Minster: Bad habits die hard, even in election season
Election season doesn't change bad habits like exaggeration and dishonesty.
Monday, March 31st, 2008
I have a bad habit I'm going to have to break if I ever want to fulfill my dream of being elected president of a home-owners’ association: I have been known to exaggerate the truth.
There was a time that the American people accepted that from their leaders, but not any more. Now we demand complete honesty (or at least a more-complete destruction of contradictory evidence).
My dishonesty started as a fantasy I’d think about but never do. Then one day I signed in to the high school library as “Nikita Khrushchev,” and it was all downhill from there.
First I told myself it was something I had to do to protect myself. Had I used my real name at the library, the faculty would know I was ditching German class (again). Then I went on a trip to Washington, DC, and told the beggars who asked my name that I was Steve Lawrence. Why were they asking my name, anyway?
I knew my dishonesty had become a problem when I lied to my doctor. I had a medical problem that could have been associated with my city government desk job. When I got to the doctor’s office and filled out the paperwork, I decided that I could claim a thrilling job description and, as long as it was still a desk job, I wouldn’t be keeping my doctor from anything he needed to know. Instead of writing “city planner” for my line of work, I wrote “hostage negotiator.”
The doctor came in to my room and went through my questionnaire. He said, “So, you’re a hostage negotiator?”
I said, “That's right.”
“Really?”
“No.”
He said, “So what do you really do?” And then he made sort of a big deal out of crossing out my previous answer and writing in my new one.
I know that stunts like this have to stop or else they will derail my political career. No more claims of “sniper fire,” no matter how badly I’m losing. I will no longer claim to be People magazine’s reigning Sexiest Man Alive, despite how plausible it seems. Although I might make extensive use of the Internet, I will stop telling people that I invented it.
Of course, in the past few decades, America has made great strides in no longer giving a crap if its elected leaders have anything to hide.
Gone are the days when Thomas Eagleton had to give up a vice-presidential nomination because of previously suffering from depression.
Now we’re all looking forward to the Democrat Party’s convention in Denver, fully expecting Hillary Clinton to go nuts and knock over the microphone stand like in the climactic scene of “Billy Madison.”
Following the ouster of New York governor Eliot Spitzer his replacement, David Paterson, has decided to head off any future embarrassing revelations by providing them all to the media himself. He acknowledged affairs he may have financed with campaign money, and he admitted to past drug use.
If that’s really what it takes these days, then let me get two things off my chest: I wish happy birthdays to people even though I don’t really care if they have happy birthdays, and when flying, I use the noise of the airplane engines to allow me to fart with impunity.
There, I've said it.
I hope you can see past these youthful indiscretions and support the electoral juggernaut that is my campaign for home-owners’ association president.
Minster '08: Now More Than Ever.
Discussion
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I have to say, this is quite witty... I enjoy.
Good "Nikita Khrushchev" reference.
This was a funny article.
good stuff, entertaining, and sadly the truth
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