Congratulations were in order this morning on The Today Programme, as John Humphrys announced a victory in the Florida primary for ‘Senator John McClane’, the NYPD tough nut usually famed for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. ‘I’m just a fly in the ointment, Hans. A monkey in the wrench’, McClane was heard to remark to international tea-leaf Hans Gruber during the incident at the Nakatomi Plaza in 1988.
Elsewhere on the campaign trail, Rudy Giuliani’s strategy of not campaigning anywhere but the Geriatric State earned him very few votes indeed, and suggested an arch-capitalist motivation for his candidacy. Did the former mayor of New York simply put his hat into the ring to profit from selling a wide array of merchandise (including hats, T-shirts, party packs, magnets, ‘Louisville Slugger’ baseball bats (a souvenir from the streets of New York), tumblers, golf balls, cufflinks, children’s bibs (one wonders if Democrats might buy them to see baby vomit on Guiliani’s face), etc etc)? Were all those people who faithfully pressed the ‘Donate’ button on Join Rudy dot com merely adding to the hardliner’s vacation fund?
He’ll quit tomorrow, then announce he’s opening a bar in the Maldives. Take a flight to visit him, you’ll find the old devil rolling in money, serving drinks through 100 dollar bills and wearing a straw hat weaved from treasury bonds – his sides fairly splitting at the humour of the situation. As if the man who single-handedly cleaned up New York could be guilty of such large-scale strategic incompetence.
Poor John Edwards – he certainly missed the boat on that one. Maybe there’s an Odd Couple-style sitcom on their varying fortunes in tax exile.
News hour, with Jerry Caesar 