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A little bit naughty Scamp for PresidentBy Rick Horowitz
So who's your pick for Leader of the Free World -- the guy who hypnotized chickens or the guy who blew up frogs? Sounds like a carnival sideshow, yes? No. The particular geeks in question aren't camped out on some dusty midway somewhere; they're circling the big white house on Pennsylvania Avenue, desperate to move into the place next January. And one of them almost certainly will. But which one? Al Gore, poultry dazer? Or George W. Bush, destroyer of amphibians? And you thought these folks were dull. You also thought you'd be making your presidential choice by oh-so-carefully comparing and contrasting the Gore and Bush positions on all the major issues. Their plans for education, for the environment, for tax cuts and Social Security and health care. Their knowledge of the world. Their ability to build consensus. Not to mention leadership and vision and -- But chickens?! And frogs?! Let's call it...unexpected. Am I inventing this? I'm not inventing this. I'm reading it in the respected pages of one of the country's most respected newspapers, The New York Times. The Times, you see, has been running a series of candidate profiles, and the stories lately have been focusing on the early years -- young Georgie raising a little heck down in the Texas oil patch, young Al juggling lifestyles as he bounced back and forth between the Tennessee farm and the Washington apartment. There's plenty of reminiscing in these stories, from the candidates themselves as well as from neighbors and teachers and childhood friends. And there's plenty of local color, too -- boys being boys, boys doing the things that boys often do. Including, apparently, having their way with animals. "A little-known farm skill passed down from adolescent wizard to adolescent wizard" -- that's how full-grown Al describes his youthful power to put chickens into trances. The story doesn't reveal exactly how he hypnotized them, only that he did. We're left to marvel, and to wonder. Of course, there's always another possibility. If young Al spoke then the way full-grown Al speaks now, there's always the chance that the chickens weren't hypnotized as much as bored to sleep. ("Let me say this about feed allocation...") Besides, how do you know when a chicken is hypnotized? You tell it to cluck like a chicken and it clucks like a chicken? Big deal. Then there's young Georgie and the frogs, at least according to the fond recollection of a boyhood pal and fellow frog wrangler. It seems that when it rained really hard near the Bush house, a small lake would form out back, and frogs would show up by the thousands. Georgie and his friends were the welcoming committee. "Everybody would get BB guns and shoot them," this pal recalled. "Or we'd put firecrackers in the frogs and throw them and blow them up." "Frog Parts Over Texas" -- talk about ribbiting entertainment! (Sorry.) The letters should be pouring in shortly. Outraged letters and petitions and e-mail, I mean, from the kinds of people who don't look kindly on the kinds of people who get their jollies by clouding the minds (such as they are) of chickens or sending frogs into orbit. "It's an abomination!" they'll cry. But then there's the scamp vote. If the Clinton years have proved anything, it's that there's a hefty bloc of citizens out there who not only don't mind it when their president is a bit of a rascal -- they seem to like it! You think Gore and Bush haven't noticed? The two of them might have shuffled over to the straight and narrow as adults; they also know that a whiff of youthful devilry could be just what the spin doctor ordered to spice up their appeal and grab those final, crucial percentage points on Election Day. Call it animal instinct. Posted 5/23/00. Your
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Rick Horowitz