I guess I'll get the ball rollin here...

[RS Davis]

...by cutting and pasting a Freedom File (so very lazy)...

Hello Freedomphiles! This is my obligatory puff piece, and I hope that you find it enjoyable. Things are getting kind of crazy right now. My life has been looking up – I am preparing for a move, getting my car back, going to a wedding, and should be getting DSL at the end of this month, which means I will have a lot more time and resources available to me when I put out Freedom Files. As a result, I am phoning in this piece of crap. It should be amusing, especially since in order to save time in thinking up clever things, I have just filled that space with potty humor. So here is this weeks creatively deficient essay:

Today, we are going to look back at the voting patterns of me, RS Davis, brilliant political philosopher. The year was 1992. Ace of Base was tearing up the charts, Val Kilmer was cool as shit in Tombstone, and a certain young miscreant named Rick was turning 18.

At the time, I was a high school dropout, and didn’t have many concerns aside from the two-year, psychotically obsessive, irritatingly shy crush I had on a total hottie and all around sweet girl named Linda. By the way, Linda is getting married this weekend to Greg, a good friend of mine – they are both Freedomphiles – and I wish them all the happiness that I’ve had in my own marriage. Never before have I seen two people more obviously perfect for each other. Good luck, you two.

Nineteen ninety-two was also a voting year. George Bush (the father) was running for reelection. He was very famous not only because he was number two to the most popular president since Kennedy, but he was also a skilled magician. He could make a Quayle appear competent out of thin air and make Middle-Eastern Malevolent Despots disappear quicker than his record-setting approval rating, but his best trick ever can be described only as an amazing feat of sleight-of-hand. It was a classic case of misdirection – he said, “Read my lips,” and while we were all staring at his thin little lips, Congress was picking our pockets.

Now, I have always been a sucker for magicians, so I voted for Bush. But America, you had a different idea. You decided that you’d rather have a musician than a magician, so a sax player from Arkansas won the big talent show, and my guy lost.

But that was okay. In the long run, magicians – with the exception of David Blain and my nephew – are almost always dorks, and musicians – with the exceptions of The Proclaimers and Devo – are almost always cool. But America, you couldn’t be surprised at the kind of life a musician would have in the coolest house in the world. I mean, it wasn’t bad enough that he was a rock star – that house is a pussy magnet.

I imagine if you want to get a good idea of what the White House was like for the next eight years with Clinton in office, all you have to do is watch the VH1 Behind the Music on that cock-rock, he-slut hair metal band Poison. I’m sure he sent that rabid little lunatic Chihuahua James Carville out to the white house gate with a bullhorn to scope out the trashiest groupies: “I…don’t…have…time…for…this! It’sthepresident, Stupid. Everyone who doesn’t put out, go to the back of the line. Everyone with self-esteem issues, to the front!”

So, it was a rockin’ four years full of Wild Turkey (Clinton’s favorite drink), women, and waste. There were a few downsides to that administration, which is what happens every time a rock star settles down and tries to think properly. You get things like Gary Cherone fronting Van Halen, Billy Joel writing classical music, White Lion’s When the Children Cried, Green Days Time of Your Life, the CC DeVille Experience, and socialized medicine.

Well, the big talent show came around again, and the Republicans, on an “even more boring than last time” platform, nominated Bob Dole, whose only discernable talents were killing krauts, referring to himself in the first person, holding pens, and scowling. He always seemed to me like the kind of guy who would steal your ball if you hit it into his yard.

But we have the benefit of hindsight now and can fully forgive the pre-Viagra scowl. “Bob Dole can’t get it up. Bob Dole is half a man. Bob Dole is very sad.” But then we all kind of knew old Bob was impotent back then, didn’t we?

So did Dole really stand a chance? A flaccid old fart against the swinginest cock in all of DC? There is a reason that ICBM’s aren’t shaped like marshmallows. America wants the kind of leader that can draw a line in the sand with his big, virile dick – that is, when it is not occupied with interns and secretaries, or that one time with his wife that mad Chelsea – and I’m not sure that didn’t happen in a lab.

Dole tried to capture the rock n’ roll crowd by doing a stage dive at a campaign rally, but he just ended up hurting himself. His popularity did jump a little, but that can be attributed more to the Three Stooges set than the Iggy and the Stooges set. But I like both groups of Stooges, so I voted for Dole.

But the sax player won again. I mean face it, we honor war heroes in this country, but we fuckin’ revere rock stars. Really, ask yourself this: Was Bill Clinton a leader or a celebrity? Do we know what musical instrument he played or his stance on the deficit? Do we know the boxers-or-briefs question or his stance on free trade? Do we know who he sexed, or what he stood for?

So it was four more years of buggering and brashness, renting out the Lincoln bedroom, stealing FBI files, corporate fraud, filling the oval orifice in the oval office, and doing things, more or less, like anyone who plays the sax and doesn’t inhale.

This was all great for me. My guy didn’t win, but someone I hated took his place. It was a perfect setting to dust off my outraged and appalled face. See, if it had been someone like Carter, who it is impossible to hate – what with that Aw shucks appeal and that giant, earnest set of teeth and hair, he’s like Eddie Murphy in Shrek – that is, if Eddie the Donkey built houses for poor people.

So I got the pleasure of purely despising Clinton. Politics is in the odd realm of life where the losers get to be smug, while the winners get all the hassle. People get to put their “Don’t blame me, I voted for a loser” bumper stickers on their cars and actually be proud of it. I wonder why these people don’t also have bumper stickers that say, “My child is a miserable failure at Maynard G. Krebs Middle School.”

So we look another four years into the future, and there’s a new talent show coming up. The year is 2000, a (year away from a) new millennium, Britney Spears. This time it’s Gore v. Bush, but add a Dubya.

Gore is now running on the platform “and you thought the Republicans were dull!” I am still firmly convinced that Al Bore is animatronic – that some day he is just going to wind down and slump over like the little Swiss dancing men on a cuckoo clock.

You see, friends, Gore had no discernable personality of his own. Sometimes he was Gomez Adams, dry humping his wife on stage at the Democratic National Convention. Sometimes he was Blue Collar Joe, telling union members that his grandmother used to sing him a union song as a lullaby ten years before it was written – that is, of course, unless his grandmother sang him to sleep in college, much to the chagrin, I imagine, of his roommate, Tommy Lee Jones. There was also the mean, pompous Gore (my favorite, actually) that showed up at the first debate and gave Bush testy, impatient and disapproving looks all night. Then there was the ten-cent-whore-Gore, showing up to the second debate wearing so much makeup the people on MIR could see him. I think he thought he looked like Reagan, when really he looked like an Old West corpse.

But Gore didn’t win, so it doesn’t really matter. There was a big controversy where Gore said all his supporters were too stupid to punch a ballot correctly – a claim I am not prepared to refute at this time – and stupid people nationwide rallied around this recognition. After it was all over, three independent news sources counted the ballots later and found that Bush would’ve won anyway, even if they did recount those ballots Gore wanted counted, but Jesse Jackson was there – and he rhymes! – so that’s what people will remember.

So the rock star finally left the house we loaned him, and in true rock star fashion, destroyed it. But whatever, he was finally gone, Bush was in, and you’d think I’d be really happy now that my guy finally won. But I wasn’t. The longer I watched, the more I realized that things weren’t changing. I started to realize that Bush doesn’t really stand for what I stand for. I don’t want a compassionate conservative – I want a cold-hearted capitalist. I want someone who will stop trying to tinker with the economy, stop abrogating my rights, give me my money back (if only the government had a satisfaction guarantee…), and let the world run by itself.

But what I got was watered-down capitalism with a pretzel stuck in its throat. Oh well, I guess that’s better than watered-down socialism with a pole stuck up its ass.

Until next time, make every day a good one!

-Rick[/url]

[outgirl]

Nice piece Rick. I pretty much disagree with every opinon put forth but well written.

[RS Davis]

outgirl said:

Nice piece Rick. I pretty much disagree with every opinon put forth but well written.

You don't like Iggy and the Stooges?

Thanks. I wrote that a long time ago. I'm ashamed I ever voted for the asshat in the first place.

- Rick

[RS Davis]

In fact, it's so old, David Blain was still cool when I wrote it.

[n2nsites]

Here's my question....why'd you quit writing? You got some good stuff out there.

[RS Davis]

n2nsites said:

Here's my question....why'd you quit writing? You got some good stuff out there.

Just really got into bein a dad, ya know? I'll probably get back to it, though. Thanks for the compliment - that was sweet!

- Rick