colonel@gloria.UUCP (George Sicherman) (10/31/84)
[Can you do what I can do?] Just remember - if you hate ALL the candidates ... on the first Tuesday after the first Monday after Halloween, write in THE CAT IN THE HAT for PRESIDENT If you don't know how to write, ask one of our courteous election observers to help you. Though not as funny maybe, the Cat's most devastating act came during his and the Opponent's first--and last--nationally televised debate. The Opponent appeared wearing his familiar small-town brown fedora, and began to speak of his pioneer grandfathers, one a blacksmith, the other a prairie preacher. The Cat suddenly interrupted: "Off with your hat, please!" The hat flew off, and under it was found to be a banker's bowler. The Opponent, as though unaware of what was happening, continued his speech without a pause, but now he was talking about investment credits, the threat of peace and depression, and "dynamic" solutions to "the problems of inventory." "Off with your hat, please!" said the Cat in the Hat. The bowler flew off and there was a biretta. Now it was "soldiers of Christ" and "the Prince of Peace" and the menace of "atheistic materialism" and "families that pray together--" which got interrupted again by the Cat's command. Off flew the biretta, revealing a wide-banded golfer's straw, and the Opponent switched abruptly from Christian pieties to locker-room banter and a really awful story about a guy with piles. This was followed by a miner's helmet, a fraternity pledge cap, a periwig, a pith hat, a yarmulke, a football helmet, beret, ten-gallon hat, mortarboard, earmuffs, Marine general's cap, nightcap, morion, a half-collapsed beaver, a black billycock, a cowl, a crown, a feather, a flower. The Opponent rattled on insanely, now a jungle fighter, now a hippie, next a cop hollering for law and order, then a farmer shooting pigs, a sociologist discussing the "territorial imperative," a dry-goods salesman trying to make out in the big city. At last it was all running together in one mad gibberish of sound, hats flying off his head like a string of rockets, until--suddenly--he seemed to swallow his tongue; off flew the last hat, a dunce cap, revealing: the Cat's Hat, of course. In the sudden silence, he reached up and pinched it. ME-YOU! It convulsed the house, ended the debate, all but ended the campaign. The Opponent sat there in the Hat, giggling idiotically, squeezing it spasmodically. There was, in fact, talk afterwards about committing him to an institution, which would have caused a terrific international scandal, but the Cat generously undertook his reconstruction, beginning all over with the ABC's and a bunch of other letters the Cat had thought up. ... Robert Coover, "The Cat in the Hat for President" -- Col. G. L. Sicherman ...seismo!rochester!rocksanne!rocksvax!sunybcs!gloria!colonel