colonel@gloria.UUCP (George Sicherman) (09/15/84)
[Send a cat in to do a cat's job? How do you mean, Mr. Ned?] Boone, a Californian, had been nominated by the Governor of Kentucky, with handsome seconds from Alaska, Virginia, California, and Idaho. I was delighted. His symbols were coonskin caps (Boone-skins, his supporters were calling them) and b'ar guns (in fact, before politics, he'd been a chemist and later vice-president of one of the nation's largest pharmaceutical companies, had never had any kind of gun in his hands before in his life); his slogans: "Explore the moon with Boone!" and "We want Boone _soon!_" A thousand frenetic, hollering, coonskin-capped, placard- and flag-waggling, bull-roaring, Madison Avenue b'ar-gun-toting demonstrators had piled in, pushed wildly to the front, seized the microphones to broadcast their chants, looking like they might decide to take the Convention by force, when the Cat in the Hat turned up. Clinking and clanking in on that goofy clean-up machine of his, the machine now bearing in red-white-and-blue letters his famous line: "HAVE NO FEAR OF THIS MESS!" Maybe the Boone people thought the Cat was one of their own--certainly he was lugging a rusty old b'ar gun over what he had of a shoulder. At any rate, they went suddenly silent, quick as it takes to snap off the TV, and turned expectantly to the Cat, who said: "Hello! hello! How are you? Can you do What I can do?" Arms reached out from the clean-up machine, snatching Boone posters. The Cat shuffled them, passed them out again. Now they read: "Eat a prune at noon with Boone!" Another mechanical arm stretched forth and from the crowd plucked, by the seat of his honorable pants, Boone's nominator, the Governor of the State of Kentucky, by image a rotund dignified Southern gentleman, already looking a little out of character in his Boone-skin cap, much more so now dangling, rump-high, over the Convention floor, the tail of his cap down between his eyes. The Cat in the Hat lowered him to the platform, whisked off his coonskin cap. Under it was another, oddly a bit larger than the first. The Cat pulled this one off, revealing yet another, larger still. The next coonskin lay on the Governor's ears, the next flopped down over his eyes. As the Cat whisked off caps, the Governor gradually disappeared beneath them. Soon he was wearing a cap that covered his head and rested on his shoulders, then one that flopped down his shirt front, others that lay on his plump belly, reached to his knees, his shoes, until finally there was only one huge coonskin cap on the platform. The Cat lifted the cap: no Governor! Shouts of amazement, even fright, from the Convention floor. The Cat, though smiling still, looked perplexed. Silence fell. The Cat doffed his own Hat, and there, on his head, in the lotus position, sat the Governor of Kentucky. "_Me-You!_" the Governor said, then clapped a pudgy hand over his mouth, gazed sheepishly at the now wildly cheering, wildly hotting crowd. The Cat fired his b'ar gun suddenly, tremendous explosion and cloud of smoke: when it cleared, all the Boone-skins had turned into live raccoons which were scampering wildly about, sending the girls shrieking up onto chairs with lifted skirts. ... Robert Coover, "The Cat in the Hat for President" -- Col. G. L. Sicherman ...seismo!rochester!rocksanne!rocksvax!sunybcs!gloria!colonel
colonel@gloria.UUCP (George Sicherman) (11/02/84)
[Have no fear of this mess!] In case you want to read the "book" on the Cat's campaign, Viking Press published "The Cat in the Hat for President" in 1980 as _A Political Fable._ -- Col. G. L. Sicherman ...seismo!rochester!rocksanne!rocksvax!sunybcs!gloria!colonel