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Emil Amok

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Be Thankful for the Florida Supremes

They like Chad

By Emil Guillermo

Our election hangover continues. Florida’s Supreme Court has spoken. And so now the state can keep counting chad till Monday, through the holiday weekend.

The decision keeps the indecision alive. And topic A intact.

Can any of us see a holiday movie, watch a high school football game, or even have our Thanksgiving meal without thinking about politics?

Holiday movie? The election is the Grinch that stole Thanksgiving.

Football? Is it fourth and long for Bush or Gore? (By the way, is that a dimpled cheerleader?)

And can you imagine the dinner conversation?

It’s all “Bush or Gore.”

Never mind “White meat or dark meat?” Pass the roast chad gravy. Please.

You poor Tofurkey eaters, vegetarians all, are out of luck. You’re left to lift in the air your processed soybean drumsticks in whose name exactly — Nader?

Ah, Democracy. The Florida Supremes have put it on the menu.

Can you even take a bite of the Thanksgiving meal without wanting to steal a look at a cable newscast for the latest bombast from either side? Right on through desert.

Isn’t that Chef Emeril whipping up a lattice-topped minced-chad pie? (What a versatile thing those chads are. It’s the new tofu).

The Bushes for sure, should have a wild Thanksgiving dinner. Too bad the turkey will taste like a gamey armadillo.

Just keep the carving knife away from G.W. And seat Jeb in the next room, if not the next county.

And yet, we must give our thanks to the Florida Supremes, whom the GOP partisans must think are the Vandellas. They’ve recognized chad as our meal ticket. If you impregnated one, you get to come to dinner. You count. They’ve also got us talking about this like it really matters— which it does. Like turkey, which most of us don’t really like, but we eat like fiends on this one day; here’s this election, between two people we like increasingly less, but with whom we’re absolutely obsessed with just the same. And we care.

For once, we have a U.S. election that’s more exciting than the Detroit Lions or the New England Patriots playing on Thanksgiving Day. In fact, we should all feel like patriots. We’ve finally got our priorities straight.

We’re counting our chads and liking it.

Some people may be fond of saying they’re sick of it all. But what else can be done but count all the votes? Besides, what’s the rush. Haven’t we learned our lesson of election night? Slow down. We don’t need a president-elect before its time. The country isn’t like some headless turkey. We’ve got Clinton. Remember him?

No, people aren’t sick of a slow, accurate chad count. We’re in a new stage of election that we’ve never had before. Post-election noise. Not purely news. It’s that mixture of news, information, rhetoric and commerce that’s being blasted in Internet time, 24-7.

The election has risen to the level of O.J. coverage.

Now that’s something to fear.

But that doesn’t mean we want the process to end. We just want the media to shut up and let the process happen. Like cooking a pig. You don’t rush it.

Instead, the news hole has expanded, and even when nothing happens, the cable folks are compelled to fill the space with accusations and rhetoric from both principals and surrogates.

The partisan bickering and distrust has grown annoying.

There was Peggy Noonan, the “thousand points of light” speech writer to George Bush, Sr., and now a Wall Street Journal columnist charging that Gore is “stealing the election in a classic vote fraud way.”

She was especially incensed by the kind of people the Democrats had on their side. “It’s a different culture, a tough culture, “ she said with a regal arrogance.

Channel surfing over to CNN, an African American woman in Palm Beach County working as a chad counter was interviewed. Was it a chaotic processed fraught with the possibilities of cheating and malfeasance?

No.

Noonan should take a hint from Marie Antoinette. Let them count chad.

That’s the only downside to politics at Thanksgiving. The meal isn’t supposed to be a holiday edition of Crossfire.

The sad fact is more and more of our elections will be just like this. Contentious. Carved to the bone. Like the fight for the crispy skin off the turkey.

In the era of centrism, where the two candidates win in the center, the centrists curse is the winner must now stay in the center.

And the center doesn’t hold.

Our choices will never be as clear-cut as turkey or Tofurkey. It’s all just turkey. So “Bush? Gore?” “White meat or dark meat?” — it’s all the same.

It’s the problem of centrist politics. There isn’t much room in the middle.

And the bickering only gets worse.

It’s the mix blessing for Asian Americans, and other minorities. Somewhat forgotten during the campaign, and told to chill out until the election is won and the governing begins — where does that put us? Not in a very good place. And whom should we thank for that?