Doin’ the limbo

As News Hits is being written, America still doesn’t know who’ll be our next prez. The talking heads are all atwitter, but few seem to be uttering anything useful. The same cannot be said of Flint native Michael Moore, who is making one incisive observation after another regarding the fiasco in Florida.

Take, for example, his outrage at the scorn being heaped on voters for the confusion caused by one county’s possibly illegal ballot.

“There was something about yesterday’s demonstrations in front of the courthouse in Palm Beach County that profoundly moved me,” wrote Moore in an e-mail message dated Nov. 10. “Hundreds of elderly Jewish citizens, many in tears, demanding, begging for someone to listen to them. They tried to explain that the ballot they voted on was so confusing they feared that they had actually voted for Pat Buchanan (a man who once said ‘Hitler was an individual of great courage’) instead of the man they wanted for president, Al Gore.

“Rather than being heard, they have been ridiculed across the country as being ‘stupid,’ ‘ignorant’ or ‘sore losers.’” Noting South Florida’s high concentration of Holocaust survivors, Moore writes, “Is it just me, or do these good people, all of whom have suffered enough in their lives, deserve not only our respect, but our commitment to see that their vote is counted?”

Demonstrating just how ludicrous the situation has become, Moore (who campaigned extensively for Ralph Nader) made this appeal in an e-mail to United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan:

“Dear Mr. Secretary General: Help us! Massive election fraud is taking place in an area that looks like a banana republic — but is actually part of the United States of America! … I ask that you appoint humanitarian ambassador/carpenter Jimmy Carter to head up an official United Nations team of election observers from Rwanda, Brunei, Bosnia and South Africa and send them to this state we call ‘Florida.’ … Remember that guy Milosevic in Yugoslavia trying to claim victory when he got the least number of votes? He would love Florida! Next to watching greyhound dogs run in circles, election fraud is South Florida’s favorite pastime. (I am enclosing, for your observer team, copies of the Miami Herald series on voter fraud which won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize.)”