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Nobody in Washington ever does anything without the
approval of his handlers, so I knew that Dan Quayle's
recent misspelling of potato
was no accident. To
find out more, I called my inside source: Ananias Ziegler,
media-relations director for the Committee That Really Runs
America.
You're right, Quayle's hot 'potatoe' was
deliberate,
Ziegler agreed. It was part of a
neo-Populist re-election strategy optimized after extensive
attitudinal research.
I think you're full of hot air,
I complained.
Trust me,
Ziegler said. I've always been right
before, haven't I? Way back in January, didn't I predict
that Bush would invade Los Angeles this year? Did anybody
else see that coming?
I checked my files. Ziegler was right. Okay. So how
does the inability to spell a common word translate into a
re-election strategy?
Bush and Quayle are both rich kids. But Americans
like their leaders to be 'just-plain-folks' types. Neither
Clinton nor Perot comes from abject poverty, but their
parents certainly weren't rich, either. So Bush and Quayle
are extremely vulnerable to charges that they're part of
the 'elite.'
I thought of the 1988 election. Didn't you use pork
rinds and horse shoes to turn George Bush from a silk purse
into a sow's ear?
I asked.
But it didn't stick,
Ziegler said. So we're
using Quayle this time. The more you guys make fun of young
Danforth for not being able to spell, the better we'll
do.
How's that?
I wondered in amazement.
Simple,
Ziegler said. The vast majority of
Americans can't spell. Look at the 'potatoe' and 'tomatoe'
you see on so many menus. Or the signs that say 'the
Smith's.' Only 40 percent of Americans buy even one book a
year. Our newspapers have been reduced to a commentary
about things that happened on non-literate
television.
So if most Americans can't spell, they'll identify
with Quayle?
Correct. It makes him seem like a regular guy, since
just about everybody has misspelled a few words. And then
Quayle will say that anyone who carps about his ignorance
is part of that awful 'cultural elite.'
Brilliant,
I agreed. Perot's a billionaire, so
he's elite, and Clinton's a Rhodes scholar -- another
elitist. But trust-fund Dan, the bad speller, must be a
regular guy, and by extension so is George Herbert Walker
of Andover and Yale.
You got it,
Ziegler concluded. The millions of
poorly educated Americans who aren't sure of their spelling
-- the vast majority -- will empathize with Quayle, and
they will close ranks to defend him against attacks from
elitist slime like you. Just wait and see. It's going to
work better than the Pledge and Willie Horton.
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