 
Among other recent events in the Land of Fruits and Nuts, former child star Gary Coleman (center in the top left photo) and Peter Camejo (top right photo), who ran for California governor on the Green Party ticket in November, have announced that they are candidates in the gubernatorial recall election scheduled for Oct. 7. Republican U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa (bottom photo), who got us into this fucking mess, cries like a baby today as he announces that he is withdrawing his recall candidacy.
Recall recoil
"Whatchu talkin' 'bout?"
That's how Arnold Drummond, the pint-sized sitcom character played by former child actor Gary Coleman, might say about the continuing California recall circus.
As I have reported already, Arianna Huffington, Arnold Schwarzenegger (hey, I can spell his name now without looking it up!), Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante and Hustler publisher Larry Flynt are among the crowded and growing field of candidates who would be guv.
Today the recall circus' ringmaster, Republican U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa, choking back tears, announced that he won't be a recall candidate after all. You would cry too if it happened to you -- if you'd spent $1.7 million of your own money to buy the governorship via a recall election only to have the Candidator take it away from you like candy from a baby. (Today Issa claimed that becoming governor was never his main goal in bankrolling the recall effort; liberating Californians from the clutches of the evil Democratic Gov. Gray Davis, whom the California voters re-elected in November, was his goal, he claimed.)
Former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan announced today that he won't be a Republican candidate in the recall, but that was expected, as he had said that he would not run if Schwarzenegger runs. Riordan endorsed Schwarzenegger today after Schwarzenegger announced his candidacy yesterday the way all serious politicians do: On "The Tonight Show."
Peter Camejo, the Green Party's gubernatorial candidate in November -- for whom I voted (he got 5.3 percent of the vote) -- announced today that he will be a candidate in the recall. I will not vote for him in the recall. I am angry at him because he had indicated that he would not run if Huffington runs and because he is further diluting the field of serious progressive recall candidates, which at this points includes Huffington, Bustamante and now him.
(California's insurance commissioner, also a Democrat, has announced that he is a recall candidate, but I don't expect that he'll get a whole shitload of votes. I mean, he's insurance commissioner. Still, every Democrat on the recall ballot makes it more difficult for the Democratic Party to maintain control of the governorship. You'd think that, unlike the Republicans, who eat their own young, Democrats would put their personal political ambitions on hold for the good of the party; but most of the recall candidates are baby boomers, each one of whom seems to believe that he or she is uniquely qualified to be Emperor or Empress of the Universe, so forget that.)
Republican Bill Simon, the idiot who lost to Davis in November, is expected to announce his recall candidacy tomorrow, the Associated Press reports.
Coleman, the 35-year-old former child star of the 1970s and 1980s TV sitcom "Diff'rent Strokes," filed his recall candidacy papers yesterday. (Now there are two Arnolds in the recall circus.) CNN reports that Coleman is running as a gag.
"Coleman's candidacy was engineered by the East Bay Express, an Oakland-area newspaper, which paid his $3,500 filing fee, collected the necessary petition signatures and is promoting his candidacy in protest of the scheduled vote aimed at recalling Gov. Gray Davis," CNN reports.
Watermelon-smashing comedian Gallagher also is seeking to be put on the recall ballot, according to the Associated Press.
I am alarmed that many, if not most, of my fellow Californians and the mainstream media seem to regard the recall as a kind of rather harmless joke. (The Schwarzenegger-movie references -- "total recall," "I'll be back," "Hasta la vista," "the running man," etc. -- are especially tiresome. As my brother suggests, the Democrats might want to adopt some Schwarzenegger-movie references of their own, such as "predator" or "raw deal" or maybe even "true lies.")
Yes, the recall does have elements of a freak show, a "carnival," as U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein has called it. (Again, thank Issa, whom California Democratic Party spokesman Bob Mulholland accurately calls "the arsonist who fled the scene of the fire." "He didn't stick around to watch the fire, but he's created a mess -- $1.7 million for his own political ambition and now he's fleeing the scene," the Associated Press quotes Mulholland as having said.)
I do have a sense of humor, but at the same time, California is the most populous state in the nation and it faces serious problems, including its $38 billion budget deficit, brought to us largely by Enron and other subsidiaries of BushCheneyCorp.*
The recall might have us laughing right now, but a Gov. Schwarzenegger or a Gov. Flynt or a Gov. Coleman will have us crying later.
*Funny how the recall supporters' biggest criticism of Davis is California's budget deficit; curiously, these same people aren't calling for the head of Republican in Chief George W. Bush, who turned President Clinton's federal budget surplus into a record-smashing projected federal budget deficit of $455 billion for this year alone. Also, with the bullshit recall election expected to cost California taxpayers more than $65 million, the Republicans are demonstrating their ability to improve California's economy even before one of them steals the governorship.
8:58:00 PM 
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