LOOK who’s chuckling into her mascara wand now.
Cruella De Vil has been vindicated.
The woman whose eye makeup was compared unfavorably to a drag queen’s by the Washington Post’s Style section, whose cheeks were rumored to possess the texture of pre-war wall plaster, has prevailed over a thicket of paunchy, balding, lawyers-of-a-certain-age working for the follicly embattled Al Gore.
Katherine Harris rules.
Yesterday, Judge N. Sanders Sauls of Tallahassee effectively threw a pudgy arm around Harris’ famously padded shoulders, no doubt risking a creamy berry-red lipstick smudge on his collar from her overdrawn mouth.
After listening patiently all weekend to the blather of the vice president’s lawyers, Sauls ruled, intelligently – a novelty in the state henceforth to be renamed Floriduh – that he could find no evidence votes were counted illegally, dishonestly or negligently.
Floriduh officials knew for years, said he, of weaknesses in the voting system. That they chose to ignore them was just too bad now. And besides, said the judge, there was no evidence that the outcome of the presidential election was affected by the state’s rampant stupidity, official incompetence or neglect by sun-addled bureaucrats.
Sauls said, in effect, that Katherine Harris, the much-vilified secretary of state, was correct when she certified the vote counts, and awarded the state’s 25 electoral votes – and ultimately the presidency – to George W. Bush.
Could this four-week election debacle be nearing a close?
Yeah, and Tipper is going on the Slim-Fast plan.
As a Gore voter who’s been embarrassed by the vice president’s pathetically selfish performance, I applauded Sauls’ ruling. And hoped, on grounds of decency, sanity and journalistic boredom, that Gore would grow up and accept defeat with grace.
Instead, within minutes, there was Gore’s main man, David Boies, the lawyer who, we are constantly reminded, brought mighty Microsoft to its knees. He vowed to appeal.
Boies’ pallid cheeks were marred with curious eruptions that resembled nothing so much as dimpled chads. Chads working single-mindedly through the ballot of his face, as if attempting to push through the skin to daylight.
The hair aboard his high-powered head hung down limply, looking stringy and untrimmed – as one might expect from a minimum-wage clerk at the 7-Eleven.
His thinning pate bore a cheap, orangey hue that looked as if he borrowed from Sen. Strom Thurmond’s dye pot. It complemented his off-the-rack suits and knit ties. A style meant for the anonymity of the office, not a national television audience.
Katherine Harris, mused The Washington Post, “is clearly presenting herself in a fake manner” to an “American public [that] doesn’t like falsehoods . . .
“One wonders how this Republican woman who can’t even use restraint when she’s wielding a mascara wand, will manage to use it and make sound decisions in this game of partisan one-upmanship.”
Well then, if Americans normally trust the manipulation of its laws to men who employ ordinary facial hygiene and appropriate clothing, how can we trust that a man as slipshod in his daily toilet as David Boies will exercise due authority when it comes to our lives?
At noon yesterday, the nation’s highest court spoke – in wonder, dismay and disbelief – at the lunacy afoot in Floriduh.
The Supremes, in their wisdom, took a look at their brethren on the Florida Supreme Court. And they issued a unanimous reply:
What the – – – -?
The high court was asked to decide if Floriduh judges were right when they said chad-crazed vote-counters needed 12 extra days to locate enough votes to put Al Gore in the White House.
Which shows just how dumb Floriduh is. Even after manipulating the law to suit Gore’s needs, he failed to win.
The Supreme Court threw the case back to the state.
It should be over now. But, I fear, the thing has begun anew.
At least Katherine Harris got a few good makeup tips on her way to vindication.