HOME / the breakfast table: An e-mail conversation about the news of the day.

Arianna Huffington and Harry Shearer

electioneering and other ills

Posted Wednesday, May 27, 1998, at 10:53 AM ET

Arianna, re your message yesterday... I haven't seen Bulworth yet, I wasted my money last night on The Butcher Boy, which takes an Action News crime story and moves it to a picturesque location in Ireland. Right now I'm watching Darrel Issa, a Republican Senate candidate in California's stealth election, doing something rare in this campaign: subjecting himself to questions from people who aren't his admakers. There's one question I'm not hearing, though, with all the ritual obeisance to education reform and tax cutting (no, of course they're not mutually contradictory objectives): the question relates to Mr. Issa's fabulous fortune, made as the king of car alarms. Shouldn't his first platform promise upon election be to turn all those car alarms off--as they say in politics, "once and for all"? Has there ever been a shred of evidence that car alarms have prevented anything but sleep? If the king of car alarms can get elected, next thing you know, the inventor of telemarketing will be seeking our votes the only way he knows how--calling at dinnertime.

electioneering and other ills

Posted Wednesday, May 27, 1998, at 10:53 AM ET
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Arianna Huffington is a nationally syndicated columnist. Harry Shearer is host of radio's Le Show, a screenwriter, an actor, and provider of several voices on The Simpsons.
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