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Oh, How I Miss Those Wonderful
Calls!
I already miss
them, the special calls from distant area codes, “out of area” and
“unknown.” Normally I avoid those calls, but not always and not
recently. How often can you pick up the phone, answer it and, after
you hang up and your spouse asks who just called, you reply, “Bill
Clinton.” Or, “Janet Napolitano.” Yes, for a brief and shining
moment, those calls were actually fun.
Of course, I never
stayed with the entire message. I didn’t need to. She had me at
“Janet.”
Then it’s over,
election day passes, and they drop you like a used intern.
Suddenly, Camelot is gone and Spamalot is back. The candidates took
their hair and robo-calls elsewhere and others hear their siren
calls from distant area codes. The only difference is that the
candidates enlist the local talent. Just as the Obama campaign
called on Governor Napolitano in Arizona, the McCain campaign called
on the Governor of California. The only difference is that, whereas
it’s easy to tell what Napolitano wanted, it’s somewhat different in
California.
“Who was that who
just called.”
“I’m not sure, but I
think it was Governor
Schwarzenegger.”
“What did he want?”
“I have no idea.
Something about supporting Dramamine for the President.”
“Bush must be back
on the aircraft carrier. Did we win another war?”
In the name of full
disclosure, these were Romney voters.
I only wish that
more candidates had survived long enough to place calls here. For
example, we never got to hear from John Edwards, which might be for
the best, since his most prominent local supporter was Congressman
Raul Grijalva.
“Who just called?”
“Raul Grijalva.”
“Omigod! He knows
where we live?”
I’d like to have
seen who came out for the lower tier fringe candidates, Mike Gravel
and Dennis Kucinich, for example. Who would have come out for
Kucinich and recorded robo-calls? Would the tin foil have shorted
out the headphones? Gravel, being an iconoclast, would probably
make his own calls.
“This is Mike
Gravel.”
“What do you want?”
“I forget. Can you
see a clock?”
I’d have enjoyed
hearing the late Bill Bowler make a robo-call for Mike Huckabee,
although the odds of actually hearing from Bill Bowler are about the
same as Huckabee getting the nomination. I find it ironic that
neither remaining candidate is acceptable to the far right of the
slowly deflating Republican party. McCain is hardly a liberal, yet
they denounce him as “too liberal.” Rush and Laura even suggest
that good conservatives should vote for Hillary instead of McCain,
on the theory that Hillary will mess things up so badly the voters
will demand the Republicans’ return. And, as for Huckabee, well...
I think they look at the former Arkansas Governor, Baptist preacher,
bass player, and fundamentalist Christian as, well... I think they
see him as Poor White Trash. Maybe it’s the Arkansas thing. But,
their elitism oozes from under their words. Mention Huckabee and
they visualize an outhouse in the Rose Garden.
“Listen to a story
‘bout a man named Huck...” You can finish the rhyme. When you do,
send it to Rush and Laura and dare them to sing it on the air.
Given the state of today’s FCC, they might get away with it.
But, the funny
thing about all the robo-calls is that I can’t imagine how they
could be effective. I didn’t vote for Barack Obama because Janet
Napolitano called and asked me to. Well, I assume that’s why she
was calling, given that I hung up immediately after the “-ano.” And
Bill Clinton’s calls didn’t convince me to vote for his wife. And I
still don’t know why Gabrielle Giffords called. (God, I hope that
was a robo-call!)
In the end, the
reality is that I didn’t vote for Obama because of Janet
Napolitano’s endorsement, but it’s okay if you tell her that I did.
After all, she
bothered to call.
© February 7, 2008 by Mike Tully
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