| Campaign 2000: a biased view of history in the making at 3 in the am i decided to call it a night. gore had won the state of florida, did not look like he would miss out on any other key states. my first thought, before my head hit the pillow, was that all would be fine with the world. no maniac in the white house who might unleash on us ww3, just so that he could prove to his daddy that he too has the balls to fight the holy oil war in the middle east. a couple of hours later i awoke, turned on the boobtube and i realised that my time in dream land should have been spend watching cnn (the bastion of modern-day news gathering). ironically it was this bastion that gave millions of democrats the illusion of victory. how the hell is this possible? did we not defeat the y2k bug? how come a simple thing as reporting a tally can go so terribly wrong? one camp screaming conspiracy, the other camp claiming victory... and me trying to understand how come one man can win the popular vote while the other wins the electoral one. guess i should have paid closer attention to my government101 teacher instead of recuperating from a hang-over i won the night before after the highly quantitative intake of beer and shots. retrospect is a nice concept, useless but nice. that brings me back to the campaign2000. what if people could go back and revote. would all those nader devotees change their votes, would more democrats and republicans use their right to vote... would the outcome be the same? our friends at cnn spoke of a scenario that even the brightest of hollywood screenwriters couldn't come up with. have we forgotten "wag the dog" or "conspiracy theory"? but that's neither here nor there, what is important is the little bell that went off in my head. the one telling me to check my history books and find a presedent. after hours of wading through historic events there it was, a little footnote easily overlooked referring me to some obscure account of political mayhem that transpired here in holland over 150 years ago. i'm guessing most of you are raking your brains trying to figure out what i am talking about, maybe this will help you out... the gouda offence (better known as the cheese war of 1843). i will not try and bore you with the details of all that went on in those 34 terrible days of cow manure throwing, horse and buggy-by cheese pelting and the clog stomping that almost destroyed dutch civilisation as they knew it back then. but i will tell you this; you see, the netherlands (what you know as holland) has always been a little country that never really managed to influence world affairs. this country that today is only known for it's drug policy, was at that time only known for the yearly belching contest. after the contest of 1839, won by dirk biggut hailing from maastricht, a couple of cheese vendors got together to hatch a cunning plan. it had become obvious that cheese was the export product of the future, nostradamus after all had had a vision of cheese-burgers being popular all over the world, most popular of all being ronald macdonald from greenock near log-cheddar. the dutch cheese-burgers, not wanted to be outdone, decided to join forces and put holland on the world cheese map. but they needed a leader, someone who could stand the pressure of being the head cheese. from all over holland representatives gathered, debates were organised, cheese tastings became en vogue. after about 3 weeks of campaigning it became clear that either edam or gouda would have the privilege of representing hollands bid for world cheese domination. but something did not smell right, there was a third party cheese that thought it could do better, the Friese Nagelkaas (a.k.a. friesian nail cheese). as people flocked to the voting booths tension mounted. the polls came in, it was to close to call. from all sides people claimed victory, speeches were held, parties thrown, and cheese was consumed with a vigour never seen before (nor again...). what ensued is not really clear, and probably will never be known, but the outcome was the war. today we are familiar with gouda, and to a lesser extend edam, this because after the war both parties decided that a co-leadership was possible and more effective. eventhough the outcome of the war was a positive one for the dutch cheese burgers it had a negative effect on hollands bid for world domination. the french beat us with brie! the moral of the story is obvious, let bush become president and allow gore to remain as vice-president (after all the congress and senate are evenly devided) or france will invade and then no more mcdonalds or pizza huts, instead frog legs and snails will become your diet. hope you guys like garlic! … |