Phillipe + Jorge have all but given up on trying to watch and/or listen to anything involving the presidential election that emanates from the mass media, as we find we have to take our skin for a crawl whenever our source of news is someone like Brian Williams, Katie Couric, or God forbid, any of the wild-eyed, masturbating frothers on Fox News.
This includes Saturday Night Live. (A note to Lorne Michaels, whose show jumped the shark prior to the beginning of the 21st century: Now that your Thursday night half-hour specials have shown that you can barely fill 23 minutes of airtime with anything resembling quality material, how about cutting the weekend SNL back to that length, and obliterate the guest hosts, who are usually shoehorned into skits so bad it makes you wince and then run from the room screaming?
But your superior correspondents do enjoy coverage such as that offered at the online Yahoo Sports by Chris Chase on October 19, which made more sense than what you’ll hear from smarmy country boy Bob Schieffer, preening nancy George Strapitonolous, or the Night of the Talking Dead zombie Tom Blowkaw.
Chase’s post notes that Barack Obama’s winning 2004 Senate race that pushed him onto the national political scene could well have never happened had he run against a person from Chicago who dwarfs mere mortals in the state of Illinois: yes, the superhuman legend of whom we speak is . . . DITKA! (Another SNL aside — you’ll get this if you remember back when the show was funny at times.)
Mike Ditka, the immortal former head coach of the Chicago Bears, was nearly in the race. It was thought that Ditka (only one name at all times, please, like Butkus) might have actually been put up as the GOP candidate in the campaign. Chase explains, “Jack Ryan had won the Republican primary that year, but dropped out of the race after the release of embarrassing papers from his high-profile divorce with actress Jeri Ryan. The vacancy left GOP leaders in the state scrambling to find a replacement. With fears that the election was all but lost, Republicans wanted a major name to turn the tide. Ditka was that name.”
(Since our readers’ inquiring minds will want P+J to inform you about those “embarrassing papers,” you may recall Ryan took Jeri to sex clubs and wanted her to have sex in front of the other patrons. Like any good husband would do, right?)
Chase points out that the always-reliable Drudge Report said he would enter the race, “[B]ut, in the end, Ditka rebuffed the offer, saying he didn’t want to go through the rigors of a campaign or give up his lucrative jobs as an NFL analyst at ESPN or as an endorser of a casino and car dealership.”
Boy, did he get some lousy advice. Who says you can’t be a politician and endorse a casino? Look at House Speaker “Blackjack Billy” Murphy. And who better in a position of power than someone who has the credibility of a used car salesman? We elect them all the time.
