Karenna Gore. Mmmmmmmm.
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--- Wasn't it bad enough that Poppa Bush was the ultimate tool? Tool of what, you ask? Tool of Reaganomics? Tool of unrequited manhood? No, bitch, that was a complete sentence -- George Bush was A TOOL! --- |
Originally I sat down to write a witty political discourse on the upcoming presidential election, but I got distracted by a rather rambunctious episode of "The Man Show" and succumbed to temporary cranial shutdown.
Despondent I realized the obvious: Stuff like this will no longer be tolerable. George W. Bush is gonna wax Al Gore like a snuff film. No question. For the first time I understood what happened to those seemingly deluded Heaven's Gate folks. They simply could not face a future controlled by ignorant Republican spawn. Analysis is not necessary; this is unavoidable truth. Wasn't it bad enough that Poppa Bush was the ultimate tool? Tool of what, you ask? Tool of Reaganomics? Tool of unrequited manhood? No, bitch, that was a complete sentence -- George Bush was A TOOL, the guy who got his ass waffle stomped in high school, who carried that memory into his twilight, to his fabled "thousand points of light," where we should've been waiting with shovels. Campaign Y2K will be 1988 all over again, this time without the bad Hiroshima hairstyle of Michael Dukakis and his alcoholic wife.
Not that the alternative is any more desirable. I mean, Jesus fucking Christ, Al Gore? Can we toss John McCain back in, just as a wild card? Is Admiral Stockdale busy? What an age we've reached: Total submission in the voting booth, and we choose the candidate least likely to vanquish the homo sapien race. Al Gore is a plank of wood powered by tax dollars. I've seen his entire family displayed on shelves at Home Depot; in fact, Tipper's holding up my Dead Kennedys LPs, nestled snugly against a vintage copy of "Frankenchrist."
Al Gore. George Dubya. Yale versus Harvard. Politics with a snooze bar. Our charlatan representatives of the wayward, carefree Sixties: a pair of clean-cut, teat-gnawing yobbos barreling through life on a gold-plated fallopian tube. One, the progeny of an honest-to-God senator -- a senator with CHARISMA, I might add (charisma that didn't skip a generation, but fled, screaming, from the gene pool); the other, an idiot savant related by blood and pathetic mercy to an otherwise barren former president.
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Karenna Gore. Mmmmmmmm. |
Dazed with thoughts of suicide, I turned to Adam and Jimmy. A gaggle of Juggies drove "The Man Show's" studio audience into blithering nirvana. They sprang on trampolines and suddenly, like all men besieged by rising silicone, I forgot my problems. Hey, life ain't so bad. The sun will burst forth tomorrow and drench my troubled body in blissful sweetness. I can forgive George Dubya because it's not his fault he was born into borrowed (and questionable) greatness. I can forgive John McCain for dropping out, therefore negating all reason to skip work for televised debates. And I can forgive Al Gore because GODDAMN, HIS DAUGHTERS ARE HOT!
Karenna, Kristin and Sarah, three beguiling vixens handpicked by the benevolent god of politics to grace every fluff piece on the candidate through the end of the year. But hands off! I saw them first! Way back in 1992, a simpler time when we were besmitten with president Bill Clinton and never supposed he used his tongue for anything more than lying through his teeth. And there they were, in a sidebar ("Holy Fuck, We Almost Went to Press Without a Tip of the Hat to the Other Guy") at the end of a Newsweek cover story: those sun-dappled urchins, forged by goddesses and bequeathed to Al and Tipper Gore. Karenna, Kristin, Sarah. Abraham, Martin and John. Which trio would you rather invade your dreams at night?
So enamored was I of fair Karenna that I saved all the money I earned as a part-time sportswriter for six months in 1993 to buy a week's worth of Oxford shirts and a bus ticket to Tennessee, where the angels made their home. A notebook packed with poetry was tucked under my $32 per collar sleeve. My plan was to infiltrate a local coffeehouse where I was certain Karenna frequented with her cerebral yet equally bodacious college friends during the summer, since children of all politicans return home for the holidays because of photo shoots, Christmas cards and dinner engagements. I'd smuggle my way into her heart with an opus I crafted just for her. Which I will share with you now. Ahem:
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KARENNA GORE (LIKE A SUNSET SHE BLEEDS) How my heart soars Enough of this candy-ass rhyming. Karenna, be my Frankenstein |
Yeah, okay. I was 21, for God's sake. I hadn't perfected my alcoholic quiver yet; that would come with another seven years in journalism when I discovered the front door of our vaunted estate locked from the outside. But somehow I knew, if I hadn't blown my money on that Iron Maiden box set instead, it'd be my face, my khakis and my fine-pressed Oxford apparel on Al Gore's vacuum of a Web site. It'd be me who shared a cabana on the mansion grounds, the two of us chuckling over our humble beginnings, her hand tracing nets through my ample hair, Hootie and the Blowfish's "Let Her Cry" washing across a pastoral countryside streaked with damask.
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Karenna! You need me by your side! |
Alas, I am forced to watch from afar as she stumps for the old man. What I've noticed is she has this alarmingly peculiar habit of parting her lips and baring her teeth in one swift motion that sociologists call, I believe, a Smile. And it looks authentic, not rehearsed, like those lusty, dusty "I-Can't-Believe-Someone-Wrote-Me-This-Shit" choreographed podium thumps practiced by the candidate himself. Watching Al Gore speak with passion is like watching a Paula Abdul video with C-3PO. But Karenna's got snazz. She's warm. She's audacious. She's witty. She's got that, uh...that, uh...you know, that word that starts with a "p." Her dad would know it as a Fats Domino song that once played on the car radio while he faked a heartfelt feel-up on his dozing prom date. Aw, man, what IS that word? Ohhhhhh, yes. PERSONALITY. Which begs the question: Why not lower the presidential age requirement to 26 so SHE can run? Turn Al Gore into the doddering Prince Charles of the White House, waiting for somebody to bugger off so he can hold the sceptre for a change.
So I beg of you, dear reader. When your ballot comes 'round, blow a huge puddle of mucus on it to express your disdain for America's taste in mainstream politicians. A wise man once said we get the leaders we deserve and dammit, we deserve Karenna Gore! She's a natural pillar of strength. Our country is in desperate need of an indulgent mother figure. We needn't worry about dispatching armies to render another fucked-up generation fatherless, because hostile countries would feel bad if they made her cry. She's interesting, she's compelling, and, unlike the rest of her family, she registers a pulse. Join me, won't you, in casting my lot with Karenna Gore, the candidate you don't need a suicide note to watch.
P.S. Dump the doctor.