Poor Jimmy Carter
View from the Peach State
Now don’t y’all go bad mouthing our Jimmy.
Jimmy Carter was elected president of the United States, once, way back in the 1970’s when his mind was fresh and not clouded by decades of inhaling the dust of peanut shells and the ethereal miasma of Plains, Georgia.
And before that he was our governor. Don’t rightly recall what he did then, but he must have done something, huh? I mean, you don’t get to sit at the governor’s desk and not do something. Of course back about then we had Lester “Ax handle” Mattox, too.
Some people say that Mr. Carter’s four years in office was the most failed presidency of the twentieth century. Others claim that Mr. Hoover’s was, which would make the Carter years only the second most disastrous. I don’t rightly know. I wasn’t around when either of them presided over the Oval Office. Nothing in my research ever connected either president with young interns and cigars in the O.O. But there was a joke that went around about both men that went something like this: “I bought a Carter (Hoover) doll. You wind it up and it does nothing for four years.” Those guys up in DC like to recycle jokes, I guess.
Down here in Georgia we all know that Mr. Carter was over his head as president. We voted for him anyway ‘cause he is one of us. It would be unpatriotic not to vote for him. Like pissing on the Confederate Battle Flag would be a bad, bad thing. We didn’t expect much out of his presidency; we were not disappointed.
These days, up in Massachusetts, according to my relatives in Boston, anyway, the voters don’t think Kerry stands a snowball’s chance in hell of getting elected, but if he does end up at 1600, they don’t think he can get much done except maybe make homosexual marriage the law of the land. I don’t know what Mr. Carter thought about that.
So some time recently, Mr. Carter escaped from his keepers and gave an interview to the GUARDIAN, a British publication over there in London which is in England. The poor old man (seventy-years of peanut shell dust, after all) apparently forgot where we was and what he used to do for a living and spent all of his time saying some really nasty stuff about President Bush and Prime Minister Blair. You see, there is a tradition in this country that a former president does not bad mouth a sitting president. It has worked pretty well for over two hundred years.
So if Mr. Carter is making malicious statements about Mr. Bush and our number one ally in the world, it simply means that the old, old man is so far into his dotage that he has already forgotten that he was once president. Sort of like Mr. Reagan fighting Alzheimer’s disease in the darkness of his later years.
Whatever Jimmy Carter has, it sure does play havoc with what’s left of his mind.
Down here in Georgia we want to remember the poor old man in ways that truly reflect his many contributions to our state. We recall fondly the ex president sitting on the roof of an unfinished house, pounding nails in his role as carpenter for habitat for Humanity. There is the powerful image of Jimmy astride a John Deere tractor, plowing the nutrient rich soil of his family farm. And of course we remember the man who donated his time so freely to fundraising for worthy causes like Georgia Public Television and Magnolia Blossoms Unlimited.
That’s our very own Jimmy Carter, a man of the people who made it all the way to Washington, failed, and returned home to join the legions of good old boys who have never journeyed further north than Macon. He’s our very own relic of a bygone era.
He’s not at all like Walter Cronkite, you know, but that is but one more sad tale of yet another useless old man.
Quickie this week, folks. Lots of stuff happening on our web site these days. You can catch it all at http://members.aol.com/luciusson/contents.html, where every link is a tale and every tale a link. You might want to check out http://politicalpuzzle.org where I have not yet been fed to the ‘gators.
I do have a new job. Your humble correspondent is a cook-trainee at an upscale Mexican restaurant near his home. He also washes dishes.
Ciao,
Luke Angelo
Macon, Georgia
Home Of The Annual Cherry Blossom Festival
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Luke Angelo, Cyberbrat Out Of Hell, lives in Macon, GA, where he regularly causes trouble and proves that the pen is far mightier than the Mayor
