Micheal Stipe (I think that's his name...the singer from REM- ya know, the one that likes guys- what a moral authority!) was on Jay Leno's show and he wanted Jay to ask him about the number on his pants leg...he says 'that's the number of voters who were misrepresented in Florida in the last presidential election.' Now, not only is that patently ridiculous, it's an outright lie. There is no evidence whatsoever that any voters were misrepresented...even after the SELECTIVE recounts that Al Gore demanded, all the major newspapers who did counts in 2001 found that Bush would have won the election no matter how many recounts you did...even if you limited it to places that are majority democratic in voting, no matter how many cards you looked at and GUESSED the voter's intention...Bush won fair and square. I wrote an article for an online magazine where I quoted the federalist papers, where it seemed to me that it was basically being said that Americans weren't trustworthy enough to know about politics and the candidates, so that's why the electoral college was born. If you dig deeper, and if you look statistically...the college is imporant in that it gives smaller states, especially in the midwest a voice in the matter of who is elected president. Large states with a high electoral counts can make or break elections sometimes, but the heartland matters to. If popular vote was what we went by, then the candidates could cruise past most of the US and stick to NY, Florida, California, Texas, etc...the college gives every state a chance to have a say, to have their voice heard.
That being said- Stipe is an idiot to claim such nonsense when he knows he's lying. He mentioned that Leno and he had a mutual friend...Al Franken- the vile Franken who is making a living off his lies. Stipe made the comment that he was thankful that Leno didn't say the mutual friend was Bill O'Reilly- yet another idiotic statement from a man who clearly doesn't care enough to tell the truth, and will bash men (like O'Reilly) just because he disagrees with their honest point of view. How refreshing. Oh yeah...
Posted by Josh at October 28, 2003 11:44 PM | TrackBack