Politics, Culture, and Other Wastes of Time: Alternative Presidential Race: Love vs. Reed

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Alternative Presidential Race: Love vs. Reed

A few weeks ago I was reading a vast collection of the alternative comic strip "This Modern World" by political cartoonist Tom Tomorrow. The strip is more cutting-edge than "Doonesbury," but not as scathing as the even more outspoken cartoonist Ted Rall..

"This Modern World" is perhaps best known for using Sparky the Penguin (pictured here) who often acts like a reporter covering political news of the day.

I must say that I am perhaps just a tad less liberal than Tom Tomorrow (I was recently diagnosed as being 35 percent conservative), but I still agree with Tom a solid 75 percent of the time. I suppose one can figure out where they stand politically by how much they laugh at "This Modern World" as opposed to the conservative comic strip "Mallard Filmore," which features a less-humorous version of "Howard the Duck."

In a strip that was originally written circa 2004, Tom Tomorrow (not the cartoonist's real name) suggested that the 2008 presidential race might come down to Courtney Love, the former lead singer of Hole who was acquainted with the late Kurt Cobain (the radical documentary filmmaker Nick Broomfield suggests she might have actually killed him!), for the Democrats and Ralph Reed, the former Christian Coalition prez who actually ran for office in Georgia, for the GOP.

So, I am asking you, the blog-reading public, to decide which candidate would be your choice. I know this may seem kitschy, but hey- wouldn't this make the presidential race that much more interesting?

And, it's not as if Reed is devoid of scandal himself as he was very close to Jack Abharamoff, who fell from grace quicker than Humpty Dumpty.

To make this even more interesting, I am giving these 'candidates' running mates. For Reed, I will designate my good friend Gary Frink from New Market, Va., who used to be a Democrat before going to God's Own Party. To give him some credit, he defected when Walter Mondale was running for president. Frink actually ran for Congress twice in his native Michigan. Once as a Democrat. Once as a Republican. Alas, he lost both times.

I will give Ms. Love, another friend as her running mate. Cenk Uygur is a fellow politically progressive Turkish-American, and he is the host of a liberal talk show (yes, there are such things!) called "The Young Turks." It once aired on Air America. Mr. Uygur was a Republican until the Dick Cheney administration came to power. To my knowledge, he has never run for office. But, he has stood firm against guests like Lou Dobbs, which proves that we could use more ex-Republicans in the Democratic Party.

I actually have an uncle Uygur in Florida..........

Now, I do have a slight bias here, even though I was never into the band Hole when they were popular (it was like ten years ago, right?). After all, I did once refer to the Rev. Franklin Graham as Satan here, which may hurt my chances to run against Cong. Virgil Goode (R-Va) should my Facebook friend Tom Perriello not defeat this evil man (who used to be a Democrat!) in November.

Nevertheless, I did try to dig up video footage for both 'candidates.' But, I'm not sure anyone would want to see Reed's complete interview with Charlie Rose, which is actually pretty interesting, on this blog. You can go to Youtube for that. It does run for about a half-hour.

But, we will leave you with the video for the song "Malibu" as performed by Hole.