Saturday 18th November 2000
Nuffin the Hamster reports on some more background to the election
FLORIDA (Saturday) - 'Let me see if I've got this right'
squeaked Yafa 'cos this whole affair is beginning to make my head swirl'
He took a long hard sniff at a peanut he'd just
shelled, looked over at the discarded packaging which lay around him on the
floor and put into words all those things which were puzzling him:
'The people of Palm Beach County are actually saying that
they don't have the intelligence to be able to work out which hole to poke out?
And this is their defence in the lawsuit that they're bringing?'
I looked at him with eyes wide open. 'Well, yes.
That just about sums it up'
'It's not that someone defrauded them' Yafa stated
'and neither is it that they weren't given clear instructions - but that they
didn't apply what they were told and that, even when they failed to perceive
what they were to do, they didn't ask anyone. Indeed, when some of them
double-punched their paper they decided to submit it anyway instead of
confessing to an official that they were a pillock and needed a new
paper?'
Again, I couldn't disagree - the hamster's logic was
impeccable - this really was what the court case seemed to be all about. But
were they justified? Did they have a case that only people with an IQ above 50
would have been able to have understood the paper? Yafa produced a copy of one
of the ballot papers from beside him, a clearly downloaded graphic from some
official report or other, I presumed.
'No' began Yafa as he eyed it carefully 'there
doesn't appear to be anyway that such a misunderstanding could have
occurred'
He held up the ballot paper for me to see - no, it
was clear. There certainly wasn't anyway that anyone could have been confused
(with kind permission, I reproduce a copy of the paper here for our readership's
careful study).
So, what exactly was the problem? Yafa and I
looked at each other with a fair degree of pessimism.
'You know' began my
colleague-in-fur, putting into words the thoughts which were, even now,
beginning to whistle round the empty recesses of my mind (poetic, huh?) 'one has
to start to wonder whether there's some ulterior motive in all this'
After all, when the label 'Banana Republic' is being
bounded about one naturally thinks of Cuba - but hadn't they got the date of the
new millenium right and the US wrong? Didn't that show something about the
blindness of technology and progress? And what about this new ballot paper
approved by Gore that had just landed on my desk for consideration - was this
the paper which should have been offered to voters or used if a revote took
place (reproduced here as well)?
It struck me as I watched CNN that very same
evening that what was happening was all a matter of being legally correct - the
legal case of Gore, the legislation brought by the population of Palm Beach
County (and where would it all end?) - but no one had stopped to think for even
the slightest of moments just what was morally right, had they? No one
was concerned to do what was righteous and honouring - no one was deeply moved
to give way to the other at the expense of himself.
And I thought to myself 'Is this nation really
ready for a Hamster President who'd be morally upright and sincerely
good?'
Mmm...I wonder...
Nuffin the Hamster writes
for the Rodent Weekly.
This article appears courtesy of that paper.
