Today’s post comes from Congressman Loomis Beechly, representing Minnesota’s 9th district – all the water surface area in the state.

Greetings, Constituents,

With the midterm election now less than two weeks away, I just made the startling discovery that I don’t actually have an opponent this time.  The adversary I thought I was facing is a guy who left me a terse note at a bait shop in Leech Lake three months ago saying he was going to make me wriggle like a nightcrawler on the Hook of Truth.

When you hold public office, people say stuff like that to you all the time, so I wasn’t too troubled about being pierced but I took it as a signal to get busy with fundraising.

I have a talent for sizing people up, even over the phone!  Within a few words’ worth of conversation I can accurately name a person’s political persuasion and at lest two hot button issues.   It turns out there are a whole lot of rich people in America who are looking to reward any high official who happens to vote exactly the way they feel at the moment!

And they all live on lakes!

So I managed to collect a decent pile of money and then I realized there was no viable opposition because the Hook of Truth  guy was only good at turning phrases and could not come up with the filing fee.  He isn’t on the ballot after all.

But I know my funders gave me that money so I could mock and disparage someone, and I’m determined not to let them down!  All I had to do was find a person or entity who I could say was unequivocally in the wrong.

That’s when Lockheed stepped forward with a declaration that they have solved the elusive problem of creating massive amounts of energy with a compact device using cold fusion!

And then some other smarties stepped forward to say there’s no way they could have done that!

I don’t understand what any of them are talking about, but it’s not a difficult choice for me – I’m going with the skeptics.

Here’s the script for my first ad:

Music:
A heartbreakingly sad violin plays something classical and brainy.

Image:
A small boy rubs his sleeve on a frosted window to make a peephole, then looks out at the night sky.

Narrator:
Jimmy has dreams about tomorrow.

Image:
We see the boy from outside, his small face pressed against the glass. Camera pans up to see starts twinkling overhead.

Narrator:
He sees spaceships flying to Mars just like airplanes fly coast to coast today.

Image:
Flickering 50’s movies style aliens and spacecraft fill the screen.

Narrator:
Jimmy’s dreams are a harmless fantasy. But Lockheed Martin says his wish is coming true. They claim to have made an advance in cold fusion – something that could, if true, provide power for deep space exploration.

Image:
A woman puts her hand on Jimmy’s shoulder – It’s his mother. She lovingly invites him to go to the piano where we can see sheet music haphazardly stuffed into a little carrying case by the bench.

Narrator:
And for this, Jimmy is neglecting his piano studies. For this, he won’t be in his school orchestra. And for this, he won’t play in a terrible rock band when he hits his ’20’s – a rite of passage, bypassed.

Image:
Jimmy’s face re-appears in the frosted window, except this time it’s a sad, old Jimmy face. His life has been wasted.

Narrator:
Because Lockheed Martin got his hopes up, Jimmy wasted a promising life waiting for compact cold fusion to become a reality. That’s not his fault. It was always just about to happen.

Image:
Jimmy’s tombstone, with engravings that indicate he lived a long, unproductive life, and with a tiny zooming spaceship carved into the granite over his name.

Narrator:
Lockheed Martin’s Cold Fusion Dream: Wrong for Jimmy. Wrong for America.

Beechly:
I’m Congressman Loomis Beechly and I approve this message because I had to use the money against SOMETHING most people don’t understand.

 

I think that’s a great ad, and I’m only a little bit sorry I had to use it against a fine, rich company like Lockheed Martin. I would have much rather used it to attack some other, smaller, less-well-off person, but I just don’t have any opposition this year!

Maybe next year, somebody with deep pockets will fund an opponent for me, so I can really have a good time!

Politically Yours,
Congressman Loomis Beechly

What makes you Go Negative?