You've either been under a rock or a cast member of Big Brother if you've not heard that Vice President and presidential hopeful Al Gore -- aka Action Figure Ken -- chose Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman as his vice presidential running mate on the Democratic Party ticket.
You've either been bent over with hysterical laughter or walking in a haze of disbelief if you've heard that Reform Party presidential candidate Pat Buchanan -- aka Action Figure Hitler -- chose Ezola Foster as his vice presidential running mate.
I love America! Don't you?
I mean, only here could such a ruckus kick up over the fact that the first Jewish running mate has been chosen for the nation's highest office. Further, only in America could someone like Buchanan have the cajones to choose to run with a black woman.
Is Buchanan really expecting to get any votes or merely a shot at an additional 15 minutes of fame? Perhaps the former Republican is trying to get his paws on $12.5 million in federal campaign funds to pay off some campaign debts.
The last time I checked, the average Buchanan supporter -- or Buchanan himself -- doesn't like people like me. Black women, that is. I'm not making it up.
In his 1988 autobiography, Buchanan wrote of race relations in the mid-20th Century: "There were no politics to polarize us then, to magnify every slight. The 'negroes' of Washington had their public schools, restaurants, bars, movie houses, playgrounds and churches; and we had ours."
Additionally, in a 1988 syndicated column, Buchanan stated that then-President Reagan had done "so much" for blacks that civil rights groups were no longer necessary. "George Bush should have told the (NAACP conventioneers) that black America has grown up," Buchanan wrote. "That the NAACP should close up shop, that its members should go home and reflect on JFK's admonition: 'Ask not what your country can do for you, but rather ask what you can do for your country.' "
As for women, Buchanan stated in his autobiography that "the real liberators of American women were not the feminist noise-makers, they were the automobile, the supermarket, the shopping center, the dishwasher, the washer-dryer, the freezer."
And does Foster, a liberated female negro, Los Angeles educator and former member of the ultra-conservative John Birch Society, really know what she's getting into, or has someone slapped a Post-It on her back with the word "patsy" written on it?
I'm not saying blacks or black women cannot be conservative. Please. We're so conservative we're asleep. But hitching your wagon to a constellation headed straight to hell is quite another story.
And what of Gore?
His choice of Lieberman -- a Jewish centrist Democrat -- is being touted as "gutsy" and "progressive" by his handlers and likewise regurgitated in the press. The only gutsy or progressive thing Gore has done is switch from Dockers to Gap khakis.
C'mon, people. It's not like Gore asked me to be his running mate. (Now that would be gutsy.) I guess I just can't get it up for a middle-aged white man buddying up to another middle-aged white man for the benefit of doing what's allegedly right for me and mine. (But they do call it the White House, don't they?)
I'm sure Lieberman is cool and all. You gotta love a man who publicly and vehemently took the president to task for getting it from beneath the desk in the Oval Office while conducting official business.
But what really would have been progressive and gutsy is if Gore had picked Foster and Buchanan had picked Lieberman. At least, that way, we would have known the outcome: another President George Bush in the Oval Office.
Just think, though. Foster could have taught Gore how to do the Electric Slide and the lyrics to the "Thong Song," and Lieberman could have shown Buchanan the real meaning of faith and values.
Instead, what we have is another political season weighing the evil of the two lessers, to quote filmmaker Michael Moore.
This doesn't mean I won't vote. Oh, no. My late grandfather caught wreck so I could. I just wish I didn't have to schlep through so much political crap to get to the polling booth.
But this wouldn't be America if I didn't have to, would it?
