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In This Issue

• East Campus Drink-or-Treating
• Why Your Vote Doesn't Count
• Cheney-Edwards: Now That's A Ticket!
• Fed Fun Guide to Third Party Candidates
• Homeless Voters Choose
• Vintage T-shirt Democracy Plot
• A First lesson in Russian Swearing
• September 10th: The Adjective
• Letters to and from The Fed
• Zombie Reagan!
• Liberal Bias Alleged in Democratic Party
• Presidential Candidates Have Large Height Difference
• Lover's Lane Hook Psycho Mutilated
• Advice from the Manly
• Complete Presidential Debate Coverage
• Monsters of the World
• THEY WATCH
• Alarming Statistics on Brain Eating
• Ice Bitch for Election Day
• Where's Dick Cheney?

Stephanie Quan

They say cameras never lie...

Stephanie Quan

Suggested Occupations for ex-candidates

John Kerry is a tall man. As unfortunate as this may be for George W. and his supporters, it is something that they are just going to have to accept. Browsing the coverage of the first debate on CNN.com, I noticed that whenever pictures of George and John were displayed next to each other, split-screen style, Bush's head and shoulders were at the same level as Kerry's, or sometimes even higher. Yet strangely, Kerry stuck up much higher above his podium. Hmmm. Did someone accidentally give Kerry a midget podium? Bush also seemed to have a much larger head than his opponent. While I wasn't surprised to see that Bush had a big head, political cartoons have taught me that Kerry's head is much longer than Bush's, and if it's in a political cartoon, it must be true. Something wasn't right.

Searching Google for pictures of Bush and Kerry, I found that there were almost no pictures of the candidates actually standing next to each other, but there were many images of them placed beside each other, in which the two candidates appeared to be the same height. Clearly someone on the Bush campaign has made a deal with the media (yes, I am refering to the media as a single entity with which you can make deals-try and do something about it) to confuse the American people with optical illusions to make us think that President Bush is 6' 4". Possibly, Bush even believes his own illusion, just as he believes that the economy is strong, things are going well in Iraq, and Poland is a great and powerful ally, but I don't think the public is going to buy this one. If you look at those pictures from the first debate again, you'll notice that Kerry uses a much longer microphone than Bush, which in Freudian symbolism means that Kerry has a bigger dick, and would therefore be a manlier, stronger leader. (Bush is always trying to promote this image for himself by carrying around long, narrow shotguns. He also picked a big Dick as his vice president.) Actually, it just means that he's taller.

Most likely, Bush is gonna try to deal with the height gap by saying something like, "One day my opponent is 6'4", the next day he's 5'11". He's changed height so many times that he could play basketball against himself." This will just backfire on him, though, mostly because it makes Kerry sound way cooler than he actually is.

In fact, Kerry packs some serious presidential clout in those extra five inches. At 6'4", he's the same height as our tallest president ever, Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln is generally considered one of the greatest American presidents, and Kerry has much in common with him. Besides being the same height, both are ugly men, whose faces plus their height give them a sort of resemblance to Frankenstein's monster. Maybe the similarities end there, but that should be enough of a subliminal connection for some of these undecided voters, who, at this point, I can only imagine have no opinions on anything, except probably that they like Abraham Lincoln. And besides, everyone's gotta be thinking that having Frankenstein's monster for a president would be totally cool. He'd be much better at scaring terrorists than a cowboy.

Bush, on the other hand, measures in at a measly 5'11", below the presidential height mode-that's the most common height, for those of you who have fully blocked out the unpleasant experience of high school math-and below the presidential height average for the past forty years.

The Republicans have reason to be nervous about their candidates height deficiency because, as it turns out, in presidential politics, size does matter. The taller candidate has won the popular vote in every presidential election (except two) since 1888. FDR only got around this by being sneaky and using a wheelchair. No wonder the Bush camp insisted the candidates be ten feet apart at the first debate to disguise their height difference.

Now, I don't like Bush much, so I'm perfectly happy to have a tall man to bash him over the head with, but still, the short person in me can't help but wonder why we are choosing our presidents by their effectiveness as phallic symbols. Could it be that when my female, African American, under-five-feet-tall kindergarten teacher told me that this was a great country because any of us could grow up to be president, she was, in fact, deceived? Did she really mean that any of us could grow up to be president, as long as we grew up to be tall white men who went to Yale, have no facial hair, and are descended from passengers on the Mayflower? Shit! I misunderstood. I grew up all wrong. Now I'll never be president.