Wednesday, December 20, 2017

As Roy Moore rides off into the sunset, a reminder: no costumes

Sir John Floyd on Horseback, by Richard Westall (Metropolitan Museum of Art)
    
     Roy Moore lost Alabama's special senate race a little over a week ago, but he already seems like ancient history, a sepia figure out of a tin-type: the cowboy-hat-wearing, hang-the-1o-Commandments-high judge, praised by a supporter introducing him at a campaign rally for refusing to have sex with child prostitutes in a Vietnam brothel.
     Because that's the gold standard now.
     Before we let Moore ride off in to the sunset ... where do these guys go? I picture some Failed Republican Candidate Saloon, with Alan Keyes playing honky tonk piano and Al Salvi behind the bar.
     As Moore goes wherever he's bound—back to the 19th century from whence he came, perhaps—I'd like to make an observation that might have flown past people in the general hoopla that met his defeat.
     You might have missed the gales of ridicule Moore faced for riding his horse Sassy to the polls. (Is Alabama the frontier? I don't think of the state as being built on horsemanship. I guess Moore couldn't go to the polls riding piggyback on the shoulders of a slave. Maybe an aid talked him out of it.)
     He held the reins wrong—in both hands. The horse looked like it hated him. His legs stuck out awkwardly. The Internet and late-night television echoed with ridicule.
     "Can we vote for the horse?" Jimmy Fallon asked.
     There is a lesson here. Not for Moore—he'll never run again, please God. But Illinois is a stateful of politicians, and there is a clear, unabiguous message here:
     No costumes.

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9 comments:

  1. Wow. I haven't thought about Al Salvi in years. I often sat next to him in law school and could not believe the stuff that would come out of his mouth. My friends and I would often discuss it after class" can you believe what Salvi said today, ugh". Who knew that 30 plus years later we'd be saying the same thing daily about our President. If you'd told me that then I wouldn't have believed it. And to be fair, legitimately believed the stuff he said. The President not so much.

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    1. It seems as if the world has been taken over by people without memories. Trump contradicts himself daily and his followers act as if the previous day didn't exist.

      I have a memory. I recall that Al Salvi, the weekend before the election for US Senator, announced that the beloved anti-handgun activist James Brady, Reagan's press secretary, a man who was permanently disabled, both physically and cognitively by an assassin with a handgun, was a machine gun salesman. Brady, a republican, had campaigned against Salvi, a devoted guns rights proponent.

      At the time I thought it was the single dumbest thing I had every heard in a lifetime of following politics. He inaccurately accused a crippled gun control advocate of being an arms dealer. Salvi lost, of course.

      I also recall Salvi announcing to a reporter that he used hand sanitizer because he was concerned about shaking the dirty, germ infested hands of his supporters. Insulting potential voters.He is not the brightest bulb on the string.

      But there may have been a candidate as oblivious as Salvi. Bill Brady ran for governor against Pat Quinn in 2010. The week after Brady got his party's nomination, he introduced his first, post candidacy legislation. It was a bill to allow multiple pets to be euthanized simultaneously. The freshly minted candidate's first legislation after becoming a candidate for governor was to allow a whole bunch of pets to be killed together in a chamber. Apparently he had a pal who wanted approval to use his invention, a mass animal killing machine, in Illinois. You can't make it up.

      Is it no wonder the GOP has troubles in Illinois?

      A memory might not save the world, but it sure can be entertaining.

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  2. At least Sir John Floyd is riding a full sized horse, unlike Moore, who rides something between a Shetland Pony & a full sized horse!

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  3. I don't know anything about riding horses. he didn't fall off. in my world thats impressive. I think its sad we live in a society where we are the least bit surprised when someone like this doesn't get elected. in Illinois we seem assured of some bloviating gas bag for governor. their the only ones running likely to win the primary.
    we are assured of getting an old rich white man to run against the incumbent ORWM. No matter the costume the characters are all pretty much the same

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  4. To bad. One had looked forward to the judge trying to ride his pony into the Senate chamber.

    Comments about his unsavory sex life are almost too easy, but had he not
    passed on the chance to have sex with child prostitutes in Vietnam he might have come to an earlier appreciation of the advantages of doing it with grown women.

    Tom

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    1. If I can hazard a guess I'd say the age of the prostitutes was of less consequence than their their race.

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  5. Pretty neat transition from Joe Moore's pony to Rahm Emanuel's smile. I think he was foolish to personally apologize for the lawsuit against the Grier family. That just made sure that several months from now, people will remember his association with the lawsuit and not that he called it off.

    john

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  6. “Oh God it must be campaign time, Rahm is trying to look human again.”

    This. This is why I read this column. Slow clap.

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  7. Politicians supposedly have a rule: Never be photographed in hats or headgear of any kind. Bill Clinton supposedly refused to wear a hairnet when he toured the Eli's Cheesecake factory, and they let him get away with it.

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