Saturday 2nd December 2000
Nuffin the Hamster on a live CNN broadcast
Florida (THURSDAY) - Okay, so it wasn’t as exciting as the
OJ Simpson car chase all those years ago (so my master, Lee, tells me) but the
nine and a half hour live broadcast of the truck headed from south Florida to
the court in Tallahassee are what insomniacs dream of - a chance to
sleep.
Ahead of a possible decision on Saturday to
recount the recount that had been recounted after the election night count, the
judge ruled that everything had to be brought to the court room
for...er...safe-keeping.
I think.
Actually, I’m not quite sure. After all, wasn’t
there more danger in something going missing with all the packing and unpacking?
With the easily bombable truck that was carrying them on the road? With the
fragile chads which could be dislodged with all the driving that the journey
entailed?
Rab was enjoying it, though - the live broadcast,
I mean. Three hours into the nauseating coverage he squeaked with excitement
‘One!’ which made both Yafa and I jump with surprise.
‘One what?’ I asked him.
‘A sparrow’ he assured me ‘Weren’t you watching?
That was the first sparrow that’s got run over by the truck. Bet there’ll be at
least three more’
This was beginning to sicken me, I must admit, but
I also found myself eerily drawn to the helicopter shots fed back live via
satellite to CNN Europe and the excitement of the lots we were drawing to
determine whether each traffic light they encountered would be red for stop,
green for go or red for stop but ignored and driven through.
A bit like Tic-Tac-Toe, I know, but it certainly
whiled the almost ten hours of uninterrupted coverage. Then something really
exciting happened.
‘A road block!’ Rab shouted ‘Look! Look! The truck’s
stopped moving!’
I looked at him with sympathy - perhaps he’d lost
his struggle with reality. He met my stare and explained:
‘Well, if there’s going to be a military coup by
the Bush Campaign, it’s gonna have to be when they’ve stopped the van. That’s
the time you’d expect masked raiders to crowbar the rear of the truck and steal
the ballot papers’
He had a point, I had to admit, and I began
wondering if such a thing might just take place. Or might there be a military
strike from the air? Or a missile attack from one of the US warships cruising
off the Florida coastline which had Republican sympathies? After all, hadn't
Gore refused to support Bush in his assertion that the forces overseas should
have all their ballots counted? This was starting to get exciting...
‘Two!’ shouted Rab and I jumped in unison with
Yafa ‘That time it was a starling’
Exciting, yes, but gruesome, too. And I began to
wonder just where this was all going to end as I received news that New Mexico
had amended their count - Hey! I thought it was only Florida that was having
problems!
As the truck sped round a sharp right hand turn
that had me thinking that I was glad I wasn’t on board, I came to the
realisation that the care with which the ballots were handled in Miami-Dade and
Palm Beach Counties and the care with which they’d be removed from the truck at
the final destination was going to be completely undone by that
journey...
...I just hoped they’d try and reaffix those
dislodged chads.
Nuffin the Hamster writes
for the Rodent Weekly.
This article appears courtesy of that paper.
