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He promised the swamp would be drained,
Was elected, said "Rain!" and it rained
And the old crocodiles
Wore flesh-eating smiles
And the turtles were well entertained.
It's a wonderful satire right out of Twain or Thurber, a minority of the electorate goes for the loosest and least knowledgeable candidate, certain that he will lose and their votes will only be harmless protest, a middle finger to Washington, and then — whoa. The joke comes true. You put a whoopee cushion on your father's chair and he sits down and it barks and he has a massive coronary. You wanted to get a rise out of him and instead he falls down dead. Very funny.
Thank you, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania for this wonderful joke. Voters in high dudgeon against Wall Street manipulators and the Washington aristocracy vote for the billionaire populist who puts tycoons in power and the Republican hierarchy who owned the logjam that the voters voted against. If Billy the Kid had been smart, he'd've run for sheriff.
And now we sit and watch in disbelief as the victor drops one piece of china after another, spits in the soup, sticks his fist through a painting, and gobbles up the chocolates. Not satisfied with the usual election-night victory speech, he stages a post-election victory tour and gloatfest, a series of rallies in arenas where he can waggle his thumbs and smirk and holler and point out the journalists in their pen for the mob to boo and shake their fists at. He puts the Secret Service through their paces, highways are closed, planes diverted, cities disrupted, just so the man can say how much fun it was to defeat Hillary Clinton and confound the experts.
http://host.madison.com/ct/opinion/column/garrison-keillor-so-much-can-do/article_f062da49-9fe0-5735-9b76-32424d3f5cd7.html
Was elected, said "Rain!" and it rained
And the old crocodiles
Wore flesh-eating smiles
And the turtles were well entertained.
It's a wonderful satire right out of Twain or Thurber, a minority of the electorate goes for the loosest and least knowledgeable candidate, certain that he will lose and their votes will only be harmless protest, a middle finger to Washington, and then — whoa. The joke comes true. You put a whoopee cushion on your father's chair and he sits down and it barks and he has a massive coronary. You wanted to get a rise out of him and instead he falls down dead. Very funny.
Thank you, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania for this wonderful joke. Voters in high dudgeon against Wall Street manipulators and the Washington aristocracy vote for the billionaire populist who puts tycoons in power and the Republican hierarchy who owned the logjam that the voters voted against. If Billy the Kid had been smart, he'd've run for sheriff.
And now we sit and watch in disbelief as the victor drops one piece of china after another, spits in the soup, sticks his fist through a painting, and gobbles up the chocolates. Not satisfied with the usual election-night victory speech, he stages a post-election victory tour and gloatfest, a series of rallies in arenas where he can waggle his thumbs and smirk and holler and point out the journalists in their pen for the mob to boo and shake their fists at. He puts the Secret Service through their paces, highways are closed, planes diverted, cities disrupted, just so the man can say how much fun it was to defeat Hillary Clinton and confound the experts.
http://host.madison.com/ct/opinion/column/garrison-keillor-so-much-can-do/article_f062da49-9fe0-5735-9b76-32424d3f5cd7.html