With just a week left until the election and magazines across the country already celebrating Barack Obama’s victory, I though you could use a break. So how about something that has nothing to do with the presidential election. Would you like that? Sure, we all would.
Ralph Nader claims that over the weekend he set the record for the most campaign speeches given in a single day by delivering somewhere around 255 minutes of speeches in 21 locations in Massachusetts Saturday. Jeebus, 255 minutes of Nader’s droning voice — can you imagine? Thank god President Bush legalized torture, or Ralph could be in some serious trouble.
Now, to qualify for the Guinness Book of World Records, he needed to give at least 150 minutes of speeches, with each speech lasting at least 10 minutes, to at least 10 people who didn’t come with Nader. That last bit might’ve been a bit sticky for old Ralph, but his campaign says he pulled it off. Maybe his staffers wore a comical series of hats and disguises to each event.
But the important thing is we’ve found a way to keep Ralph distracted while the rest of us get on with electing a president. And it seems to be working. Watch out next weekend, when he sees how far he can pull a biodiesel-modified 1978 Mercedes with his teeth. As long as it’s not in a swing state!
4 comments:
Thank you Ned. Not for your childish mocking of such a great figure, but for placing Ralph Nader in the public eye. Now maybe people will go to his website and see that he is approaching the real issues that the two big candidates refuse to touch.
i would like to thank you for your childish mocking of all figures, great and small.
Columnist Ned Ehrbar sets a tremendous example for us all.
Instead of staying constantly on the move, like vigorous 74-year-old Ralph Nader--who set a world record by making 21 campaign stops in one day, this past Saturday in Massachusetts--Ehrbar seems to stay in one spot, defending the niche he has found writing snide political “gossip” for Metro. He shows the proper respect for the status quo. He knows his place, you might say.
On Oct. 25, Nader barnstormed across an entire state, interacting with his fellow citizens face-to-face, speaking to them on a broad range of issues with an extraordinary breadth and depth of knowledge, answering questions, proposing solutions. He challenged his listeners to demand single-payer national healthcare, to bring the Wall Street crooks to justice, and to support our troops by bringing all of them home.
But Ehrbar responds to the challenge by showing us all the way--the way around that challenge. He brilliantly demonstrates how to avoid active participation in your democracy. Instead of moving, as Nader does, Ehrbar gives us an invaluable lesson in how to sit around and smirk.
Of course we all know that social justice and political progress are achieved by sitting around. Ned’s dedication to sitting around and sneering at a dynamic, courageous person like Nader is truly inspiring.
Let’s take a lesson from Ehrbar and get down to some serious smirking and giggling and eye-rolling and sitting around. Let’s follow him in his crawling submission to our corrupt two-party system, and to the corporate lobbyists and media moguls that make such boot-licking possible (and profitable!). And let’s honor Ned Erhbar by giving him a motto to live by: “Don’t just do something--sit there!”
Jerry Kann
P.S. To learn more, go to VoteNader.org!
The Big Media's presidential ticket of Barack "No Experience Necessary" Obama and John "The War Hawk" McCain both support giving a $750 billion corporate welfare bail-out/grant to the Wall Street bankers responsible for the current U.S. economic mess.
And both Obama and McCain are still afraid to debate the more experienced and qualified Nader on television.
So what's really funny is how some Metro writers apparently aren't politically hip enough to yet realize that the 2008 U.S. presidential election is nothing more than a Big Media/Big Money-rigged undemocratic charade. Too bad Abbie Hoffman ain't still around to provide Metro readers with some anti-establishment political humor and satire.
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