Common Tater
for release 06-10-05
Idaho
I call myself a commentator when really I'm just a common Tater. I don't have any inside information. I get the news from the same places that you do, newspapers, radio and television and the internet. I don't have Deep Throat whispering secrets in my ear or a tap on Dick Cheney's phone line.
To be a common Tater, about all you need is common sense, (I mean just enough sense not to book your vacations in Chernobyl or Baghdad) and a reasonable awareness of what is going on in the world.
How do we know what is going on in the world? We rely on the press. By the press I mean print publications as well as radio, television and now the internet. We trust these sources to provide us with a picture of the world that is beyond our own eyes. The common Tater with any common sense will eventually have to ask the question, "are these sources reliable?" Can we trust anything other than what we see with our own eyes?
The common sense answer to that question is: of course we can't. Anybody who understands the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle knows this. The observer always has an effect on the experiment. The reporter always colors the story with his point of view. The simple act of measurement or observation affects the results.
My feet are not on the ground in Baghdad. When CNN reports that a car bomb has exploded there, I pretty much have to take their word for it. The pictures usually tell more than the words and are more believable. This is why the beheading videos are so effective. Even if you don't speak Arabic, you can see what is going on. Seeing is believing.
On the other hand, when you see George Bush in the Rose Garden wearing rose colored glasses and telling us that everything is peachy in Iraq now that Uncle Sam has a bungalow there, do you believe him? Would it be more convincing if he were superimposed on films of roadside bombs going off and civilians and our own soldiers being killed daily? Pictures speak louder than words. It's just common sense.
The potato is a remarkable fruit. It produces food from air and dung. Of course it's not a fruit at all, but a tuber. The Tater grows underground. The common Tater is even worse. It grows anywhere and feeds on whatever is not fast enough to get away. He slurps up Republicrats as quickly as he gobbles Democricans. It's just common sense--eat or be eaten.
I used to play on occasion with a band called The Potatoes. It was a zany band, a Spike Jones affair. We played odd and cheesy instruments and did TV theme music and Xavier Cugat covers. I was proud to call myself a Tater. We knew that the potato was a staple of our economy. There were couch potatoes and potato chips and a whole state (Idaho) dedicated to potatoes. The Irish claim it as theirs, even though it probably came from Bolivia or Peru. The root has even become politicized. Do you believe that the French Fry originated in France? No. It came from upstate New York or Belgium, depending on who you want to believe. It's a method of cooking taters. Yet it has recently been used as a political symbol to represent the French refusal to participate in the coalition of the unwilling in the immoral war in Iraq. What's the difference between Freedom Fries and French Fries? Freedom Fries have more oil in them.
But if you call them French Fries people will naturally think they are French. The largest producer of french fries in the world is McCain Foods Limited, a Canadian company in Florenceville, New Brunswick. So, I suppose a common Tater would call them Canadian Fries. But in the end, whether you call them mashed or hash-browned or scalloped, they are all just Taters. Common sense tells us this. And I'm just a common Tater. But at least I'm not a Mr. Potato head like the idiots who are trying to run this country.
Maybe the French Fry is really in control. We have super-sized ourselves into obesity and our minds are so clogged with starch and grease that we elected the Bush Administration for the second time in a row and Gdub's most fervent supporters are the ones that stand to lose the most from his policies. The Red Staters are so giddy about bans on gay marriage and restrictions on abortion and appointment of rabid right-wing judges, that they fail to notice that their tax burden is greater, their Social Security promise is about to be broken, private pension plans are going to be worth ten cents on the dollar, they can't get on an airplane without giving their life histories and a DNA sample, the drug and healthcare industries are allowed to commit legal rape and their sons and daughters are fighting a pointless war when all they were trying to do by enlisting in the National Guard was to get the education which they couldn't afford otherwise because their Pell grants had been cut under the banner of No Tater Tot Left Behind.
Two terms? Fuck me once, shame on you. Fuck me twice shame on me. But don't mind me, I'm just a common Tater.
One potato, two potatoes, three potatoes four
Five potatoes, six potatoes, seven potatoes more
One potato, two potatoes, three potatoes four
Five potatoes, six potatoes, seven potatoes more
