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Jewish World Review Dec. 29, 2000/ 3 Teves, 5761

Jackie Mason & Raoul Felder

Jackie & Raul
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Orchids or Stinkweeds


http://www.jewishworldreview.com -- THAT TIME of year is here again when reflection is the order of the day. Just as all matter can be broken down into four categories -- air, fire, earth, and water -- looking back over the past year, we can catalogue all human endeavors or persons by awarding it or them an orchid or a stinkweed.

The Florida fiasco was the central attention-grabbing, impact-producing, TV-monopolizing event of the year. The birth rate will undoubtedly go down nine months after the Florida recount since couples were up all night watching television, waiting for court decisions, instead of doing what the Democrats were trying to do to the rest of the country. The situation, however produced more than its share of orchids and stinkweeds.

Among the stinkweeds was the Democratic Party that wanted to count all the votes, as long as they were in certain neighborhoods that traditionally voted Democratic, as long as they could keep changing the methods of determining the intention of a voter, until they could come up with a method that showed the voter intended to vote for them, and as long as they could prevent counting the votes of absentee ballots of service people, who usually vote Republican.

If you were a Democrat, and understood what was really happening, then you would award a stinkweed to David Boies, who put the Democrats into their final predicament by not realizing that the game for them was to get as many votes as possible counted by the December 12th deadline. Boies should have realized that by convincing the Florida Supreme Court to extend the protest stage of the election, faced with a firm outside date of December 12th, the Democrats would be forced to eat up the time allowed for the contest stage which was to follow. If you are a Republican, you would want to give Boies an orchid, because he was really the architect of George W. Bush's Florida victory by creating a scenario where the clock ran out on the Democrats' ability to count votes.

Stinkweeds to every TV commentator, except Alan Dershowitz (who, ironically, because of his political ranting, is permanently in the Stinkweed Hall of Fame). Except for Dershowitz, they didn't understand that it was Boies who tied the Democrats to the rails, making them unable to get away before the train ran them over.

Stinkweeds also for chads, pimples, dimples, puckers, hanging doors, open doors, swinging doors and butterfly ballots. Pimples belong on teenaged girls, dimples and puckers on babies, doors on houses, and butterflies should spend their time flying away from nets. Chad is a country in west central Africa with no railroads, a 14 percent literacy rate, and population in which males have a life expectancy of 37 years. Why name one disaster after another?

Stinkweeds to the Democratic voters who couldn't figure out the butterfly ballots, even though they were created by a Democrat, published in the local papers before election, and contained clear instructions that were able to be followed successfully in a test by 6th grade students.

Orchids also to Judges N. Sanders Sauls and Chief Judge Wells of the Florida Supreme Court. Sauls looks and acts like he was sent by central casting to play a wise old Southern judge and Wells had the courage to say, finally after one false start, that the rest of the Florida Supreme Court should go back to law school.

Stinkweeds for Janet Reno. Reno, as odd a bird that has ever flown into the Washington aviary, was Clinton's fourth choice for attorney general, which should speak volumes about her competence. Her idea of the job of attorney general is not to be the people's lawyer, but rather to keep her boss and his henchmen from getting indicted. She made a simple deal: The Boss would not get indicted as long as she could keep a job for which she was ethically and physically incapable. Her specialty seems to be botching up the handling of crises. She started her reign by mismanaging the Waco situation, resulting in the needless deaths of children. More recently, she dealt with a situation involving a child by waiting past the time in which the matter could have been dealt with reasonably, but firmly, by ordering a Gestapo-style raid to send Elian Gonzalez back to Cuba. Privately, we suspect, she wished they could have just tossed the kid back into the sea when they found him.

Stinkweeds for Ehud Barak. The last time the leader of a country tried to exchange land for peace was in September 1938, when British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain sold out Czechoslovakia. He came back from Munich waving a piece of paper proclaiming, "Peace in our time." Churchill said Chamberlain "had to choose between war and dishonor. He chose dishonor, he shall have war." It sounds like Barak was reading from the same script.

Stinkweeds for Rick Lazio. He wasn't a Senate candidate, he was a chemist. He was able to take a wonderful opportunity and turn it to garbage. He made the most publicized invasion since D-Day when he walked into Hillary Clinton's personal space. Stinkweeds to Darva Conger and Paula Jones. Anybody who bought Playboy and Penthouse, respectively, with their nude pictures should get their money back. They both gave sex a bad name.

Orchids to Wen Ho Lee. Wen was either the smartest criminal or the dumbest incarcerated man ever because he stayed in jail for a considerable period of time before he was let out, the judge apologized to him, and everybody said it was the FBI who was guilty, not him.

Orchids to Joe Lieberman. He was the smart enough to know he wasn't going to win and kept his job, as opposed to Gore, who is now reading the "help wanted" section of the paper.

Stinkweeds to the Summer Olympics. They gave a game and nobody came.

We could go on and on and talk about the Microsoft trial (stinkweeds) because an efficient business is being punished and the result is that the public will end up paying more for the same products.

Stinkweeds to Al Gore for pornography (the famous kiss with Tipper).

Orchids to Regis Philbin's brown shirts (probably the only shirt that influenced an election).

Stinkweeds to Bill Clinton because there will have to be an exorcism in the Oval Office to remove the karma of a president who was impeached, in the process of being disbarred, was a perjurer, and used the oval office as a hotbed motel. Clinton, however, could use some orchids, always a favorite with New York City chorus girls.


JWR contributors Jackie Mason and Raoul Felder need no introduction. Comment on this column by clicking here.

Up

12/15/00: The Florida "mess" as a religious experience ... for some of us
11/20/00: Dailey deceptions
11/07/00: The art of lying
10/31/00: The only effective way to clean up American politics
10/24/00: PLEASE, Mr. Mugger
10/10/00: Lieber(al)man creates new Jewish denomination
10/03/00: Space invaders
09/12/00: A Delicatessen Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand (with apologies to A. Lincoln)
08/23/00: Life's certainties
07/31/00: AlGore needs a doctor --- badly!
07/03/00: Only a coincidence?
06/01/00: Can a liberal make sense?
06/02/00: Never give a GOPer a break
05/17/00: Computers, OY VEY!
05/02/00: Cuba si, Castro nu
04/17/00: Gen. Kennedy for Commander-in-Chief
04/06/00: Guns, hypocrisy and common sense
03/31/00: What's sleazier than a lawyer?
03/23/00: Clinton the 3-D Man
03/10/00: Politics or Pro Wrestling?
02/28/00: Free advice to the pundits: Get a life --- and new jobs
02/14/00: She Flunked!

© 2000, Jackie Mason & Raul Felder. This article first appeared in online edition of The American Spectator.