The Typewriter's Collage 2024 Presidential Endorsement
In a true show of editorial cowardice, The Washington Post & LA Times refused to endorse a presidential candidate. Never fear! Our braintrust at The Typewriter's Collage has no such colliwobbles.
Let’s face it. This election season has been filled with ups and downs, ins and outs, lefts and rights, hoofs and mouths. What a year it has been. And by “year” I mean these past two weeks.
Two corporate-owned newspapers, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times, have been pilloried (and rightly so) for not making a presidential endorsement. The reasons given by both behemoth media entitites for their respective decisions were classic examples of weasel-worded subterfuge.1
I know that you, my loyal readers—chockablock with voters both undecided and those solid with their choice—are always duly impressed by my sage political analysis, plus my keen ability to weave2 the word “chockablock" into a sentence. Hence, no matter what you do in the privacy of the voting booth, I humbly offer you my endorsement for the 2024 Presidential Election. Ignore my advice at risk of catastrophic implications for generations to come.
Let us review the candidates, compare and contrast their strengths, their weaknesses, and their ability to boldly lead us into a bright future. And by “a bright future” I mean the hellscape wherein we will forever dwell, regardless of the election’s outcome. Granted, political prognasticators been proffering doomsday warnings since the days of George “Gonzo Knickers” Washington, the Father of Our Country, and—if rumors are true—father of a few other countries on the side. Just sayin’
Candidate Pros & Cons
Senator Charles Palantine
Charles Palantine, senator from an undetermined state representing an undetermined party, albeit we know it’s the Democratic Party.3
Pros:
Takes Yellow Cabs to campaign events rather than limousines, thus saving taxpayers considerable scratch while showing solidarity with taxi drivers across the United States. Is on record as saying “Let me tell you something. I have learned more about America from riding in taxi cabs than in all the limos in the country.”
Listens to voters. For example: takes into account that this city here is like an open sewer, you know, it's full of filth and scum. Whoever becomes the President should just really clean it up, know what I mean? The President should clean up this whole mess here. He should flush it down the fuckin' toilet.
Senator Palantine is a dynamic man, an intelligent, interesting, fresh, fascinating...and I did not forget sexy.
Cons:
I would say Senator Palantine’s campaign worker Tom has quite a few problems. His energy seems to go in the wrong places….I don't like him. Not that I don't like him, I just think he's silly.
Potential Secret Service bodyguard, Henry Krinkle, can’t tell the difference between his zip code and phone number.
Wildcards:
Great slogan: We Are The People.
He is talking to me.
President Rufus T. Firefly of Freedonia
Pros:
He will not stand for anything that's crooked or unfair. He’s strictly on the up-and-up, so everyone beware. If anyone's caught taking graft and Firefly doesn't get his share, he’ll stand the offender up against the wall and pop! goes the weasel.
Has a mirror image.
Takes up the carpet before he takes up the tax.
Forget? You ask him to forget? A Firefly never forgets. Why, his ancestors would rise from their graves, and he’d only have to bury them again.
Cons:
Is an upstart. However, this can also be considered an attribute, depending on which ambassador he’s insulting.
Firefly can see you bending over a hot stove. But he can’t see the stove.
Firefly could dance with you until the cows come home. On second thought, he’d rather dance with the cows till you come home.
Wildcards:
In a fraternity with Chicolini, Pinky, and personal secretary Bob Roland.
Everything is duck soup.
And my endorsement goes to….
The President of Klopstokia!
Pros:
Not encumbered by a formal name.
Expert arm wrestler.
Develops outstanding Olympic track team; wins shotput throw for his country.
Daughter leaves the motion picture business and marries Harpo Marx.
Klopstokia’s Chief Exports: Goats and Nuts
Chief Imports: Goats and Nuts
Chief Inhabitants: Goats and Nuts
Cons:
Klopstokia constantly on verge of bankruptcy.
He is surrounded by spies. Sometimes mistrusts himself.
Wildcard:
Best stocked liquor cabinet in all of Hollywood.
Story Links:
Travis Bickle (Robert DeNiro) talks politics with presidential candidate Charles Palantine (Leonard Harris) in Taxi Driver (1976)
Rufus T. Firefly (Groucho Marx) details the rules of his presidential administration in Duck Soup (1933)
The President of Klopstokia (W. C. Fields) asserts his power in a clip from Million Dollar Legs. This whacked-out 1932 film is a must-watch in the Fields canon. It’s a Pre-Code movie that flew with unmitigated glee right under the radar of blue-nosed moralists and censors everywhere. Million Dollar Legs turns up on TCM every now and then. It’s also available in Blu-Ray and DVD. Avoid the colorized version on YouTube. It is an abomination unto thine eyes. (And if you don’t know what I mean by “pre-code,” here’s the history of 1930s Hollywood censorship known as “The Hays Code.”
Who is your favorite candidate, real, fictitious, or perhaps a combo of the two? That’s what the comment section is for. As we say here in Chicago: vote early, vote often.
Thanks for reading The Typewriter's Collage. Connect with me at Twitter/X, Bluesky, Threads, and Instagram at the handle @RealArnieB. I’m on LinkedIn and Facebook under my real name. While you’re at it, click your mouse or trackpad over to my website, www.arniebernstein.com.
And because you made it this far, here’s your bonus content:
W. C. Fields wasn’t just a gifted comedian. He got his showbiz start on the vaudeville circuits as a master juggler. Despite the well-deserved reputation Fields earned as Hollywood’s most enthusiastic imbiber of adult beverages, he was a graceful manipulator of balls, boxes, and more. In this clip from The Old Fashioned Way (1934) Fields recreates his unparalleled skills that earned him international acclaim, long before he became one of filmdom’s most irascible figures.
Oh, fiddlesticks! We all know the corporate stooges holding the overstuffed moneybags at The LA Times don’t want to offend advertisers, while Jeff Bezos, owner of The Washington Post and hybrid fusion of picaroon and lickspittle, doesn’t want to risk losing his Simon Bar Sinister business practices through the vexation of retalitory regulations by an Amazon-unfriendly president taking revenge on an unsupportive Bezos whilst sitting at the Resolute Desk.
And I don’t mean the “weave” as defined by You Know Who.
If you continually refer to the Democratic Party the “Democrat Party” even when you know it’s wrong, you suffer from a hopeless case of Playground Bully Idiotic Name-Calling Syndrome. I have no sympathy for your folly.
Your logic is unassailable. I am switching my vote from Pat Paulsen to Klopstokia. At least it won't have the nepotism that will come with a Firefly administration.
My candidate is Rasmus Malling-Hansen.