Article: Any true review of "Recount" at HBO must be subtitled "Look Back in Anger"

Any true review of "Recount" at HBO must be subtitled "Look Back in Anger"

Though I thought I knew a thing or two about American public life, before 2000, it was the "Recount" process that really lifted up the huge rock of illegitimate derring-do that's been going on in our country and its elections, for decades, and showed me all the countless things crawling grotesquely beneath it, many more than I ever could have possibly imagined, even in all of my worst case scenarios, as well as any combo thereof.

I finally was able to "feel" Lily Tomlin, when she said so memorably, "No matter how cynical I get, I just can't keep up."

It was my "Baptism by Recount."

The review reprinted from the SF Chronicle below hardly covers it, though. I don't care what anyone calls the people who supported Bush in the "Recount," the a.k.a. of "Republican" is just a crime partner euphemism for all those Frankenstein monsters sutured together from the spare body parts of Corporatismo, and that gathered in the Dawn of the Living Dead once John Elliot (as in, first cousin to John Elliot Bush, J.E.B.) "called" the Election out the back end of a 30 day contract at the Fox News elections desk, that November Evening that will live forever in infamy in the hearts of whoever is still left to give an Eff.

Most of us in the Election Reform movement know every jot and tittle of what transpired after that. And James Baker the Third (rhymes with Turd, no joke, as in "Turdblossom") was nothing noble, even for a moment, in that whole fiasco, and rather just everything venal and pimped.

To even give him any credit at all, in today's ill-conceived review by Tim Goodman of the SF Chronicle, as a feint at "fair and balanced, is like giving Josef Goebbels credit for being a great "propagandist," or whatever. These are feral derivatives of human beings, and deserve no mention whatsoever, now, then, or in the future. They betrayed every law and tenet of what makes our country worth caring about, as opposed to a cost/benefits analysis.

But, for me, the real hero of that whole schlepp of a process, cosmetically dubbed in the popular memory as a "Recount," was Gerald Richman, not Klain, nor any of the other cast of thousands, in suits. Richman argued the case for the Gore side in Seminole County, Florida ~~ as irrefutably as any case has ever been presented, anywhere, for my money ~~ and received a ludicrous judgment from Judge Nicki Clarke, one of the most cowardly in American history, who dismissed his arguments to have the vote thrown out due to partisan incursions and crimes by the Republican supervisor (such as giving party members exclusive access to the ROV computers months before the "vote") and "slapped" Richman across the face, and every law-abiding citizen the planet over, with the judicialese equivalent of "Nothing to see here folks, go about your business."

Ultimately, though, it wasn't the thousands of pages of newsprint I stored in a rented storage unit ( my sort of take on a metonym for "fertilizer bomb," in retrospect ) once all the newspaper coverage extruded through my doorways, but just one line from the New York Times.

A line that went missing. "The Shot Not Heard 'Round The World."

I'd just read the line in question, that evening, on one of the patron PC screens of the El Toro branch of the Orange County, CA, public library, as they were closing. It was recorded in the online edition of the New York Times, as breaking news, and later on the front page "above the fold," that in Miami Dade at the courthouse, where I'd lived right next door only a few years before, and where the "recount" was now being conducted. ( Well, that's quite the euphemism, as well: an Italian newspaper mocked us all when, on Thanksgiving eve, that whole affair was postponed by Supervisor Leahy, and two other sheepish accomplices ~ their expressions imprinted on my long-term synapses for ever and anon. as well as sickening our holidays' digestive cycles well through the next day and all left-overs, to boot ~~ with their headline, translated from the original Italian, "The Turkey Won").

And then, outdoing Kafka at his darkest and killingest, NYT informed us that the ballots were being shipped by Ryder Rent-A-Truck to Tallahassee and the pitiful Kangaroo Kourt of Sanders Sauls. Not to be outdone by any of the public record of these things, the correspondent saved the best for last, literally, as he signed off on his own Miami rapportage: his eyewitness news that two Republican "observers" were there with Leahy to pack and ship the ballots, once that had been projected by one and all to hold sufficient edge for Gore to give him the Presidency, and he concluded meekly with the stand alone sentence: "No Democratic observers were present."

I read that last sentence several times in stupefaction, as the library lights dimmed on/off to hint closure, and somewhat certain, for one surreal moment, that I was observing a rip in the Space Time Continuum.

I mean, not only was it incredible, even in the context of all of my worst Homeland experiences, that such a thing could happen, and with such global scrutiny of what was going down, not to mention substantial global ridicule ( such as this choice comment in the Times of London, early the Morning After, November 7, "What can only be called a charade of an election will have given hope to dictatorships everywhere...") but how could the NYT ~~whether in the worst of times or the best of times, no matter~~ even have the face to report it in such a way, let alone all the legions of guilty bystanders of the Press have the face to countenance, without comment, such a blatant theft !?

The library printers at my local branch were seconds shy of shutdown, that November evening, so I thought, "Well, I could rush and print this out, but, not to worry, I've kept my sub to the national hard copy of NYT for this very purpose, to get such revelations in the print edition."

I ran out at 4 AM six hours later, in my bathrobe, in the pre-dawn, when I heard the delivery of the paper, such as tossed over the garden wall of my place by Fernando, and tore open the plastic wrap to find the lines I'd read the night before.

They were the most invisible lines I've ever read.

They had stunningly been "Disappeared."

Somebody, channeling Karl Rove ~~ or perhaps the Rovester himself, when he himself was not channeling that ghoulish forebear who built German concentration camps ~~ had excised the inculpatory lines about this bogus aftermath of "The Brooks Brothers Riot."

I rifled through the paper for a half hour, to see where the infamous lines might have alighted, "No Democratic observers were present," but the phrase had disappeared into some wormwhole, of which there were many, and counting, as we all endured the death of our democracy.

This taught me something about American "Media."

Accept no substitutes. All the farcical alternatives, bogus simulacra, and impostors presented for our delectation, all these shams meant to stand in for a a democracy, all of which spell nothing more nor less, courtesy of the Fourth Estate, than the death of all our values, or any that are worth a crap.

But we learned once and for all in those hours that Major Media, in serpentine cahoots with various Major Mafia conjoined obscenely to hijack our democracy, had succeeded in their fell corporate chore, that day in a pivotal way. And pardon me, if I submit, that all the various flavors (candidates) we are presented this year just represent the latest pimps of that cresting Crime Wave. With the going cost for each primary vote, let alone the "real" ones in November, what can any finalist be in his or her candidacy, but a wholly owned subsidiary of what Garrison Keillor saw coming as "The United Corporations of America" ( or as Groucho Marx foresaw as "The United Snakes of America," and had to answer to HUAC, or its operative serpents, for his wit ).

"Two Party System" has become, merely ~~ and in a unique historical way, simply ~~ code among those who know, and any who are ready for more than the fairy tale, the left and right wing of Corporatismo The Only Game in Town.

Until people are really prepped on that sad fact we don't know enough even to protect ourselves and our public life or private dreams from these hoodlums.

They know who they are, and so must we.

Peace, and Power to the People and Public Protections:

John Ervin

NOTE BENE: Tom Sawyer to Huckleberry Finn in the opening pages of that eponymous piece of Americana: "Let's not do it, and say we did." ~Mark Twain

Tim Goodman's review of "Recount" in today's SF Chronicle: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/05/22/DDP210QBVO.DTL

PPS: As a very "personal postscript" to all who have lost loved ones in the Middle East conflagrations, a direct result of these electoral crimes, as well as a personal request to include all Iraqis and Afghanis in this Memorial Day remembrance, I offer my "attempts" at rhyme as we count bodies in place of votes:

Memorial Day 2008

( Victoria Caswell, in Memoriam ~~ 1951-1980 )

They will not fade

Who were never old

As we who were left behind

Grow old.

Suns can not fade

Their light

Nor hold them

When

At the going down of the sun

And in the morning light