I sensed it was all over for John Kerry in Florida upon learning that Roseanne Barr and Michael Moore would be at the Tallahasee/Leon County Civic Center election eve to rally the faithful to depose Prince W come on E-Day. After all, Leon County is a safe haven for Democratic presidential candidates such as Mondale, Dukakis, Clinton and Gore.
As the final returns from Florida starkly prove, the Michael and Roseanne road show would have done better to work the I-4 corridor circuit where the election was actually decided.
It was Moore’s second appearance in Tallahassee in a month. In October he spoke to a full house at Ruby Diamond auditorium on the FSU campus. Moore started his entertaining October anti-Bush harangue by bellowing out, “It’s great to back! The scene of the crime.” Moore, of course, was referring to the infamous 2000 election.
As dumb irony would have it, and though he didn’t mention it, in 2000 Moore spoke on behalf of Ralph Nader from the same podium in Ruby Diamond, warning students of the evil of the two party system and the necessity to vote for Ralph Nader. It was the same year in which Moore prepostorusly said in an interview published in “Working For Change:” “George Bush is not going to appoint justices who would overturn Roe vs Wade.” Adding further: “He’s not a right-wing ideologue.”
Although I voted without qualm the “lesser-evilist” ticket once again as I did in 2000, I can fully sympathize with Nader and his supporters who must have blanched when they read that Moore, unless he was misquoted, was now saying Nader was “crazy.” Surely Nader is no more crazier than John Kerry who managed to self-triangualate himself over the Iraq war by being first for it and then against it.
I truly find these silly, Zell Millerish attacks on Nader by fellow-lesser evilist (as though Nader were Richard Nixon incarnate and solely responsible for the 2000 election fiasco) creepy, weird and incredibly tiresome. And in the case of Michael Moore, who like Nader is a first rate, invaluable rabble rouser, hypocritical in the extreme.
Just as Zell Miller opportunistically demonized Kerry a mere couple of years after singing his praises as a war hero in order to prove his bona fides, Moore comes dangerously close to playing the same foolish role. In Kerry-esque fashion, it seems that Moore was for Nader–before he was against him.
In the end Bush beat Kerry by 4 points in Florida, and Nader got less than one pecent. Message: we won’t have Ralph Nader to kick around for the next four years.
JACK McCARTHY lives in Tallahassee Florida. He can be reached at: jackm32301@yahoo.com
