|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
As the television choppers follow the yellow Ryder truck up the interstate, I have the feeling there's really something missing from the plot of this surreal election drama. I want to script this! I need to script it because it's just too ... too much and yet too little. We need to add some drama. I mean, where's the drama in a Ryder truck being escorted up the interstate by unmarked police cars? There are no marked cars with flashing lights. There's no element of urgency as the Ryder truck plods along. Ryder truck? No one could even afford a Wells Fargo type armored vehicle? Sheesh, they're only ballots in a presidential election. Okay, so a Ryder truck. This is too dull to even waste the television chopper time. I want two or three black helicopters to appear. Menacing copters, like Apaches. Gunships. No one knows who dispatched them or why they're there. They don't do anything, they just lurk in the distance, a formidable presence. And I want at least one UFO to flash in and out of view, appearing and disappearing at will, its lights brighter than the sun. Now the television anchors have something meaty to chew on, not the whipped fluff of another Al Gore appearance which is as thrilling as a carton of over-ripe cottage cheese. Can you see the hysteria? They can't even figure out whether there's two or three black helicopters. No one knows where to locate Arnold Schwarzenegger. James Bond isn't around for an interview. The head of the CIA cannot be reached. Military jets are dispatched from Eglin Air Force Base, but as soon as they approach these objects, they .... disappear. Still the convoy continues along the interstate, toting carefully packaged ballots inside the yellow Ryder truck that's usually used to haul washers, dryers and sofas from one home to another. All the action is overhead. A sarcastic Tom Brokaw calls this a desperation move from the Bush camp. A disgruntled Peter Jennings, disturbed from his sleep, snarls that this election seemingly will never draw to a close. Dan Rather blathers on about "only in America." The drama unfolds for hours, yet at the end of the journey which has kept all of America riveted to its television sets, the boxes containing the ballots arrive in Tallahassee. Just prior to the van's arrival in Tallahassee, the UFO goes straight up and vanishes, the black choppers veer off to the east, west and south, and nothing more is seen of them, they aren't picked up on radar. All is quiet in the sky. Dozens of SWAT teams greet the Ryder truck. Special deputies, observers from the FBI, members from every imaginable branch of government watch as the boxes are unloaded. A judge demands that the boxes be opened for inspection. And inside, as if to mock the mockery of the nation's presidential election: No ballots, not a single one .... just millions upon millions of .... chads! See today's featured column: Still Counting...Attend the 2003 Al Gore Press Conference with the Cynic Join the conversation about the election... © Dorothy Anne Seese, 2000
See our latest columns: View expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Political USA.
|
|
