I’m writing this from a secure location with a pencil I had to sharpen with my teeth, but stay with me, it will all become clear…
As you may recall, Republican Senator Bob Dole ran a losing presidential race against Bill Clinton in 1996. Vengeful after their defeat, the Republicans launched a political attack against President Clinton for an act of personal immorality. They impeached him in 1998. The impeachment failed, and we get the bill. Thanks, Republicans. After tying up the government for months and embarrassing the nation with detailed accounts of things not normally described in the press, the Republicans promised to restore dignity to the office of the President. After trashing it worldwide. Thanks, Republicans.
In 1999 Bob Dole made a series of commercials for Viagra and introduced America to the phrase, ‘erectile dysfunction.’ Was this just a case of a man who could have been President making us go ‘ew’? Or something more sinister?
Just two years later, Dole appeared in an ad for Pepsi where he leered at Britney Spears while stroking a small dog he was holding in his lap. Having failed to keep America distracted by what was going on below Bill Clinton’s belt, Republican operatives were setting up Bob Dole to bare his soul, as it were. Why did they want us to think about Bob Dole that way? And why Britney Spears?
A possible answer lies in an interview that Spears gave to Tucker Carlson six months after the start of the Iraq War.
CARLSON: A lot of entertainers have come out against the war in Iraq. Have you?
SPEARS: Honestly, I think we should just trust our president in every decision that he makes and we should just support that, you know, and be faithful in what happens.
CARLSON: Do you trust this president?
SPEARS: Yes, I do.
Think about what the CIA could do with a drug that made people’s brains as blindly trusting as Britney’s. Think of what would happen if they slipped it into our Pepsi. Bob Dole has made humiliating commercials for Pfizer Pharmaceuticals and Pepsico. Do you think he was just doing it for the money?
Far from it. His white-hot rage at being defeated by ‘Slick Willie’ Clinton has not abated. His faith in electoral democracy is gone. He lost.
And Spears. She started out as a spokeswoman for virginity, and then did the sex symbol thing. She knows that you can only do that for a limited time. The next step is a crash, repentance and getting religion. Her ‘disastrous’ performance was no accident. She’s just fast-tracking her career. As soon as she’s out of rehab she’ll become a virgin again, and take her kids back after they’re toilet trained. Liddy Dole can coach her on how to create her political profile. Britney has an exceptional ability to soak up all the press. She’s a perfect front for a new product aimed at curing our electoral dysfunction.
Recurring Nightmare 
Indeed, Ms Spears’ elucidation of her faith in Mr. Bush is at once inspiring and makes one proud to be a consumer. I have never been able to fathom Mr. Dole, understanding of course that he was an amazingly heroic soldier who sufferred ghastly wounds, but at the same time one of those remarkably unaccomplished politicians who remained in office as long as he wished. His bad temperament seems to have moderated in direct proportion to the largess bestowed upon him by drug companies and soda pop conglomerates. Mr. Dole was however wise enough to realize that it was time for a second career in commercialism unlike so many others who seem to haunt Congress forever. Mr. Robert Byrd of West Virginia, a former grand something in the KKK, brings new meaning to “overstayed your usefulness” and is virtually an embarassment, not because of his almost 90 years, but because he wears them so poorly. Whether he was ever a model for moral rectitude, and if wearing a sheet and burning crosses, is a worse sin than Mr. Clinton’s damages to Ms Lewinsky’s dress in the Oval Office, or his record of serial philandering, I leave to far wiser minds to discern. Politicians are a never ending source of amusement and human folly. It is such a shame that their antics can cause such harm and despair. One almost thinks than Ms Spears would not do too badly in Congress, once she emerges from rehab again and she might well do less harm.
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