A fellow by the name of Jeff Merkley is profiled today in the New York Times. It’s a classic off-election-year politics piece, the gist of which is Merkley’s keeping a low profile so that he may emerge in 2020 as a viable presidential candidate. Sort of like the old Yogi Berra line: Nobody goes to that restaurant anymore; it’s too crowded.
Anyway, as long as the presidency of this holy land has been tainted forever by the horse’s ass that occupies the White House today, I say, Why not Merkley for president?
First off, I haven’t even read the piece yet and I doubt if I will soonly, considering it’s a gorgeous June Sunday and I’d rather be doing something — anything — else. So I know nothing about this Merkley chap. He may be our messiah or he may be just another dope. I don’t know and I don’t care today. But I want him to be prez because it’d be so poetic to have a President Merkley.
See, some 20 years ago, Matt Groening and Co. joked that one day in the bizarro, psycho, comedic future there’d be a President Trump. Lo and behold, that’s what happened, natch. So let’s go back to the mid-1960s when Stanley Kubrick, Terry Southern, et al, gave us President Merkin Muffley.
Merkley (L) & Muffley
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You remember President Muffley, don’t you?
Hello?… Uh… Hello D- uh hello Dmitri? Listen, uh uh, I can’t hear too well. Do you suppose you could turn the music down just a little?… Oh-ho, that’s much better… yeah… huh… yes… Fine, I can hear you now, Dmitri… Clear and plain and coming through fine… I’m coming through fine, too, eh?… Good, then… well, then, as you say, we’re both coming through fine… Good… Well, it’s good that you’re fine and… and I’m fine… I agree with you, it’s great to be fine… a-ha-ha-ha-ha… Now then, Dmitri, you know how we’ve always talked about the possibility of something going wrong with the Bomb… The Bomb, Dmitri… The hydrogen bomb!… Well now, what happened is… ahm… one of our base commanders, he had a sort of… well, he went a little funny in the head… you know… just a little… funny. And, ah… he went and did a silly thing…
The Simpsons‘ President Trump became a reality. Why can’t Dr. Strangelove‘s President Merkin Muffley do the same. Or at least it’d be President Merkley. Sort of a portmanteau, no?
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