Isn't That The Stuff They Give To Junkies?

11/10/2005

That’s what I thought too, after I first heard someone say the name John Corzine a few years ago. As it turns out. I was wrong…but only partially.

Far from being some man-made powerful narcotic primarily used to create zombified human beings, multi-millionaire Democratic Senator John Corzine won the great state of New Jersey’s gubernatorial election yesterday, beating a stuffed shirt millionaire windbag named Doug Forrester.

After making an obscene amount of money off the backs of working men and women on Wall Street and then buying his way into the US Senate where he did absolutely nothing of consequence for the last four years except line his pockets with large sums of corporate money, this is what an exuberant Mr. Corzine had to say last night after he "closed the deal" on his latest acquisition, the Governorship of the State of New Jersey:

I'm gonna turn
this mutha out!!

"Together we will restore the simple truth that public service is about serving the public - nothing else, nothing more, not our party, not our friends, not our contributors, just the people of the state of New Jersey. And I want to be very clear our government should not and will not be about economic opportunities for politicians or anyone else, but a partnership that's built with the citizens of New Jersey."

Is he fucking kidding me or what?

Call me a cynic, but I would bet dollars to doughnuts that absolutely nothing changes in Trenton over the course of this guy’s administration accept the names.

He also claimed he is going to "end insider and back door deals." What the fuck was he doing on Wall Street all those years when he was putting those dirty stacks of hard currency into his private vaults scattered all up and down Bergen County? Was he getting his tips from CNN and Lou Dobbs at noon on Wednesday? Playing hunches? Give me a break.

This is the kind of thing that turns people off to anything political.

Maybe that's the goal.

The tired old scene of a man, usually super-rich and white, making promises, assurances and forceful declarations that his candidacy was about "the people" and finally "WE" have "taken back" control of the government as if it was EVER controlled by the populace in the first place, has really overstayed its welcome.

How could anyone possibly think that "the people" are going to even remotely factor into this guy’s decisions for the next four years? The only thing this guy is going to care about in his thought process is the proverbial, "Gas, Grass or Ass…Nobody Rides For Free" axiom. Any benefit to the population at large will be purely coincidental.

Doesn’t anyone ever ask WHY, in the 21st century, a period of time when incredible amounts of information and remarkable technology are readily available to the overwhelming majority of our population, do the political parties continue to trot out such dreadful candidates, whose imaginations and leadership qualities rate so average that their sustained mediocrity almost borders on grandeur?

Ladies and gentleman...Mr. Fernando Ferrer.

And if we do have the capability of asking, why do we continue to accept this scenario year after year?

I am starting to feel I know the answer to that one.

But enough of that. What really caught my eye about this race was the downright nastiness of it all. What we had were two mega-rich people, probably still smarting from boyhood humiliations, funneling all of their massive resources into a full frontal assault upon their opponent's trenches. Personal attack ads saturated the Tri-state area for months.

According to the commercials, and since I live in New York they were my only exposure, each of these candidates, depending on whose ad you were viewing at the time, were not only bad decision makers, but they were totally unfit to govern at all. If these commercials were to be believed, Forrester and Corzine were downright revolting human beings who you would not trust with seven dollars to buy you a pack of cigarettes. A steady stream of words like, LIAR, TAXES, CRIME, CHEAT and UNTRUSTWORTHY were superimposed over the candidate’s faces in bold, hammering home the undeniable fact that this man was a scumbag. The repetition was mind boggling.

It was the Battle of Verdun of sleaze.

The best of this bunch, released by Forrester two weeks before Election Day, utilized quotes from Corzine’s ex-wife who was, naturally, pretty bitter about their divorce because he left for another woman. I think her exact words were

If he is elected, he will let New Jersey down…the way he let me down.

So Forrester, in his ad, played up the fact that he has been married for thirty years to the same woman. Lines like, ‘Corzine walked out on his family…He’ll walk out on New Jersey too" were voiced over images of him stoically standing dutifully next to his wife.

And just to show the country that the Great State of New Jersey, a place once nick-named “The Garden State” now known officially as “The Binge Drinking Tit-Bar State,” is not only the leaders in corruption and moral malaise, (Former Senator Robert Torricelli and Former Governor Jim McGreevy both recently were ran out of office in complete disgrace for bribery, corporate kickbacks, influence peddling and ass-fucking) but with this new found respect for “the sanctity of Marriage,” is also on the cutting edge of social evolution. Outraged by Corzine’s marital status, the electorate’s support for him began to waver for the multi-millionaire “Man of the People.” Corzine’s poll numbers immediately started to plummet.

After my laughter subsided, my first thoughts, I have to admit, were purely selfish. I contemplated what MY angry ex-girlfriends would say after I announced my candidacy for whatever elected office I will try to run for. (My sole platform and issue being the passing of legislation to force the current copyright owners of the brilliant 1970 film "Let It Be" to finally release it on DVD.)

Needless to say, I don’t think it would be too flattering.

It wouldn’t be relevant either.

Have our politics, and our sense of completely unrealistic piety, become so ridiculous that the concept of a divorcee running for office is beyond our understanding?

What fucking year is this 1922?

Afterall, if divorce immediately disqualified a person from running for office, Ronald Wilson Reagan would never have been the "It’s Morning in America" man. That is because one morning in 1949, Mr. Reagan sat at his breakfast table, ate bacon and eggs that his wife, Jane Wyman, woke up early and cooked for him, while leafing through the morning newspaper. After he was finished dipping his toast with trimmed crusts in the broken yolks, he washed his hands, kissed his kids goodbye, gently caressed his wife’s arm, smiled, walked out of his house…and never returned.

He had Nancy, probably dressed in a red laced Teddy, waiting for him.

He left it for his soon to be ex-wife, Jane Wyman, to explain to his first set of kids why daddy didn’t love them anymore.

That act of uncommon heroism doesn’t stop Republicans…like Doug Forrester, the architect of the shameless "divorce" campaign against Corzine… from considering Ronald Reagan to be one of our most trusted and greatest Presidents of all time. It didn’t stop Republicans…like Doug Forrester…during that 24/7 week long funeral dirge on Fox News from completely forgetting about Jane Wyman as they sang the praises of the "Fairy-Tale Love Story" of Ron and Nancy as if they were the inspiration for Romeo and Juliet. And it still doesn’t stop Republicans…like Doug Forrester…from pining orgasmically for a non-existent "morally clearer time when people understood the difference between Right and Wrong."

He even wants to put that two-timing womanizer on our money!!!

In fact, out of all the people who were ever elected President, Reagan was the only one that ever "walked out on his family."

Hmm, now that I think about it, maybe the Forrester smear-machine was right about Corzine.

I never trusted that son-bitch Reagan either.

I think I need another hit.
Larry