal lately reports that the effort has “uncorked an unexpected torrent of lust and longing from the nation’s Reiki instructors and anti-war activists.” (Yes, we had to look it up, too: Reiki is a “widely-known” form of “energy healing.”) Eighty of the hopefuls were originally accepted as formal applicants for the honor of Rep. Kucinich’s hand, and nearly 50 of them are still in the running.
The contest ends this week, and THE SCRAPBOOK encourages its readers to make their voices heard. But we decline to make any specific endorsement, simply because we can’t make up our minds. Maybe “Kate,” the Los Angeles art student who’s sent in a photograph of herself covered in fake blood at a war protest outside the Oscar ceremonies. Or “Kathy” from Des Moines, who says she’s given “more than 20 percent of my take-home pay” to Kucinich’s campaign over the past four months (though “I don’t really care about being a first lady, I just want to be Mrs. Dennis Kucinich”).
Or how about “Lucy,” the Unitarian Universalist minister from Connecticut? “I floss” and “balance my checkbook every month,” Lucy discloses.
Also, she’s “Howard Dean’s first cousin.”
It’s Not Called “The Head” for Nothing
According to Marisa Buchanan, MSNBC’s “embedded” reporter on Wesley Clark’s presidential campaign, Gen. Clark chose a November 18 appearance in Plymouth, New Hampshire, to reveal a . . . well, most peculiar detail concerning the twinned functioning of his psyche and digestive system. Buchanan recounts that Clark was asked “about his disposition–how does he handle stressful situations and how does he deal with anger?” Whereupon the general offered up the example of June 11, 1999, an especially tense day during his NATO command in the Balkans. The Russians had unilaterally crossed the Drina River and headed into Kosovo; it was “alliance warfare at its most challenging,” Clark remembered.
“[So] what I did is, after about three hours of this, I decided I really needed to go to the restroom, and then I felt a whole lot better.” Because “sometimes you just gotta get up and clear your head and that’s what I did.”
Thanks for sharing, General.
The Bigot in the Machine
In freeing-downtrodden-peoples-of-the-world-from-the-yoke-of-oppression news, Los Angeles officials have requested that their suppliers and contractors no longer provide computer equipment labeled “master” and “slave”–commonplace industry designations for primary and secondary hard drives. Reuters reports that Joe Sandoval, manager of the city’s purchasing program, has sent a memo instructing municipal vendors that “this is not an acceptable identification.” Given “the cultural diversity and sensitivity of Los Angeles County,” Sandoval explains, the “master” and “slave” euphemisms “could be interpreted as discriminatory or offensive in nature.”
According to Reuters, Sandoval was prompted to issue this diktat after an unidentified city employee, having spied such potential offensiveness on devices attached to a videotape machine, filed a formal discrimination complaint with Los Angeles County’s Office of Affirmative Action Compliance.
No word yet on how Los Angeles thinks disk drives ought to be labeled instead. Meantime, THE SCRAPBOOK recommends that Joe Sandoval and the discrimination-complaint filing worker be referred to as “Dumb” and “Dumber.”
There’ll Always Be a Realm
While President Bush was in London making a show of support for his politically beleaguered friend Tony Blair, a British gentleman named John Gouriet was here in Washington, attempting to drum up support among American conservatives for a project that involves, among other things, hanging Blair in effigy–for, Gouriet says, “obvious reasons.”
Gouriet, you see, is chairman of the “Defenders of the Realm” and the “Battle for Britain Campaign,” an 8,000-member group of right honorable Englishpeople determined to prevent “the unlawful imposition of an E.U. constitution on the United Kingdom.”
Gouriet & Co. intend to petition the queen and parliament to such effect and further intend, should that effort prove unavailing, to demand that the queen “uphold her Coronation vows and, if necessary, dissolve Parliament.” Shall British blood be enslaved to a “wicked” continental bureaucracy in Brussels? No!
Not without one hell of a public relations stunt, anyhow. The Defenders plan to sail a 100-year-old three-masted brigantine, the Kathleen & May, straight up the Thames and anchor her off the Tower of London. Where, from somewhere amidst her red sails and black hull, they will conduct that effigy-hanging business. And Blair won’t be the only victim. There’ll also be former prime minister Ted Heath (“who took us into this ghastly mess”) and an additional Europhile malefactor. Gouriet explains: “We’re leaving it for people to decide who they’d like to see swing.”
Among the Washington dignitaries granting Mr. Gouriet a brief audience: Attorney General John Ashcroft.
