The Writings of Burt Prelutsky

Random Thoughts About Elections, Executions, and Al Gore New in the last 14 days

November 29, 2006 - I am always fascinated by the low turnout in American elections. Some people blame it on lackluster candidates or the weather or on the belief that their one vote won’t make a difference. Nearly nine million Iraqis risked death by flaunting their purple thumbs, but the majority of Americans elect to stay home on election day. We pay lip service to democracy, liberty and universal suffrage, but the truth is that most of us would just rather not bother.
The big surprise is that, on occasion, elections have been determined by a mere handful of votes. Once in a very great while, the difference has turned out to be a single vote. I always wondered what must go through the mind of a losing candidate when that happens. How can be help but wonder what he might have done differently? As he tosses and turns, trying to get to sleep on election night, you have to assume he’s muttering something along the lines of “If only I’d returned my neighbor’s lawnmower” or “Maybe if I’d left that waitress a bigger tip” or even “I guess I shouldn’t have told mom how much I’ve always hated her tuna casserole.”
Recently, I came across a list of the eight most notorious serial killers in American history. Each of them made Jack the Ripper look like a piker when it came to murder. In no particular order, these sociopaths were Danny Rolling, David (The Son of Sam) Berkowitz, Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, John Wayne Gacy, Dennis (BTK) Rader, Richard (The Night Stalker) Ramirez, and Aileen Wuornos. Except for Dahmer, who was killed by a fellow prisoner four years after he entered prison, the one thing they all have in common is that they all lived for at least 10 years after being found guilty of their heinous crimes.
Berkowitz, who was sentenced to 365 years back in 1977, only has 336 years to go before he’ll walk out of jail a free man. Rader was sentenced to 10 consecutive life terms in 2005. I guess if he minds his p’s and q’s, he could get out in five life terms.
Ramirez was sentenced to death in 1989 and, probably because he committed his murders in California, all these years later he’s still around to receive mash notes from women who are even spookier than he is.
Although it took them between 10 and 12 years to execute Rolling, Bundy and Wuornos, Florida is the only state to have rid the world of more than one of these freaks. In fact, Illinois is the only other state to have executed one of the eight. Fourteen long years after being convicted of slaughtering a slew of teenage boys, John Wayne Gacy was finally sent off to meet his maker.
Two questions come to mind. The first: Why should it take so long for the system to carry out a judgment? The second: Why were Berkowitz and Rader given life sentences? What sort of insane legal system gives life for taking life?
Which finally brings us to Al Gore. How is it he is still around, still having media attention paid to him, still trying to pass himself off as one of the big brain people? It was bad enough when he was claiming to be the model for the boy in “Love Story” and even worse when he was claiming credit for the Internet. My own lasting impression of this buffoon was his planting a big wet one on Tipper at the Democratic presidential convention. Unfortunately for him, the Smooch Seen Around the World only succeeded in reminding us how desperate this fellow was to plant his rump in the Oval Office.
Somewhere along the way -- I have always suspected inside a Chinese fortune cookie -- Gore got the idea that he could ride global warming into the White House. That may have been even a goofier idea than the smooch. You may be able to arouse large numbers of people over such issues as Iraq, the economy, Islamic terrorism, even the price of gas at the pump. But there are, by actual count, 23 people who can get over-wrought about global warming, and only eight of them are old enough to vote.
By this time, I’m sure even Mrs. Gore wishes they’d gone to a Hungarian restaurant that fateful evening. The poor woman! Imagine having to listen to that blowhard blather on about that one single topic morning, noon and night. In my weirder moments, I picture the two of them in bed, and Tipper’s announcing, “Until you stop hogging all the blankets, Mr. Piggy, I want you to knock it off with the global warming!”