By Reid Collins on 12.9.02 @ 12:04AM
Two American myths died over the weekend: Bigfoot, and the invincibility of President Bush's political powers of persuasion.
Two American myths died over the weekend: Bigfoot, and the
invincibility of President Bush's political powers of
persuasion.
Bigfoot was exposed as a put-on by the family of Ray L. Wallace,
who himself passed away in late November at age 84. The family says
Wallace was playing a trick on a bulldozer operator for the Wallace
Construction company in 1958 in Humboldt County, California.
Wallace had some giant humanoid feet carved out of alder wood and
he and brother Wilbur stomped around the 'dozer, leaving 16-inch
footprints the Humboldt Times in Eureka dubbed "Bigfoot."
A credulous nation, then the world, adopted the American version of
the Abominable Snowman, and the possibility of an uncharted
creature stomping around America's forests was off and running.
The November off-year elections created the other myth: that
President Bush's popularity could actually unseat a comely blonde
Democratic Senator from Louisiana and put in her place a sterner
Republican brunette hand-picked by the GOP to do the job in a
run-off election. Defeating Mary Landrieu became an all-ups effort.
Sent into the state were President Bush, his father and mother,
Vice President Cheney, Rudolph Giuliani and Bob Dole as well as
bags of money. Polls indicated the GOP candidate, Suzanne Terrell,
had closed the gap and in fact had winning momentum. Wrong. As
wrong as that analyst that insisted Everybody.com would reach
300.
Not only can outsiders not pronounce "Louisiana" to the
satisfaction of natives (it presents some of the difficulties of
"Louisville" to the untutored tongue), but also they overestimate
the persuasive powers anybody from that foreign state of Texas can
bring to bear in the Pelican State (not "Bayou State" as your own
seventh grade teacher thought). A Texas dog don't hunt in
Louisiana, which shares but one thing in common with Texas -- a
border.
Outsiders might have thought bringing Democratic Rep. Maxine
Waters in from California to canvas the state might be a Landrieu
mistake. But wrong again. Where do you think the black population
of Los Angeles came from, anyway? Clipper ships? No, a sizable
portion hailed from Louisiana which produced periodic waves of
out-migration to that more salubrious environment and there remains
an affinity between La. and L.A.
There is more. Much of Louisiana's economy lies offshore. Thus
the prospect of seizing Iraq by its oily throat loses some appeal.
Firing the administration's top echelon of economic advisers on the
very verge of the election may not have been a confidence builder,
either. Though heavily Roman Catholic, the state's southern reaches
are a laid-back, Europeanized Catholicism where the subject of
abortion may not resonate as some politicians would guess. How many
states' major cities would be comfortable in the appellation, "The
Big Easy"? "Light Sweet Crude" may be a traded petrol commodity,
but I swear I saw her dance one night in New Orleans.
The above are cited as needed excuses for those pundits whose
catechism in Bush political omnipotence can use some edits this
week.
To them another word of cheer. There are still those with utmost
confidence in the existence of Bigfoot. An Idaho professor insists
he has 40 or 50 casts of footprints that he believes were made by
some real unknown primates. You just gotta believe.
topics:
Trade, Catholicism, Abortion, Environment, Iraq, NATO, Oil
