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VOTE ME, OR DON’T VOTE AT ALL!
Monday, March 15th, 2004 by joelBy Girdy. (Title added by Joel because Girdy didn’t actually include one. I make no apologies.)
It is with deepest regret and profuse apologies that I, hereby and in all other ways, announce my candidacy for the Presidency of the United States of America. We live in a busy world, and many of you have better things to do than read my personal political manifesto., so I will pass over that and do what I can to keep this address brief, short, and non-repetitive.
I would like to thank those who have made this campaign possible. First, thank You, God, for creating me and instilling in me a unique sense of purpose and thirst of ambition, and for lunch. Thank you, Mom and Dad, for having sex all those years ago, and for never, intentionally or accidentally, letting me catch you in the act since then. Thank you also for raising me in a region (the Midwest) which no other candidates currently running personally represent.[1] My thanks to the constituents of the states of Florida and California, who have worked so diligently in recent years to illuminate the idiocy of having a democratic government in a nation populated, originally, by outcasts and malcontents and infused, more recently, by materially opportunistic yet individually self-destructive standards of profit and loss. Thanks also to Bill Clinton, his wife, George Junior, the Last Action Hero, and all others (Sonny Bono, etc.) who, by winning election, confirm the futility and frustration of the majority of the American people. Final thanks go out to Herman, my running mate and one of the few figments of Joel’s imagination whom I respect and yet do not fully understand.
There have been many comparisons between this election and that of 1992, when George Junior’s dad (I forget his name) ran for reelection and lost to Bill Clinton, formerly from Arkansas.[2] In that election, as in every other election since politeness was recognized by Americans only as a universal value,[3] the leading candidates vowed to run positive campaigns. They then proceeded to do whatever they could to sling mud upon their opponent (again, following in the example of their predecessors).
I will issue one, and only one, promise to the voters of America: I will not run a hypocritical campaign. Because of this, and the above facts just mentioned, I assure you that my strategy is in large part negative. Oh, to be sure, positivism will occasionally seep in (i.e., “The Official Candidate of Candy for Everyone�[4]), but do not expect such goodness to be the driving force of my quest for the Presidency.
Indeed, in this vein I come before you today to not only announce my presidency, but also to ask you not to vote. A no-vote is a vote for a Girdy!
Some of you may in fact decide to vote, thinking that not voting for me will not result in my election. I want to illustrate how wrong this viewpoint is. Remember that 1992 election? It was widely considered remarkable because 60% of voters turned out to the polls, the most in several years before and in all the years since. Clinton, then, received a little more than 30% of the possible votes. Bush ended up with a little less than 30%. 40% of eligible citizens did not vote when no candidate was asking them not to. With the advent of my campaign, who would doubt that that 40% will not increase by at least five or six non-voters? As you can clearly see, my up-coming victory is a mathematical certainty.
I said I would keep this address brief, short, and non-repetitive and, in so doing, I must bring my comments to a close. I thank you, my friends, my fans, my fellow American citizens, for your apathy. With your lack of support, all will know who America did not vote for in 2004.
Goodbye, Good Luck, and Godspeed,
Michael Paul Girdwood
March 11th, 2004
P.S. Earlier, when I was thanking people, I mentioned Joel. I want to make it absolutely clear that I was not thanking Joel himself, nor even his original fictional character Herman, as it may have seemed. Rather, I was expressing gratitude to the existential norm of Herman, his essence, the concept of which Herman is but a projection, as per Plato’s shadows upon a cave wall. It is my deepest desire that Joel will learn to spell-check his cartoons before he inks them. Until such a time as that, or when I become President and have the ability to draft him and send him off to war, or at least have a senior government official assigned to oversee his activities, I personally apologize for your exposure to Joel’s vocabularian naïveté/grammatical ignorance/cycloptic dyslexia.
