Candidate's Night: Red Herring Bait

Tonight in the Community Center, Muttonchop City performs its own Passion Play, an ugly bit of business held under the misapprehension that it is informational. Only confirmed partisans show up, the same hundred and fifty people year after year. The factions gather, the *Monetizers lurking near the back, much as they probably did in high school, the *Fernando-Lamas supporters (many of whom are tiny, elderly ladies), huddling together towards the front.



The candidates sit elbow to elbow at folding tables in the front, studying their 3-minute speeches. They will give their speeches, then answer questions submitted from the audience, drawn at random from a box. Each question must be addressed to a particular candidate, from a particular shareholder, signed, which quashes spontaneity, thank God.


The factions' minds are already entirely made up, so speeches have no effect but to allow the audience the pleasure of either cheering or booing.


Monetizers have a unique, emphatic style of applause: it is stiff-armed, arch-backed, and thunderous, like a cross between the universal soldier and a performing seal:




The only point of the Q and A is to embarrass the enemy. The factions brew the questions in their secret conclaves, decide which enemy candidate is either the weakest or simply the most hated, and bombard that person with poison loaded question-bombs:

To Vincent Piano: "Are you going to tell us which of your children you are illegally putting on your income affadavit this year?"

To Mr. Polly: "After only living here for two years, how did you jump the list and get a two-bedroom apartment?"

Could laypersons manage to compact so much misinformation into such a small amount of space, or does it take a lawyer's touch?

JUST IN, MUTTONCHOP RIGHTS' LATEST:

Carefully timed to coincide with Candidate's Night, a masterpiece of concentrated untruth arrives in all 1,600 Muttonchop City mailboxes.

Oh the fatigue and eyestrain! More prevarication per square inch than Ahmed Chalabi's Medal of Freedom application. I can't set you straight lie-by-lie, but just as an example of MuttonChop Rights methodology:

• see where it says that those "opposing *Fernando-Lamas reconstitutions argue that such and such a tax should be assessed"? That's entirely untrue. The *Bureau of Taxing People may charge a huge, honking tax on *ko-ops that priv---er, *monetize. Our poor little group, which should be called Cassandras for Fernanado-Lamas, has been WARNING that this big, honking tax MIGHT be assessed.
• Our poor, little anti-*monetization group has never requested that the Bureau of Taxing People charge this big, honking tax; we don't have the power. If we are pushed over the cliff into Monetization, the last thing we want is that tax. The Bureau of Taxing People is looking into this tax because they want the money. They don't give a rat's behind what *Ko-operators for Fernando-Lamas want.
• On the other hand, that honking big tax would be on the three to nine-hundred THOUSAND dollars that these apartments might fetch us at market rates, apartments we *ko-operators got, and pay almost nothing for, thanks to YOU THE TAXPAYER. THAT'S YOU THE TAXPAYER. WHO PAYS THE TAXES WE DON'T. YOU. NOT US. YOU.
• Don't you think you should get your money back?

And later, more about the death threats!

It's late, Mr. Polly and I are tired. But yes, more death threats. Mr. Polly came back from Candidate's Night (Mrs. Polly cannot attend thanks to a predisposition to bullshit-induced nausea). According to some of the Monetizers, we are interfering with their God-Given right to monetize.

*all names, appearances and search terms have been changed to protect the Pollys from the wrath of their lovely neighbors. Except that pale woman---she looks EXACTLY like that.