I'm Back for More Cash

by Tony Kornheiser

  Not since the O.J. trial have we had this kind of continuous boffo tort TV. Jeffrey Toobin! Dan Abrams! Soul Sister No. 1, Doris Kearns Goodwin! And wall-to-wall Greta Van Susteren! They’re swooning at Harvard Law School, fainting at Yale.

  And how about my man William “You Want a Piece of Me?” Daley, who I couldn’t help but notice has a head that could float above Fifth Avenue on Thanksgiving Day. What I like most about Daley is that he remains unimpressed with the fact that George Bush’s daddy was the president, because his daddy was the Boss. (That’s right, his real name is William Springsteen.) When Daley gives a briefing, it’s all he can do to stop from slugging everyone in the room. I mean, everything about this guy screams, “Don’t [mess] with me, pal, I’ll plant you like a tulip bulb.” When this is over Daley is going straight to The Sopranos.

  For days, Al “Mulligan” Gore and George “Jeb, You Promised” Bush almost disappeared. (If they could have just kept it up for four years, the problem would have been solved.) Gore was seen transparently pandering to Camelot nostalgia by playing touch football with his family. Bush spent time on his Texas ranch with his dog Spot. Yes, Spot. The dog is actually spotted, so there doesn’t appear to be any saving irony. It’s altogether possible Bush actually thought about a name for the dog and came up with Spot! Do you believe this guy?

  The two finally did speak up midweek. When Gore offered to meet Bush, he was so geeked up, his head kept bouncing around on his neck, like one of those dashboard dolls. Later, Bush turned Gore down and insisted on no more recounts. Did someone say snippy? Bush gives more snip than a vasectomy clinic.

  We should hand Bush this, though: The guy can really wear jeans and a suede ranch jacket. He’s exactly what our president should look like. But as one of my wickedly funny friends says about George W. rather than Jeb running for president, “It’s like Don Corleone picked Fredo over Michael.”

  But the real star of the show has been Florida’s Ballot Babe, Katherine Harris, the Junior League Blind Date from Hell!

  In an arena chock full of secretaries of state, Harris is the one who appears to have been lost in the woods as a baby and raised by Tammy Faye Bakker. I don’t want to say Harris wears a lot of eye shadow, but it looks like she’s applied enough paint to refinish the Wilson Bridge. How does she put it on? Fire hose?

  Harris is the one who carefully considered the written requests to conduct hand recounts—or would have carefully considered them if she hadn’t already fed them to wild goats. When Gore campaign officials suggested she was acting as a Bush partisan, her measured response, as a responsible public official, was, in its entirety, “Bite me.”

  In politics they call this “respecting the will of the people.”

  In Chad they call it “Must-See TV.”

  Someone Get the Hook

  Dear Al:

  I can call you Al, right? I feel like we’re on a first-name basis, because I see you on TV every night begging for votes. You’re like somebody from Pledge Week. How can I get you to stop? More to the point, if I agree to go to Florida and vote for you, how many ballots do I have to dimple before you send me a CD? (Not a tote bag, dammit.)

  Not that I could actually get my hands on a ballot. I saw them trucked up to Tallahassee from Palm Beach with a police escort and news vans following behind, TV helicopters overhead. It was so eerily reminiscent of the O.J. low-speed chase I was waiting to hear David Boies on a CB radio saying, “I’m in the Ryder. I’ve got Al Gore with me. I’m bringing him in. But back off. He’s got a loaded chad pointed at his head.”

  Anyway, Al, I know that a lot of folks are asking you to drop out now. Some are asking you to do this, quite frankly, because they can’t stand watching you on TV. Half the time you’re flapping around like a great heron. Honestly, can’t you keep your head still? What are you doing, auditioning for The Exorcist III: The Recount?

  Most people who want you to drop out, though, are saying you should do it for the good of the country.

  Country-schmuntry.

  Do it for me. Al, baby, two words: Bor-ing!

  This election is, like, sooo over. If I had the clicker, I’d be way past your channel by now.

  Seriously, what is your problem?

  I mean, you don’t really think you’re going to be president, do you? The dope won. You lost. Get over it.

  I understand you have to keep up the pretense of winning. And I know it’s killing you that Bush has asked Katherine Harris for the first dance at the Inaugural Ball and Dick “Large and in Charge” Cheney is itching to change all the locks on the White House. But isn’t setting up your “transition team” a bit out of a reach? What positions are you offering in the (wink, wink) Gore administration? Ambassador to Remulak?

  I see footage of you sitting there, pathetically speed dialing everybody in town. You look like a telemarketer. You gonna go from trolling for votes to selling Ronco Inside the Shell Egg Scramblers? Hmmm, you think you could do any volume in Semi-Lifelike Al Gore Action Figures®.

  The meter’s running, Al. This thing has already taken almost FOUR WEEKS. Carmen Electra’s marriages don’t last this long.

  You know, I think I may be to blame for all this. A couple weeks back, I was telling everyone how I wanted this to go on and on. Al, I was joking. I’m a humor writer. What, you thought I was David Broder?

  Not to put too fine a point on it, but how many times must Friends be interrupted for a special bulletin about which court you plan to petition next so you can get a recount in West Eckveldt, Florida? (Some of these judges you’ve got—where’d you find them, at a bus terminal?) You’re just not that important, Al. You had a good run, but it’s not like you’re Matthew Perry.

  I’m glad you think that there’s a great civics lesson being taught here—that every vote counts. But where I live, in the District of Columbia, for years they didn’t actually count any votes. They just threw them in a pile marked FOR MARION BARRY.

  Of course you don’t want to give up: If you don’t win, you don’t have a job. And with your recent, um, overeager performances on TV, it’s not like Ted Koppel has anything to worry about. For that matter it’s not like Bernie Koppel has anything to worry about.

  Go home, Al. Kiss your wife. (Not like that.) Play touch football. Do whatever it is that fifty-two-year-old rich white men do when they’re out of work: Learn to paint, trade online, download porn.

  Don’t make us have to pry the chads out of your cold, dead fingers. First you went to the Florida Supreme Court. Then you brought the election to the U.S. Supreme Court. What’s next, the Supreme Soviet? How many Supremes are left before you get to Diana Ross?

  I’ll bet if we could vote again, the results would be a whole lot different—I mean now that we’ve seen how you guys react under stress.

  You’re a train wreck.

  Lieberman never met a spotlight he didn’t like. You light a match near this guy and he’ll do the first act of Annie.

  Cheney had a heart attack.

  Bush’s face was visited by boils.

  (I know you’re trying to make it sound like it’s not personal between you and Georgie, but tell the truth. When you see Bush squinting at the TelePrompTer from his Texas ranch, and he purses his lips and his face starts to twitch and he makes that same robotic speech about how he’s won like a zillion times already, and if there’s another recount he’s going to hold his breath until his face turns blue, don’t you get the sense that he’s so lost that Cheney and Baker ought to be dropping bread crumbs? No wonder Bush’s numbers go down every time he tries to look presidential. It only reminds people that when all the fun is over, this guy is actually gonna be president!)

  By the way, am I the only one who’s bothered by the fact that Bush refers every question to Baker? What did I miss? Did Jim Baker get elected something?

  Speaking of very former secretaries of state, what did you do with Warren Christopher? One day he’s out front, the man on the podium, and the next day he’s vanished. Poof.
Where’s Warren? Did he molt? Is he wrapped up in a cocoon somewhere, waiting to emerge as a butterfly? Quick, somebody call 911 and put out an alert for an old guy with Mr. Potato Head eyebrows and a $5,000 British suit.

  It’s your show now, Al. You’re everywhere. Wasn’t that you on BattleBots? I know I saw you being interviewed by Claire Shipman on NBC. You tried to appear calm, as if you haven’t been thrashing around since November 7 like someone possessed. You said, “I sleep like a baby.”

  Yeah, I know.

  Rosemary’s.

  Bush-Whacked by Gore Groupies

  We begin this week with a note to the readers:

  I have received many letters and calls protesting last week’s column about why Al “Do You Think Boies Could Sell Them on a Foot Recount?” Gore should put a sock in it, already.

  Readers apparently thought I tilted too far toward George W. Bush, who has already begun the arduous task of tagging and color-coding his jogging outfits for the move to Washington, while Dick Cheney and Jim Baker pick the cabinet and make plans to declare war on Indonesia for the thrill of testing some cool new bombs we have.

  I’m somewhat stunned by the allegation that I’m pro-Bush, since in that column I referred to Bush as “a dope.” Of course, I meant it in the most complimentary sense—okay, maybe not as smart as Phoebe on Friends, but certainly smarter than meat tenderizer. I suppose we shouldn’t fret that when Bush was asked what impressed him most about Condoleezza Rice, he said, “It cooks up in a minute.”

  I have to admit I’m beginning to like Bush more, because the longer he sits on that ranch, the more big, fat Republicans show up in giant cowboy hats and tight blue jeans. They look like huge, overstuffed chew toys. Every time I see Trent Lott, whatever I happen to be drinking explodes out my nose.

  I was chastised for suggesting the election be ratified before all the ballots were recounted by hand, using special spectrographs, electron microscopes, and the Hubble telescope to examine chads; and if that didn’t work, placing direct long-distance calls to the Psychic Friends Network to assess voter “intent”—maybe even picking up a few votes from disembodied spirits and ancient Egyptian pharaohs, who surely would have voted for Al Gore because he invented embalming.

  And I was chastised for writing it was Gore who carried the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, when it was actually Bush. My mistake was seen as proof that I am, in the words of an angry caller, “completely and totally prejudiced toward a man who would cut your taxes and the taxes of your rich media friends, while babies starve in the streets.” I assume he meant Bush, because Gore would never let anybody starve in the street when he could bore them to death in front of their TV sets.

  Okay, I apologize for getting some of the legal minutiae wrong. You thought I was Greta Van Susteren? I thought the first step in “tort reform” was roll the dough into a ball. Hello? Hell-o. I’m writing jokes here. I have no political influence whatsoever. I have political flatulence. I should take Beano before writing these columns.

  Come on. Do you think there’s any bench Gore wouldn’t have appeared before to keep his hopes alive—up to and including Johnny Bench? Gore would go to Judge Judy if he thought there was a shot of getting a recount.

  (I don’t think Gore ever plans to go away. I think he’ll end up setting up a government in exile in Palm Beach County. Sort of like what Chiang Kai-shek did in Formosa. It’ll be called Formatzoh.)

  I may not be Tim Russert, but I do have something going for me. Because I am a man, I can pay attention to weighty political subjects, such as Dennis Hastert, with only half my brain—while women need to use all their brains to follow along.

  That’s right. A recent study at the Indiana School of Medicine (motto: “That’s Right, We’re the Indiana School of Medicine”) was conducted on men and women who listened as a novel was read to them. Brain scans indicated the women used their entire brains to listen, while men used only half their brains! This allowed men to continue to scratch themselves during the experiment.

  “Somebody read Jane Eyre to the men, and their right brain was listening, and their left brain was imagining Jane Eyre naked,” my friend Tracee concluded.

  I suggested men might listen with both sides if the novel had been Sorority Sluts Get Wicked.

  I saw pictures of the brain scans. Men have one small spot on the right side of their brain that is engaged—maybe it isn’t a spot, maybe it’s a gnat or a piece of lint. Women clearly have spots on each side engaged in listening.

  Tracee explained the apparent disparity this way: “The right side of a man’s brain is still functioning because that’s the remote control hand. The left side is dead because that’s the side they fall asleep on in the recliner.”

  I disagree. The problem is that men aren’t interested in droningly tedious topics—defined here as anything a woman might choose to talk about. My friend Tom says he often reaches moments of crisis during long soliloquies by his wife, in which she’s relating a story some friend told her that involves a long list of characters he can’t possibly keep straight, and he has to remind himself to “remember a few key phrases in case she asks a question when she’s done.”

  This happens to all men. They begin to glaze over when women talk to them.

  “Men don’t listen to women,” a woman friend of mine lamented, “because they are completely incapable of any meaningful exchange of emotion that doesn’t involve sports on TV or checking out the waitress. Men are always thinking about themselves. I can’t tell you how frustrating it is to have these one-sided conversations.”

  “Huh?” I said. “Did you say something?”

  Taking a Shine to Sheen

  It’s one thing to put these debates between Al Gore and George W. Bush on TV as a public service for viewers who would otherwise be forced to undergo surgery without an anesthetic. But it’s quite another to preempt West Wing to do it.

  West Wing is the best show on TV. Why would anybody want to see Gore and Bush clumsily trying to act presidential, when they can see Martin Sheen elegantly succeeding?

  And speaking of anesthetic, what sort of megadose was Al Gore on at the debate Wednesday night? I can’t recall such a drastic change in anyone’s personality since Grateful Dead fans stopped taking drugs and realized: Jeez, this music is terrible!

  In their first debate Gore was all over Bush, hectoring him. Plus, because of his multiple layers of makeup, Gore looked so waxy that you wanted to strap him to the top of your car and yell, “Surf’s up!” But the other night Gore was barely alive. Obviously, Gore’s handlers told him to “try to be a little less annoying—even we want to slap you.” Gore was so tame I thought Bush would give him a biscuit and pet him.

  And is it just me, or does Bush always look like he’s struggling to read the cue cards—except there aren’t any cue cards. You just know he’s thinking, Dang. I knew this stuff yesterday. During Wednesday’s debate he actually said, “Africa is an important continent.” (Which in a way relieved his handlers, since earlier in the day Bush had also identified Africa as “an important food group.”) When Gore finally came to life and hit Bush with bad stuff about Texas, Bush sat there pursing his lips as if he were undergoing a proctological exam. I’m not saying the president always has to be the smartest guy in the room. But Bush may not even be the smartest guy in a phone booth.

  Is there any doubt who would get the most votes for president in a three-way race among Gore, Bush, and Sheen? Sheen would win in a landslide. What’s not to like about Martin Sheen—except those two dopey sons of his, Emilio and Charlie, the Chang and Eng of schlock.

  I’d also take Sheen’s vice president over either Dick Cheney or Joe Lieberman. If Cheney were any more of a fat cat, he’d campaign in a window box, sunning himself. And Lieberman has taken so many new positions, it’s hard to tell if he’s running for national office or posing for The Kama Sutra. On the other hand, Sheen’s vice president is Tim Matheson, who was Otter in Animal House! It was Otter who was comforted by Fa
wn Leibowitz’s sorority sister in the backseat of Flounder’s car after that terrible kiln accident. It was Otter at the toga party who bagged Dean Wormer’s boozy wife. Remember how he debonairly took off her mink coat and hung it on a hook? But there was no hook there, and the mink dropped to the floor. That was so cool. That’s what we need in a vice president. A frat boy who can score boss chicks. (Yes, Mr. President, the vice president.)

  Playing the president in recent years, we’ve had lots of actors I’d vote for ahead of Gush and Bore—excuse me, Bush and Gore. Actually, the only actor who really stank as president was Ronald Reagan.

  I’d vote for Michael Douglas from The American President. He looks like a president. Also, Catherine Zeta-Jones for first lady is the only domestic policy the man would need.

  I would vote for Kevin Kline, who played the president in Dave. Kline is funny. And when people laugh at him, it’s because he’s actually trying to be funny. Not because he says things like “Al Gore’s plan is so prescriptive we’ll need IRA agents” to figure it out. IRA agents? And where would we get them, Belfast? Hello? Hello, is this on?

  I’d vote for John Travolta, the president in Primary Colors. Imagine Travolta dancing at state dinners the way he did in Saturday Night Fever and Pulp Fiction. Now imagine Al Gore doing the macarena.

  But Martin Sheen is the one I’d most like to see in the Oval Office. On West Wing he has a way of speaking from the heart, even when it’s going to hurt him in the polls. Sheen doesn’t lie—unlike Gore, whose October surprise is probably that he invented the new Redskins defense.

  In the face of mounting criticism of his overblown claims, Gore said he would “take responsibility for getting some of the details wrong.” For example, if Gore claimed that after a hurricane he flew a plane loaded with food and water to the hurricane site, and toured the affected area with the governor, then cooked hot meals for folks whose homes had been devastated—and it turns out that in fact Gore stayed home watching When Shaved Poodles Go Psycho IV on Fox—well, Gore would take responsibility for getting “some details” wrong.