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Remember when comic books were funny?
By Alan Caras
Several years back--oh, maybe about six--Arnold Schwarzenegger starred in the movie True Lies. I loved it. It was for me a cinematic comic book. I thought Arnold and his cast played it perfectly with their tongues planted firmly in their cheeks.
You may recall that some years previous to that, Jesse Ventura was in a different comic book-type Arnold movie. This one was not played so lightly. It was a more straightforward bang-bang shoot-'em-up paramilitary flick. It was called Predator. I liked it, also.
This is the movie that gave Jesse Ventura the line he copped for his bio I Ain't Got Time to Bleed. As best I can recall, that movie was released in the mid-'80s.
Now in 1999 Arnold and Jesse are playing in another comic book. This one is more serious than either of the others. I call it Presidential Campaign Politics. Arnold thankfully downplayed his interest in elective office by acknowledging he was in the entertainment business and that was going to occupy all his working lifetime. Jesse, on the other hand, is taking all of this seriously, and I think his modest success in elective politics has gone straight to his head.
I never for one minute regarded Jesse's election as anything more than the Minnesota electorate telling the established politicos to wake up. But in the comedy we call politics, winners never see the comedy. So now Jesse figures he can be an influence on the national scene.
He ran under the umbrella of Ross Perot's amorphous collection of party apparatchiks who have no clue as to what an ideology is. He knew that. So when he won and was the Reform Party's only elected office holder of any prominence at all, he presumed he was the Power Broker.
If it weren't a comic-book story, he would have been. But this is the party formed out of the detritus (and dollars) of a Ross Perot run for the presidency, and while the little twerp finally realized he cannot win the office, he will not just turn over his party to a person of opposing ideology, especially an ideology that does not respect organized religion and right-wing fanaticism.
While Pat Buchanan--an anachronistic, self-absorbed former speech writer and sometime darling of the right-wing Christian Coalition--began to publicly court Ross and his remnants in the party, Jesse was publicly courting Lowell Weicker and Donald Trump. Does The Donald have any politics?
Now I do not know about you, but to me that was comic. If Jesse wants to be a power broker on the national scene, he had better run for a national office or wrest the party power from Ross, or Ross' sycophants.
I cannot look or listen to Ross Perot without laughing. That anyone ever took anything he ever said (in politics) seriously was to me also comic. I have already said I felt that Jesse's election was nothing more serious than a wake-up call to the Minnesota politicos. And then the rank beginner starts to publicly broker two well-known opposite types, with the full cooperation of the national media. If this weren't so damn stupid it would be tragic. Now it is just plain funny.
A tragicomedy of true lies. Assume that is true. Does it not give you pause?
How did we get here?
And is not Bill Clinton's sitting in the White House symptomatic of a society and an electorate that encourages idiocy of this nature?
I do not care what you think of any of the former presidents or former candidates. By and large, previous to John Kennedy and Richard Nixon, they were men of much more substance, intellect and quality than most of the current crop of wannabes. Our candidates and presidents--and our media as well--are reflective of us.
What a depressing thought.
Alan Caras is a Los Gatos businessman.
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Los Gatos, California Since 1881
