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‘Bush Stole the Election’ Protest Makes the News

ob Kunst of the Oral Majority drove the full length of Florida last weekend, arriving in the panhandle Monday, in tandem with Mr. Bush. He’d driven from Miami Beach. Mr. Bush’s theft of Election 2000 continued to be his unforgiving theme.

For his part, Mr. Bush was attempting his first visit to this fabled state where election scandals once again were becoming fodder for TV and radio news talk shows. The scandals have returned in part because of a much-noticed report in the Palm Beach Post showing that Gore’s lead would have been 10 times that of Bush’s had ballots been properly counted.

"Over-votes cost Gore the election in Florida" said the headline. Palm Beach County Election Supervisor Theresa Le Pore’s badly designed ballot eliminated Gore’s 6,000+ votes, according to the newspaper’s review.

Ms. LePore claims that she’d presented the controversial ballot to Palm Beach Democratic leaders prior to the election, a claim, says Kunst, that they steadfastly deny. Many believe that in collusion with Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s forces she deliberately sabotaged Democratic voters.

They emphasize that she was not accessible on Election Day, November 7, to respond to voter complaints and difficulties.

In the wake of the November 7 fiasco, Broward County, Kunst points out , saw its ballots fully welcomed with both their chads and dimples by Ms. Harris. Thus, he believes, Harris set a standard that later was vehemently rejected and ridiculed by the Republican Bush juggernaut after it invaded the state to prevent all recounts.

Ms. LePore and other Palm Beach officials failed to recount local ballots in a timely manner. This is because the Palm Beach Supervisor , unlike Broward County officials, deliberately stopped the Palm Beach count on Thanksgiving Day. This delay allowed Katherine Harris to blithely reject Palm Beach’s late-arriving tallies.

The apparent collusion between Katherine Harris and Theresa LePore and the subsequent struggle waged by the Bush camp to prevent vote recounts is, says Kunst, "the missing link that AP and the media in general has ignored. The election was purposefully stolen." The media he fretted, might be trying to hide this fact in the name of what they dubiously call ‘stability’

The Oral Majority, growing rapidly because of hosts of disaffected Florida voters, is planning a 3 p.m. demonstration April 1^st at Theresa LePore’s Palm Beach County offices. The picketers will stress, says Bob Kunst, that on April Fools Day "there’s one official who can’t ever fool us, and we’re demanding her resignation as the county’s Election Supervisor. That official’s name is Theresa LePore."

The Oral Majority had spent March 10 leafleting and selling "No More Bushit" bumper stickers at Daytona ’s Bike Week celebration. "I didn’t know quite what to expect of the bikers," said Kunst, accompanied by other Oral Majority members, "but they bought up our bumper stickers like crazy, and showed us lots of enthusiastic support."

Negative responses to Katherine Harris, on the other hand, came from a broad cross section of Floridians last week. Ms. Harris had been chosen to present the winner of a horse race with a trophy. The Daily Racing Form carried a brief reference to the occasion, a story oddly ignored by the mainstream media. The Daily Racing Form’s Mike Welsch wrote:

Kunst didn’t know, as he drove toward Panama City, whether or not he’d be standing alone protesting Bush outside the Marina Civic Center in a predominantly Republican stronghold. He was joined spontaneously by willing pickets, however, numbering at various times between 14 and 20 persons.

Late in the afternoon, CNN showed Kunst holding a lengthy banner: "Bush Stole the Election" and, although the Oral Majority chair stood at that time with only one supporter, their banner as well as an accusatory television commercial were clearly shown on the news channel. The commercial, paid for by Bay County Democrats, also recalled Florida’s election fiasco and critiqued Bush’s disingenuous tax cut proposals.

Monday’s NBC-TV national news programming, in the context of other worrisome questions about Bush’s highly suspect plans, pictured the Panama City protesters and their "Bush Stole the Election" signs.

Monday’s startling decline on Wall Street seemed to throw into question any long-range economic optimism upon which Bush’s $ 1.6 trillion ten-year tax cut plan has been fashioned, through varied propaganda techniques, to appear prudent.

Kunst, who gave interviews and who was photographed by an impressive array of newspapers, emphasized that a major reason the U.S. economy is slowing is that subliminally many Americans can sense that there’s been an illegal coup d’etat and that their nervousness surrounding this issue manifests with a reduced desire to either invest or to spend.

Late Sunday, the Secret Service, with help from their bomb sniffing dogs, had made a sweep of the huge Panama City civic center. A second sweep took place shortly before either Bush or Kunst arrived. Those entering the civic center were escorted through a metal detector. Bush entered the center from the rear, avoiding both protesters and supporters.

"Yeah, he sure does trust the people," laughed Bob Kunst sarcastically, making reference to an oft repeated mantra used by the Bush election campaign last year, one which promised that Bush would be a "people truster".

Saturday’s Panama City News-Herald had announced that Kunst’s Oral Majority would be protesting Monday. It said:

"The Miami Beach group considers Bush an invalid president, saying Al Gore
should have been declared the winner of November's presidential election."

The Panama City newspaper also carried a full page ad, ‘An Open Letter to President George W. Bush", paid for by the Bay County Democratic Party. It reminded Bush he was 'selected', and that the 'mis-called election' was due to the enormous number of absentee ballots received in his favor statewide.

Kunst explained to me how absentee ballots in Bay County had strangely comprised 22% of the November 7 vote, a tactic solicited by Jeb Bush whose supporters spent $500,000 to foster a kind of vote they were sure would favor Republican voters.

"Absentee ballots," Kunst said, " are one key way to abuse the election."

The ad asked:

"Do you believe that all Americans should be given the same opportunity to
vote? Or do you believe that one sub-group of citizens should be allowed
easier access to the process of voting."

"Isn't it simply unfair to win by breaking the rules?"

In the wake of such troubling questions, the ad then critiqued Bush’s tax cut for the wealthy.

"Not a bad opening, especially since it came from the Democratic Party in Bay
County," noted Kunst, "which is more than what we got from the rest of Florida’s dead Democratic leadership and nationally, a leadership that’s ignored this Grand Theft of our Country to their own political demise."

"This ad," exulted Kunst, "started my day."

Kunst told me:

"I got to the Marina Civic Center by 8:30 A.M. and had already done my first
interview with the Panama City News Herald.

"I stood at the entrance to the Marina and it was cold, super windy and very
overcast and in fact we would be under a tornado warning till 3 P.M., yet it
didn't rain.

"I was there for an hour and getting lots of visible support for my
statement, before the Secret Service wanted me to move to the area set aside
for protesters, which was by an old Air Force Jet, and after some persuasion
they moved us further towards the Civic Center where we could be seen.

"At first I was by myself and then joined by a very nice guy from Rochester,
N.Y. touring America and also wanted to protest ‘Bushit’ for his own reasons
on the phony tax issue.

"Then we had a third guy show up, who left and then came back later with his
dog.

"All in all we had 20 protesters, but no more than 14 at any one time.

"Our ‘Bush Stole The Election’ banner also stole the show itself, for the
Bushit fans trying to get into this 2500 seat center had to wait in line and
see the banner from across the street, as well as the media who then came
over to talk.

The Oral Majority chair compiled a list of the newspapersand television crew members who had interviewed him throughout the day. They numbered approximately 25.

"We’ll see who said what on Tuesday morning," said a much-satisfied Kunst.

Late that night, The New York Times online had already quoted him. The next morning I accessed reports of Kunst’s protest in the Washington Post, the Washington Times, the Dallas Morning News, and several other papers.

The Dallas paper said:

"As Florida Democrats ran radio ads using the disputed election to attack the Bush tax-cut plan, a dozen protesters and a dog named Cocoa picketed the president's speech to Rotarians in this beach resort on the Gulf Coast.

The right-wing Washington Times got Kunst’s key point wrong, natch. Its reporter simply stated Kunst wanted "a more liberal standard in hand recounting" when, in fact, that "liberal standard" had already been accepted, as Kunst had pointed out, by Katherine Harris in her acceptance of Broward County’s recount. But the Washington Times reporters blatantly editorialized as follows:

Well, everybody already knows what to think about Bush and his high-handed U.S. Supreme Court. There are 673 professors of law, signers of a joint statement, who think the Supremes acted like GOP gofers. See: www.the-rule-of-law.com Where’s the national media been hiding this story? The New York Times ran it as an ad, yes, but as news? Nada.

GayToday correspondents are pointing out to me the subtle changes now in progress.

Last Tuesday’s USA Today covered Bush’s Florida trip on its front page. It could have emphasized his stupid tax cut plan, but no. Instead it focused on Bush’s intemperate scolding of the media for focussing on vote re-counts in Florida. The headline read: "Bush: Media should stop Florida ‘re-voting’."

Please, Mr. Bush, don’t call the media. We’ll call you!

GayToday’s political genius, BuckcuB, penned the following analysis of the media’s new stance:

I have indeed noticed the shift in the network coverage of Shrub and of his
opposition. More tellingly, I've been carefully monitoring the coverage on
both the AP and Reuters newswires and some key words are
beginning to appear that I've been looking for.

The wire services purport to offer almost-completely objective coverage, but
over the years I've noticed a change in the tone of coverage often signals a
shift in journalistic opinion -- and the networks instantly follow suit,
terrified of losing a single viewer to the print media. Here are a couple
of examples. Last week, the services both reported that the Bush tax cut
was "moving quickly" and "moving rapidly" through the House. But in
coverage today of the tax cut, AP's report said the Senate would be taking
up the tax cut which was "rushed" through the House. Reuter's described the
Senate would be looking at a tax cut which "Republican stalwarts pushed to
House approval with little opportunity for debate."

That subtle editorializing tells me that the Bush press honeymoon is over.
And I think that's part of the reason for the increased media attention to
anti-Bush protests. The instant that one major news organ turns to a
negative accent in coverage, that's it -- it's open season on the target.
My favorite wire service coverage of the last two days was a story about
Bush being protested by Democrats in Florida. The AP said Bush "scolded"
the Democrats. Reuters said Bush "quickly dismissed" Democratic comments
about the vote recount. Those words and phrases were not chosen by
accident; NOTHING on the wires is chosen by accident. I think, as you say,
that my latest suspicions have been confirmed. The news org's smell blood,
and I would bet that within two weeks we're going to see more and more
negative coverage of Bush, and positive coverage of his opposition. The
networks all discreetly trashed Ms. LePore's new "Punch It Out!" poster on
tonight's broadcasts, NBC even subtly suggesting that she was trying to
place the blame for the butterfly-ballot debacle on the voting public.
Delicious!

The fight goes on. Only 54 days into his illegal occupation, Bush is losing
the media. CNN's Spin Room had on Maxine Waters tonight, who openly said
Bush was not her President, and "he isn't really anyone's President. He
wasn't elected, he was selected." Even the snidely conservative Tucker
Carlson mostly kept his mouth shut, and didn't respond to the charge. The
worm is indeed turning, I believe, my friend!

I shared this interesting analysis with Bob Kunst, who was delighted changes in media coverage now appear to be taking place.

"Now! On to the Oscars!" hooted the smiling veteran activist, referring to his forthcoming trip to Los Angeles where, on March 25, he will present George W. Bush with an award for "Best performance in a coup d’etat."

Oral Majority Online: www.oralmajorityonline.com

Jack Nichols is the author of The Gay Agenda: Talking Back to the Fundamentalists (Prometheus Books, 1996) Of Men’s Liberation: A New Definition of Masculinity (Penguin Books, 1975) and of Welcome to Fire Island: Visions of Cherry Grove and The Pines (St. Martin’s Press, 1976)

richard e. schiff,
richard
e. schiff,
 richard e. schiff
Richard Schiff
 Richard Schiff
Richard Schiff ...

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