ELECTION 2000
Don't Disenfranchise Celebrity-Americans!
Let's not forget who is really in charge of the culture.
A statement from the Emergency Committee of Concerned Citizens Concerned About Citizens Who Have Concerns About Being Citizens on the Emergency Committee of Concerned Citizens:
We the undersigned couldn't help noticing a couple of big ads in the New York Times headlined "The Election Crisis" and signed by the Emergency Committee of Concerned Citizens 2000. The ECCC comprises some of America's leading intellectuals, as well as the kind of frothy celebrity airheads you find on the cheesier talk shows. The leading intellectuals (Robert DeNiro, Rosie O'Donnell, Bianca Jagger) and the celebrity airheads (Sean Wilentz of Princeton, Ronald Dworkin and Todd Gitlin of New York University) had come together because of a "constitutional crisis" that "must be addressed with utmost solemnity."
As Concerned Citizens, they were concerned that "as many as 19,000 Gore votes may have been nullified and that thousands of other voters may have been improperly turned away. . . . Although we respect the efforts of the Florida State Election Commission and both candidates to achieve an accurate tally, we believe that the serious and credible allegations of inaccuracies and irregularities require a definitive conclusion." To that end, the Concerned Citizens demanded a revote in Palm Beach County.
The Emergency Committee is the latest wheeze of Mr. Wilentz, the excitable professor last seen warning the House Judiciary Committee that, if they voted to impeach, "history will track you down and condemn you for your cravenness." The day after the election, Prof. Wilentz saw an excellent opportunity to pull together the old anti-impeachment band--Arthur Miller, Toni Morrison, Gloria Steinem--and take it on the road one more time.
So he fired off the above manifesto and an accompanying e-mail: "This will run in tomorrow's Times as a full page ad. (The text may get revised a bit before press time). Sign. And get me as many famous names as you can to sign it by 1 p.m. TODAY. EXTREMELY URGENT. Conservative names good if you can, but not essential. Mainstream. Famous/recognizable. . . HELP."
Trouble was, not all the Concerned Citizens knew what they were signing. Like those Palm Beach Jews who punched their chads for Pat Buchanan, prominent members of the Emergency Committee claimed they'd been "confused." Cass Sunstein of the University of Chicago told Slate's Timothy Noah that he didn't even know he'd agreed to join an Emergency Committee. Furthermore, he said, "I was very upset to see my name associated with a position that I reject." He also passed Slate a copy of a letter that he, Prof. Dworkin and Bruce Ackerman of Yale, had sent to the Times:
"We did not see or approve, and do not approve of, the Saturday advertisement on the op-ed page of the Times, which included a number of alleged 'signatories,' including us. The advertisement calls, far too prematurely, for new elections in Florida. We never saw the text and would not have signed it if we had."
To date, America's newspaper of record has chosen not to publish this letter. Worse, Philip Roth was upset to discover his name had been printed with an extra "l."
That is why we the undersigned have formed our own Emergency Committee. Thanks to this Concerned Citizen circus, America--hitherto a beacon to intellectually minded celebrities and celebrity minded intellectuals--is now the laughingstock of the world. This crisis must be addressed with utmost solemnity if we are to preserve the legitimacy of our intellectual-celebrity endorsement process.
Although we respect the efforts of Prof. Wilentz to achieve an accurate tally of Concerned Citizens, we believe that the allegations of inaccuracies and irregularities are serious and credible. Those who signed the advertisement should be asked to sign again as soon as possible, without pressure from any party, but under the strictest scrutiny. And there should be an accurate hand count, if possible, at Tina and Harry's place, cocktails, dress informal. Let the celebrity Intellectuals decide!
Our position has the wholehearted support (unconfirmed at time of press) of Prof. Sunstein. "Well, Sean sent me an e-mail asking me to sign," he told us angrily, "and the deal was I'd get to go on 'Rosie' and we'd do a medley from 'Bye Bye Birdie.' Next thing I know, Sean calls back and says Rosie's people are having second thoughts, but he can get me on some dog-and-pony show called 'Nightline,' yakking into the small hours night after night about whether a recertification stalemate in the Florida legislature means that, under the Constitution, the Supreme Court has to pitch it back to the Senate president pro tem to appoint as acting vice president an attorney general from a state with a 'p' in its name. I said 'Get real, man. Take your ad and shove it. No dice.' Sean said, 'Okay, I'll put you down as a dimpled chad.' "
With every passing day, we're getting reports of massive signatory intimidation, with many celebrities being turned away by Prof. Wilentz because they're no longer, in his chilling words, "famous/recognizable." The NAACP (National Association of Aging Celebrity Professors) has filed a civil-rights suit with Janet Reno, charging systemic discrimination. The Rev. Jesse Jackson has taken time out of his hectic schedule to go and jump up and down in the street outside Prof. Wilentz's office, even though he's not yet found a rhyme for "Wilentz." With him are some of those who've been "excluded from the process"--Henry Louis Gates, Anna Nicole Smith, William Sloan Coffin, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Jennifer Love Hewitt, F. Lee Bailey, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jerry Lee Lewis and Kathie Lee Gifford.
Gore campaign chairman William Daley yesterday issued this statement: "As the recount of Concerned Citizens proceeds, I am confident that we will see increased support from two leading pillars of our base, the Intellectual-American community and the Celebrity-American community. I myself held up the New York Times ad to the light and saw not only the faint signatures of Prof. Sunstein, Prof. Dworkin and Prof. Ackerman, but also those of Doris Kearns Goodwin, Tony Orlando and Soon-Yi Previn Allen. Following a favorable ruling from a Broward County judge, we were also able to discern the imprints of Princess Diana, Mahatma Gandhi, Alexis de Tocqueville, Socrates, and Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians."
How can the American people have faith in the celebrity-intellectual system on which the integrity of our republic rests? At this Emergency Committee, we have included only the names of those who responded to our own e-mail: "EXTREMELY URGENT! This will run in tomorrow's Journal. Sign. And get me as many famous names as you can by 1 p.m. TODAY! A few obscure constitutional scholars look good--NO MIDWESTERN STATE COLLEGES!!!--but what we're really looking for is supermodels, babes from Fox sitcoms, people who knew O.J., etc. Conservative names good for bipartisan fig leaf. Does anyone have Strom Thurmond's fax number? WE NEED IT NOW!! NOW!!!! How about Randy Weaver's? C'MON PEOPLE WORK WITH ME ON THIS!!!!!"
We urge Sean Wilentz, Bianca Jagger and their fellow thinkers to adopt the same high standards. It is no exaggeration to say that in his precipitous rush to certify his celebrity signatures, Prof. Wilentz is showing the kind of high-handed, brutal, intimidatory, totalitarian, Fascistic, neo-Nazi, thug tactics we haven't seen since Katherine Harris's last press conference.
Signed,
Mark Steyn
Professor of Chad Studies
Palm Beach University
Kevin Bacon
Prof. Alan Dershowitz
Ricki Lake
Maya Angelou
Wayne Newton
Prof. Larry Flynt
Prof. Arthur and Dr. Laura Schlessinger
Prof. Anita and Mr. Benny Hill
Dick Clark and Ed McMahon
(You may already have won!)
Sen. Dale Bumpers
Dale Evans
Harold Evans
Trigger
Tina Brown
Tina Sinatra
Phillip Rothh
Salman Rushdie
Phillipp Wroth
Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass
David Geffen
Joey Buttafuoco
Barney Frank
Barney the Dinosaur
James Brolin
Dr. Jack Kevorkian
Dionne Warwick and the Psychic Friends Network
The Four Tops
The Four Aces
The Four Lads
The Four Chads
Mr. Steyn is a columnist for Britian's Daily Telegraph and Canada's National Post.
