Vote For Kamala – Or Else!
The Top Ten Reasons To Support Kamala (and a few jokes)
Martin Lewis is a British producer, writer and humorist. Based in the US since 1982. In his five-decade career he has produced Monty Python, the Rutles, Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Rowan Atkinson, Billy Connolly, Pete Townshend, Sting, George Michael et al. He’s also proud to have produced a lot of mayhem…
Recently I received a request for a very noble cause. The folks who run the excellent online literary emporium McSweeneys Internet Tendency - have set up a website to promote the election of Kamala Harris.
They have called it “270 Reasons” – a clear allusion to the 270 votes needed to win the US presidency in that archaic institution - the electoral college.
I briefly digress to remind readers that the views of the 333,000,000 (that’s three hundred and thirty three MILLION!) Americans are not remotely as important as the opinions of just 538 voters in the electoral college. A system that was devised by the Founding Fathers in the 1770s as the best method to elect each US President.
They obviously knew what they were doing. As they didn’t want any riff-raff voting. No women, no blacks, no Irish, no dogs. You know the score…. They didn’t even want votes by men who didn’t own property! After all – why take account of the views of people too poor to own their own home?! Rental tenants? Get OUT of here!
So those fine, slave-owning, property-owning, white men certainly knew what they were doing when they devised the system
And though some constitutional amendments crept in over the past two centuries, permitting votes for tenants, women and – after 200 years of agitation – people of color – the basic system is still ludicrous.
That’s why the 39 million citizens of California are permitted a grand total of two senators in the US Senate. And the 580,000 citizens (and cattle) who constitute the entire population of Wyoming also get two senators in the US Senate!
So if you live in Wyoming it takes only 290,000 of you to get one senator.
But it takes 19.5 million of us in California to get that same one senator.
And that is fair and democratic because…?
I’m not advocating taking away either of those two senators from the good people (and cattle) of Wyoming
Just give us in California the other 16 senators we’d be entitled to in a real democracy!
The reality is that the USA is NOT a full democracy. It’s just the notion of democracy that seemed a good idea at the time to some very nice, very well-dressed 18th century slave-owners…
One must acknowledge that they they were pretty good about getting rid of a tyrannical British monarch. But not quite so good at devising an electoral system that was reasonably capable of being amended to take account of the enlightenment that had eluded them…
That peroration over with – I return to why I am writing this essay.
The project decided to seek essays about the importance of voting for Kamala Harris
And to pen those words they decide to invite what they described as “a polyphonic orchestra of brilliant writers, musicians, filmmakers, artists, and activists to weigh in about their plans to vote this November.”
Somehow an invitation found its way to me! I’m not a musician or artist. But I am a writer, a filmmaker and an activist. That’s three out of five disciplines. One of the few benefits of being polymathic…
Whether or not I’m “brilliant” is not for me to say. There have been a lot of words used to describe me over the decades. Many beginning with the letters “F”, “C” and “S”. And probably a few of those descriptives begin with the letter “B”. So perhaps I am qualified…
As for how I will vote this November? Alas I have no vote. I am taxed - but I have no vote. (So much for “no taxation without representation”!)
Why don’t I have a vote? Well I’ve lived in the USA since 1982 – very happily. Despite that uncorrected mistake of the Electoral College – I love this nation. But in an act of probably childish contrariness I have preferred to retain my British citizenship and not become an American. I remain an Alien. A LEGAL alien – but still an outsider.
I think it may be because I like being a fish-out-of-water. I think of myself as delightful lightly oak-flavored, Scottish Smoked Salmon – or that Rolls Royce of the sea – a grilled Dover Sole. But definitely a “creature of the deep”. An osteichthyes. (Latin for fish). And defiantly not IN-the-water!
Perhaps I’m inspired by the words of Gilbert & Sullivan – the 19th century composers of light opera . I hasten to clarify that I’m not referring to Gilbert O’Sullivan – the extravagantly-coiffed singer-songwriter who gave us "Clair, "Get Down" and "Alone Again (Naturally)"
In Gilbert & Sullivan’s “HMS Pinafore” a character sings of someone like me
In spite of all temptations To belong to other nations He remains an Englishman!
And that’s me…. I have remained an Englishman.
But that status and lack of a vote hasn’t stopped me being very politically active. In a very public way. As a commentator - in print (Time Magazine, Salon, Huffington Post et al) and on TV (CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, “Politically Incorrect,” Real Time With Bill Maher” etc etc). Indeed during one appearance with Joy Reid on MSNBC I so angered Donald Trump that he tweeted his anger at me!
As CBS News journalist Daniel Schorr remarked during Watergate about being #17 in the Top Twenty of Richard Nixon’s Enemies List – “It was a Badge of Honor. It was such a distinguished list. My lecture fees went up…”
Now that I’ve completed this lengthy preamble it is time for me to present my essay.
Well… of course before I do that I need to follow my preamble with a prologue!
Why am I presenting the essay for the “270 Reasons” website on my Substack?
Simple. The requirement by “270 Reasons” was for an essay of about 300 words
300 words?!
As you’ve just noticed it takes me a thousand words just to say “hello”!
So we arrived at a compromise.
I would write my full essay and post it on my Substack
And the lovely “270 Reasons” folks have posted a rather truncated version on their website. With a link to this full-length piece for those masochistic enough to want to read the whole megillah!
Here Starteth the Lesson!
WHY KAMALA?!
The request was to write something succinct about why I would like to see Kamala Harris elected. And to focus on the positive reasons rather than invoke anything negative about her opponent.
This creates two challenges for me.
Firstly, I am congenitally incapable of being brief. Some call me long-winded. I prefer to describe my writing as “generously comprehensive”.
Secondly, I am a huge admirer of Kamala Harris. But I am also British, schooled in the satire of my childhood hero who I was fortunate enough to subsequently work with and befriend - Peter Cook. Thus I am fatally attracted to the excoriation and ridicule of those I disdain. More so than penning paeans to those I admire.
I’m going to compromise. I won’t mention the name or deeds of Kamala’s rival. But I am compelled to advocate victory for Harris-Walz through the prism of the dire consequence if America doesn’t elect them.
And that dismal other Universe I fear might result in ME eventually becoming in charge of America! And - trust me on this - you really don’t want that...
Now I sense a tad of incredulity coming from you at this point. Allow me to explain.
We MUST elect Kamala Harris because if we don’t America will be in one of those crises that arise in families where an adult child goes off the rails and the long-suffering parents eventually decide to stage an intervention. We’re talking Britney Spears type conservatorship!
As I’m sure most of you know - much of the land mass of the United States was once part of the Great British Empire! With a nice pink coloring of all Britain’s colonial conquests on those atlases and globes we had as kids. (An off-topic observation: How odd that such a homophobic nation as Britain chose pink as its empire’s color on world cartography!)
Color us Pink! We Were The World! (Or a large chunk of it!)
On this map of the world every country that the British Empire ever invaded, colonized or exploited is shaded in a rather fetching shade of coral pink. Yes we British were rather ravenous for land and treasure… (I wonder why we were kicked out of so many nations!)
We only allowed you lot to declare independence and set up on your own after you beat us hollow during that little seven-year skirmish 1776-1783. And later when we failed to take New Orleans in the battle of 1815. On account of our infantry forgetting to bring ladders to scale the city walls. (Sadly all of this is true. British contractors and handymen are notorious for not remembering to bring their tools).
In any event - being very gracious parents we British permitted our American offspring to set up home and live independently of the Mother Country. And you did fairly well for a good while. Even came in handy during WW I and WW II when we needed a spot of help. And you sent your lads to Britain to assist us. (Eventually). As memorialized in that spiffing song by George M. Cohan about US troops in England. “Over-Paid, Over-Sexed and Over-Here”.
But while we looked on benevolently as our unruly offspring went through a messy adolescence - that Uncivil War as depicted in one of Ken Burns’ innumerable TV series… and the fight against Civil Wrongs in the 1950s and 1960s - we always thought our Yankee-residing kid would straighten out.
Our first awareness that you lot might need a product recall was 2000-2008. What WERE you thinking?! And then we understood. You WEREN’T thinking. But at least that couldn’t happen again. Then 2016 told us how wrong we were. And now here we are once more. On the brink of a fateful election.
Of course all that awkward racial stuff has been sorted out in the USA. It must have been. Because why else would Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts - he of the insufferably smug elitist smirk - declare in 2013 that there was no need to keep key provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 because so fair-minded and decent were his racist conservative cronies in the Republican Party - they could now all be trusted to behave honorably towards voters of color during elections! Yeah right!
Tom Lehrer summarized that disingenuous logic in a different context in his song the “MLF Lullaby” about the then (in 1965) vexing issue of whether or not we should permit Germany to re-arm.
Once all the Germans were warlike and mean
But that couldn't happen again
We taught them a lesson in 1918
And they've hardly bothered us since then…
Anyway - if you lot pull up your socks up and roll up your sleeves (tangential query: why is it that people can only work hard if they roll their sleeves up?!) and elect the intelligent, caring, compassionate, efficacious, joyous Kamala Harris – then you’ll be fine. We British will see that you have finally gotten hold of yourselves.
But if not - this is what will happen in double-quick time:
1) King Charles III (by the way - don’t ask him what happened to Charles I and Charles II - it would cut him the wrong way. Cause him ‘axe-iety’…) would issue an edict that America is officially out-of-control. And needs to be placed under parental control for a period of supervision until the kid gets straightened out
2) My very good friend King Charlie - who I once met and conversed with at an L.A. garden party in 1994 for just slightly over 17 seconds - would immediately wish to appoint a trusted and loyal British subject who is familiar with America as Lord Protector of the US. And who better than me?! Certainly not that over-dimpled John Oliver with his brilliant formulaic “insert the F-word two and a half times every show. It gets a good laugh…”
3) I’ve lived here since 1982. I’m already RESIDENT of the United States. So I’m just one “P" away from being President. Which at my age is all too frequent...
4) I have a head start. After we met at the 2000 Democratic Convention which I was covering for Time Magazine - and she saw my business card, thereafter, whenever we encountered one another at political, social or cultural occasions, Nancy Pelosi took to calling me “Mr. Resident”. So I’m already more than half-way there…
5) What would I do that would be so terrible? Everything!
For a start I’d change the name of the nation. No more “United States”. This land would be called the “British States”. I would become - quite literally - President of B.S.
6) Sorry baseball fans… No more “World Series”! For a game played just by three and a half nations?! No way! For example: when was the last time an Albanian team competed?! It’ll be re-named the BS Series. When you invent a sport that other countries are remotely interested in playing - we’ll have another think about it.
7) “Football”?! No - that’s what the rest of the world plays. That you call “soccer”. What you call “football” contains very little connection between a foot and a ball. It consists mainly of over-sized men wearing sponsor-strewn padding who have slutty eye-liner painted 3 inches too low over their cheeks - brutally attacking each other! Try rugby. No padding. No Maybelline makeup. That’s a sport played by Real Men! So NFL and AFL? Tilt! Game Over!
8) I would order the deportation of TV commentators who ignorantly refer to an “affidavid” when they mean “affidavit”. (“Affi-David” would be the married name of the owner of the Palestinian chicken restaurant who tried to ‘fornicate’ the Jew out of Larry David – if she succeeded in luring Larry into marital hell).
The finger-lickin’-good Mrs Affi David
9) I would also outlaw baseball hats being worn backwards (after the age of 5), bubblegum, use of the word “awesome” - and the consumption of peanut butter, cilantro and bananas.
10) I would take all these actions not because any of the aforementioned things are intrinsically un-British (although most of them they are). But because I’m a cantankerous, curmudgeonly man in my seventies. And if you have a choice between someone who meets that description and the divinely gifted Kamala Harris … well you need to elect Kamala!
