Better late than never

Would you buy a used car from this man?

Fredrick of Hollywood is on a campaign blitz, in case you hadn't noticed. The following is from the Day 1 campaign diary of a reporter-blogger trying to stay awake for the punch line:

Fred Thompson’s Wocket’s Wed Gware; no toilets in Council Bluffs; the homeless discuss the race

Matt Taibbi / Rolling Stone

I was only back on the campaign trail for about four hours before I started to feel unhappy again; this was back a few weeks ago, on actor Fred Thompson’s kickoff tour (see “Running on Empty” in the current Rolling Stone), specifically on a bus run between Des Moines and Council Bluffs on the afternoon of Thompson’s first day of campaigning.

Thompson had had a rough start to his presidential experience. His people had chosen to start things off by having a cow-eyed former Miss Iowa named Carolyn Haugland sing the national anthem for the large crowd of press and supporters gathered at a Des Moines convention center. Haugland is something every state should have – a right-wing beauty queen with a Hannitoid political blog (“That’s when it dawned on me,” she writes, “Bin Laden isn’t just a terrorist. He’s worse – a liberal!”) who eschews post-pageant catalogue work for stridently patriotic campaign performances. Her anthem would have been fine, except that she has a mild lisp. She ended up sounding like Robin Williams doing Elmer Fudd doing Bruce Springsteen doing “Fire.”

“Oah de wam-m-m-pahts we watch…” she belted. “Wuh so gaow-want-wee stwee-e-e-e-ming. And de wockets wed gware…!”

From there Thompson’s handlers cued his campaign video, entitled “The Hunt For Red November.” The signature propaganda piece in a campaign that labors openly to blur media fantasy and political reality, the video is additionally confusing in that it starts off with a photo array of Democratic candidates Edwards, Hillary and Obama, interspersed with a dramatic HUNT FOR RED NOVEMBER title frame set against a frankly “Red” background. I thought they were trying to say something about the “Reds” on the other ticket, and so did someone in the crowd behind me. “Do they mean communiss?” I heard someone whisper in an Iowan twang.

So I ran to Todd Harris, the Thompson campaign’s press guy, just to check. He seemed pissed by the question. “No,” he sighed. “Red November, red state. Republican.”

“Right, but in the original movie, it was Red like Lenin Red, and you’ve got Hillary and Edwards there all covered in red… Do we want a Red November, or do we not want a Red November?”

“We want it. Now it means Republican,” he said, trying to smile, then walked away.

You can find the rest of the article here.