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Virtual Surreality
Campaign 2000 Enters the Twilight Zone
by Tamara Baker

Saturday, Dept. 16, 2000 -- SAINT PAUL, MINNESOTA (AmpolNS) -- I'm beginning to wonder if we all haven't been given massive doses of purple microdot.

Seriously.

This campaign season is just so bizarre that words like "bizarre" don't even come close to capturing it.

And all because of the Austin Dauphin and his retinue.

Heironymous Bosch, The Cure for Subliminables. L-R: Pappy Bush, Dubya Bush, Dick Cheney, Karen "She's a maaan, bay-bee" Hughes
Ever since the religious right warned Dubya off from picking Tom Ridge for his running mate, things in the Bush campaign have gone from bad to worse to awful to Hieronymous Bosch-level awful. Not only is the Shrub being tortured for his sins, it's happening at the hands of multi-limbed grotesqueries of his own devising.

Was it only two weeks ago that I first predicted Shrub's downfall? I mentioned Bush's inability to undo Gore's post-campaign boost, coupled with the extreme difficulty the Austin Dauphin has with staying on message. (And it certainly doesn't help that he, and his campaign, are still taking the weekends off even as Al and Joe rip through the nation like hot knives through butter.)

And this was BEFORE the "Major League Asshole" gaffe and the non-apology apology.

BEFORE the "RATS" fiasco and Bush's "subliminable" response to it.

BEFORE the "Is Bush dyslexic?" controversy.

No wonder Gore's pulling away.

The RNC, in a desperate attempt to stem the bleeding, has decided to make a federal case out of the Clintons using the Lincoln Bedroom as it has always been used: a means to honor important and honorable guests.

Whoop-tee-doo. We've been down this road before, and it leads only to a dry well at the end.

Meanwhile, every prominent op-ed columnist, every nationally syndicated editorial cartoonist, and every late-night comedian has been staggering under the barrage of free first-rate comedy fodder gifted to them by George W. Bush.

In the past few days, you couldn't have turned on a TV after 10 PM at night without running into somebody riffing on Bush's butchering of the word "subliminal". Or Dick Cheney's "big-time" affirmation of Shrub's dissing Adam Clymer of the New York Times, the alleged "liberal Bush attacker" who voted for Dole in 1996. Or the Bush campaign's backfired attempt at "subliminable" advertising. Even Maureen Dowd, no friend of Al Gore's, just teed off on Shrub over that one in what is her best column yet.

This campaign has reached Hunter S. Thompson levels of weird, and it finally looks as if, now that the going's gotten weird, the weirdoes in Austin have turned pro, Mr. Gillespie. Though even he can't save this Salvador-Dali-on-acid campaign, not now. Not now that we've seen the Shrub and his crack(ed?) staff show us what they're made of.