Stateside: Convention In A Rear View Mirror

I never did get to write a Convention Watch for the final few days of the Republican National Convention, but I know what stands out in my mind as I look back on it.

Tuesday night was Menagerie Night. First there was Arnold Schwarzenegger looking for all the world like a big ole pig, happy as can be, rolling around in a mud patch. This impression was but reinforced when I happened to turn to the TVLand Channel for some light relief only to find it was the episode of Green Acres where Arnold Ziffel goes off to Hollywood to become a movie star.

You remember Arnold Ziffel don't you? He's Mr Ziffel's pig, and he trots off to Hollywood with his neighbors -- Eva Gabor and Eddie Albert as Mr and Mrs Oliver Wendell Douglas -- in a convertible, carrying his little suitcase. Coincidentally, he is put in room 527, which is a number you might recognise for its place in the US tax code, where it regulates the activities of groups like Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and Moveon.org.

Then came The Chicks. Remember them? Me and my best friend (like countless other teenage girls in the Sixties) tried to emulate those two sisters from Kaukapakapa in the hope of singing stardom and the chance to wear a mini-skirt on Studio One. These modern day chicks of course come from the same egg. No, actually they don't or they'd look identical, since they are twins.

Yes, indeed, the Bush twins are a pair of eggs, and their strainedly unconventional convention introduction of their father's introduction of their mother was enough to make you hope someone will soon give them the authority to fire their speechwriters. Surely they can't really be such ditsy chicks?

Now, forgive me. I can't help it if I have an overactive surf gland and an imagination to match. Somewhere over on another channel I happened to glimpse a promo for a premiere later that evening of an adult animated TV serial called Father of the Pride. The lions in it are like those in The Lion King.

And I'll be blowed if the blue-suited First Lady didn't look like she'd had the same makeup artist set loose on her. Go on, replay your videotape or your Tivo and tell me if you don't see Laura Bush's eyes made up to look like they slant ever so slightly down towards the centre, just like a cat's. And isn't there something about the way her facial makeup makes her nose look almost flattened at the end, like a cute little kitten?

But here at last was a national figure who wasn't using the national convention platform to take shots at the other main candidate for president. Instead, she gave what one might call an Over the Teacups chat about how her hubby had strode alone in the White House garden as he contemplated what he should do about Iraq, early in 2003. And how they married three months after they met. (A suspicious timeframe in any country girl's book, if you ask me.)

Ah, don't moan to me about making cheap shots. Those who participate in farce must expect to be thought farcical. I'm sorry, though, if I've dissed the animal kingdom in any way.

As for Cheney and Bush, I'd jumped ark by then.

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