Monday, September 14, 2015

Lest We Furr-get: He-Man

By Zamboni

Between the 2016 clown car and the pending shutdown of the federal government, the bad behavior on the Republican side of life was starting to get so dismal that we cats thought we were going to have to resort to a red panda post for a pick-me-up.

And then we saw another critter reference today that made us smile instead.

Check this out. It's a lovely trip down Memory Lane about a time in Jeb! Bush's life when he got fatally skewered at a debate. Okay, it was 20 years ago, but it's still fun.

Jeb! was running for Florida Governor for the first time — the race he didn't win — and was trying to imply that the incumbent, Democrat Lawton Chiles, was washed up. New blood was needed. But in their debate, Sly Lawton answered the young Bushie carpetbagger the best way a seasoned Floridian knew: "The old he-coon," Chiles warned, "walks just before the light of day."

"Jeb! was speechless," said one of his advisers. "He didn't know how to respond. At that moment, Lawton Chiles defeated Jeb! Bush."

Fast-forward to the present: Today's "debates" are not really debates. We cats suspect that the only real political face-off was the first one, Kennedy vs. Nixon, because it had never been done before. But once they were revived in 1976, debates became silly. That's why we're going to treat Wednesday night's sideshow like the Oscars, and refuse to waste precious hours on it when we can read the recap in three minutes the next morning.

Still and all, we know that every now and then, a "he-coon" moment can happen. We hope that Lawton Chiles will be looking down from wherever he is on Wednesday, and maybe throw some pixie dust on the clown car passengers for good mischief's sake. We cats PURR.

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