Classic Election Special

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello buglers and welcome to sub-episode A of Bugle issue 4171.

The A in this case standing for Andy Zoltzmann, in other words me, could not face doing an episode previewing the US election after banging on about it so much for the last few months anyway.

And I'm also not entirely convinced that the bugle is a particularly effective tool for swaying the opinions of undecided voters in the key swing states, with all due respect.

A also stands for also it is school half-term, so I thought I'd try to avoid awkward questions this week from my children, such as, Daddy, why have you spent the last 45 minutes in the shed shouting, they'd better not give the c four more years.

So instead, we're going to delve into the bugle archives for previous pre-US election bugles from years such as 2012, 2008, 1880.

Oh, sorry, I'm just hearing we did not actually record a pre-election episode that year.

Sorry to any James A.

Garfield fans, as if you lot haven't suffered enough.

And of course, 216.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We will record a snap post-election bugle on Wednesday with Nish Kumar and NATO Green.

I cannot guarantee exactly at this stage what the tone of that show will be.

All I will say is, don't worry, America, it doesn't really matter.

One day the universe will end.

So there's always that.

Right, Right, time to hop into the Bugle time machine and go back to our first ever US election in 2008.

Back in the days when one old white man was controversially seen as more than enough in any presidential election.

Your hosts back then in Bugle Issue 51, John Oliver and

I always forget the other one.

Top story this week and the Congo.

Just kidding, the US election.

Congo really picked the wrong time to plunge itself into a bloody civil war.

Well, we're nearly there, Andy, and barring a huge surprise.

Either Obama or McCain will be president-elect by the next episode of the Bugle.

That is, unless Hillary Clinton swoops in to take it at the last minute, or one of the founding fathers comes back from the dead.

Incidentally, my money would be on John Adams.

He's got Comeback Kid written all over him.

This week saw the debut of a 30-minute Obama primetime ad, which aired across seven US channels at an estimated cost of $1 million per channel.

Speak to Americans right where their heart is, the television set.

And through the very thing the television set was made for, the infomercial.

Ever since John Logie Baird first dreamed of selling a two-minute omelette maker to the public at three in the morning,

his historic invention has been building to this point.

The program itself should have been a ratings disaster.

It had none of the ingredients for a hit show.

There were no ex-celebrities either eating bugs or learning to ballroom dance.

There were no pets doing the funniest things.

No crime scene investigation of any kind.

And no overprivileged teenagers driving around in a Mercedes in the Hollywood Hills while arguing with each other.

And yet, somehow, it received an audience bigger than the World Series final game which followed it.

That should be put into perspective, Dandy.

That was the lowest rated World Series in baseball history.

It seems...

an alien concept to us here in Britain, John, where our longest part of political broadcast is about five minutes.

And even even in that time still manages usually to result in a fight for the crossword and a queue for the toilet in that order.

This bold move proved that not only would Obama make a terrific president, he'd make a passable mainstream documentary maker too.

Yes, his work would be a little syrupy, but his heart would be in the right place.

Some said the spot was so slick it could have been orchestrated by Karl Rove, which I suppose is a professional compliment and a personal insult.

In fact, no, I take that back.

It was just an insult.

I couldn't really spot in Obama's broadcast any overt terrorist messages.

And it seems that the election gets close, he's really playing that side of his personality down.

I think his campaign advisors have certainly said, don't make any major threats to America in any of your ads.

It's a time and a place for it.

The time is after the election, and the place is America.

Right.

Do you think he'll do it in his inauguration speech?

It'll all come out.

That's when people will be expecting it.

So I think he'll probably do it sometime the following week.

Oh, I see.

He'll just rip his chin off and reveal the fake beard underneath.

The real beard underneath the fake chin.

But nothing on the scale of this ad has ever been attempted before.

Although Ross Perot did try a 30-minute ad during his presidential campaign in 1992 and of course history proves that that worked brilliantly.

Obama did admit though that he's not a perfect man.

Yes.

Obama did say, I will not be a perfect president, but I can promise you this, I will always tell you what I think and where I stand.

Whoa then!

Not perfect.

Don't start pulling that shit now!

Let me make one thing perfectly clear: I'm looking for nothing short of complete perfection.

Anything less is going to be a crushing disappointment to me.

Rightly or wrongly, Obama has got my unreasonable expectations right up.

By the end of next year, I expect world peace, a strong economy, and polar bears writing letters asking if there can be less ice in the North Pole now because they've got more than enough.

That's right, I expect both global warming to be over and polar bears to have developed cogent thought, writing skills and indeed have invested in constructing their own postal system.

That is what I believe I've been promised over the last year by the Obama campaign.

If I don't receive it, I will take back the vote that I still cannot believe I don't technically have.

This, to me, John, this could be the own goal that costs him the election.

I mean, that's the gap the McCain team's been waiting for.

Because, you know, we've come to expect over the years, we've come to expect our presidents to be perfect.

We've become used to the ethereal flawlessness in the White House of people like Bush, Clinton, Bush, Reagan, Carter, Ford, Nixon, and so on.

It's flawless men with souls of gold, hearts of honey yoghurt, rippling six-packs, and quads to die for.

Do you know that Jimmy Carter could bench 470?

I did know that.

I did know that.

Yeah, but he did it in people.

He had a white spa and then he just had people hanging off the exact size.

If this huge ad ends up working on Tuesday, Andy, has it set a dangerous precedent?

Will future campaigns be boiled down to each side releasing one feature-length blockbuster movie and playing it non-stop for an entire week?

The boundaries are going to keep getting pushed back.

Who will release the first IMAX political ad?

Maybe McCain should have not only released a similar video, but done it in 3D, giving each home in America some 3D glasses, except, of course, judging the way that he's run his campaign so far, he'd have just used it for an attack ad, making Obama's face in black and white loom menacingly into people's front rooms.

Well, maybe he could do the first 24-hour real-time attack ad.

The outtakes from Obama's infomercial are absolutely hilarious.

At one point,

he saw a woman walk past who looked a bit like Tammy Winnette and started singing Stand By Your Man, but then he couldn't remember past the second line, so he just got as far as sometimes it's hard to be a woman giving all your love to just one man and then just broke down laughing.

Then there's another one where he puts on a bin Laden beard and shouts Death to the West.

Urn.

Death to the West urn.

It's an outdated genre of movie.

Oh, he had me going there.

Well, it was a very funny joke.

And he also said, God help America instead of God bless America.

I think that was a Freudian slip.

Such is the spending power of the Obama campaign.

He's even bought 30 seconds of the bugle.

So I'm afraid we're going to have to run his ad now.

Here it is.

Well, Andy, I mean, yes, that does seem a little light on content, but it's made me feel a bit better about everything.

I can't deny it.

It's all about impression at this stage of an election, John.

That's right, that's right.

We were never going to hear anything new from it,

but I do feel that he's no real thought.

I trust the man.

That sounded presidential to me.

I think it's a bit unfair, John.

We're skewing the bugle very much in favour of the Democrats, and that could prove absolutely crucial on polling day.

So I think, in the interest of balance, I'm going to donate 30 seconds of the bugle to John McCain, who clearly can't get away from the family.

Oh, that's a good idea.

So here is John McCain's 30 seconds of the bugle.

Barack, who shame a bomb.

Barack, who shame a bomb.

Barack, who shame a bomb, who shame?

Oh, cut that off.

Cut that off.

Oh, that is a shame.

That's beneath him, Andy.

Why does he keep stooping so low?

Is America actually excited anymore, John?

As the election is just days away now.

It's tired, Andy.

It's like a boxer that gone into the ring of a prize fight, excited, jumping around, listening to the music, bit of shadow boxing.

First five rounds, absolutely huge.

But now

America really is...

Towards the end, as both sides throwing towels, asking to stop the fight before someone gets hurt.

Both boxes just leaning up against each other and dribbling.

But the key to the election could prove to be those who can't vote.

For example, children, dead people, Iranians, and me.

And I feel just as you do, disenfranchise John.

I've watched a lot of this campaign on television.

Yeah.

And, you know,

I think we both deserve a go.

Our votes are being suppressed.

Well, I mean, the Constitution.

Yeah.

Which was never a good idea.

I said at the time it wasn't a good idea, that Constitution.

2008 there, but of course 2008 turned inextrably into the year London 2012.

And would you believe it, another presidential election.

And Barack Obama was up against a young whippersnapper by the name of Mathaniel Romney.

And that election was not just a political storm, well it wasn't really a political storm, it was relatively straightforward, but there was quite literally a quite literal storm as well.

Let's delve back to 2012 and Bugle issue 212.

Top story this week, f ⁇ you Chicago!

You just lost the title of Windy City.

Yes, we are leading with Hurricane Sandy this week, partly because that blustery bastard very nearly meant that we couldn't do a bugle at all today.

Hurricane Sandy is, of course, a slightly strange name for a hurricane.

It brings to mind the character of Sandy in Greece, played by Olivia Newton-John.

And it only really would have been fitting if Olivia Newton-John had spent that entire movie flipping over cars, pissing on people's carpets, and punching John Travolta in the face.

Have you not seen the DVD extras?

Well,

then it would have seemed eerily appropriate.

It has been a while since I've seen Greece, but I think she only actually does two of those.

Point is the build-up to the hurricane striking was actually pretty impressive.

Most of the vulnerable areas were evacuated, even here in the city, and people hunkered down safely and responsibly.

I wasn't sure whether people would fully respond to the warnings.

And part of me was expecting to see crowds of New Yorkers standing on the beach on Long Island, facing the ocean, grabbing their nuts and screaming, I got your hurricane response right here, buddy.

Get the f out of here!

And that didn't happen that much.

It did.

Well, not that I saw Andy, but I'm not going to say it didn't happen.

It probably did happen, but not in the numbers that I was expecting it to.

There was one magnificent moment of lunacy in the build-up, not only

just for the city of New York, but for the country of America.

I was watching the local news just before the hurricane hit as yet another reporter stood pointlessly close to New York Harbour, illustrating nothing other than their ability to be proximate to a body of water when something truly wonderful happens.

Just over this reporter's right shoulder, suddenly entering the frame, a man on a jet ski started jumping waves and zooming around New York Harbour.

That's right.

And

a man was watching the news, witnessing countless reports predicting the coming of the most dangerous storm on record in New York and thought to himself, oh my god, that looks terrible.

This is truly an emergency.

You know what?

Reacting quickly is always critical in these situations.

So I'd better wax up my jet ski and get out there because I don't want to be the only New Yorker not jet skiing around the harbour when the hurricane strikes.

And I will say, Andy, credit to the cameraman at this point, because he did not hesitate to pan immediately away from the wet journalist he was inexplicably supposed to be filming.

And instead, he followed the jet skier all over the harbour as he attempted to jump off the highest wave he could find.

It wasn't clear exactly what the long-term aim of this escapade was, but at one point I was wondering whether he was actually going to try and jump off a wave and high-five the Statue of Liberty.

Now, you might look at the hurricane and the devastation and tragedies that it's left in its wake and think, there is absolutely nothing positive about this.

But of course, you'd be wrong, because if you are, say, an investment author and therefore have had your soul surgically removed years ago, then you don't see a crisis, Andy.

You see a catastrophe.

Author.

We have another word for the bugle lexicon, ladies and gentlemen.

Hallelujah.

Author Larry Oxley gave tips this week on how to trade the so-called Frankenstorm to make money, saying, it's almost hilarious.

But the beauty of extreme weather investing is that you don't necessarily have to be ahead of the event.

You can just play the opportunity as it unfolds.

You're right, Larry.

It is almost hilarious.

And you should point that out to the families of the 90 people who've died.

Their almost hilarious deaths will be made somehow less tragic with the news that you managed to personally profit from their deaths somehow.

And you're also right in a way, Andy.

You can play the opportunity as it unfolds.

You can technically do that.

But should you, Larry?

Should that be the first thought in your diseased mind as a humanitarian crisis unfolds?

To see, let's say, a monsoon barreling towards Haiti and saying to yourself, let's hope that thing picks up steam.

Come on, mass casualties, Larry needs a new speedboat.

Sorry, did I say needs a new speedboat?

I meant to say Larry wants a new speedboat.

And what else was happening that week?

Well, obviously, someone was hurling themselves out of a hot air balloon from 100,000 feet above the earth, because why not?

There have been some sensational news involving daredevils recently, or to give them their technical names, magnificent lunatics.

First, a few weeks ago, there was, of course, a space jump.

Felix Brown Gartner rode up in a balloon to the edge of space and then stepped off a platform 24 miles up in the air and hurtled back down to Earth.

Now, the one thing I think Felix really missed out on Andy was not saying anything just before he jumped.

Because he saluted.

But he really missed his Neil Armstrong moment.

He could have gone with, holy shit, this is high.

Or,

actually, forget it, can you bring me back down?

Or Baumgartner away.

Or I think the most appropriate, there is absolutely no point in this.

Well, I was very disappointed that he did just go, we

or even Geronimo, or even I can see my planet from here.

Baumgartner is an Austrian man, Andy, which I personally found slightly disappointing.

Because this really feels like something that an American should have done.

This is my adopted homeland, Andy.

And I really feel like if someone is going to do something this magnificently misguided, this heroically stupid, this discernibly inexplicable, this tremendously pointless, then it should be an American.

And also, nice try, Austria, but you're still most famous for Hitler.

Okay?

It's going to take a lot more than riding a balloon to the edge of space and jumping down to make all of us forget that little f ⁇ er that you brought into the world.

He made some slightly ludicrous claims about it all being very important scientific research.

And I guess, you know, we've learnt a lot about what to do if you ever find yourself stuck floating in a balloon 100,000 feet in the air with high-tech equipment, a pressurized body suit and an oxygen supply.

I mean, we all know now what to do in that situation.

I just wish he hadn't even pretended it was for science, John.

As you say, he is a magnificently ludicrous man.

He should have called it as it was and said, I'm just doing this for the f ⁇ ing hell of it.

That is a far more noble, heroic pursuit, pursuit, John.

Did Rald Amelson get his piggyby to the South Pole for science?

No, he did it because A, the South Pole was there, and B, he thought he might meet some hot chicks down there.

And C, he wanted to see the look on Captain Scott's face when he turned up a few weeks later to find the Norwegian flag urinated in the snow and a message saying, chilly down here, isn't it?

Did Neil Armstrong, John, leg it to the moon for science?

No.

It was for Cold War politics.

That is a far more noble goal.

If Neil Armstrong hadn't built and flown that space rocket, we would all be speaking Soviet by now.

And he also did it to see the look on Buzz Aldrin's face when he elbowed him in the ribs and jumped out of the rocket first.

Apparently, throughout the stunt, Bab Gardner was in contact via an earpiece with Joe Kittinger, his 84-year-old American mentor and the previous holder of the highest altitude manned balloon flight.

And I'm guessing that Joe was a little less impressed because he jumped from 102,000 feet in 1960, essentially in his pajamas, Andy, standing on the platform, finishing his cigarette, flicking it into space, shouting down to his wife to have dinner on the table, and then diving back down to earth.

Just before Baumgartner jumped, you could hear Michel Control say, Guardian angels will take care of you.

Now, if I'd been up there, Andy, that would have annoyed me.

My response would have been,

really, because I was under the distinct impression that you would be taking care of me.

You and science.

I spoke to him on the phone today.

Did you?

I spoke to him on the telephone.

Did you, really?

Yeah.

What was he?

Did he call you or did you call him?

He called us.

He called me on another job I was doing.

I was trying to give him a girl's phone number, but he wasn't having any of it.

Is that true?

Yeah.

Why did someone, did someone you know say, I want to go out with that?

Yeah, yeah.

Exactly.

She wanted a date with him, but he was insisting he was a family man.

Right.

Well, he's got to be worth a pot for a a life insurance payout, hasn't he?

Yeah, yeah.

He said, though, he said his next, he wants he's going to give up jumping out of space and become a helicopter pilot.

Which

that's a bit dull, doesn't it?

I want to see if he can double up, John, and

fire himself up to ground level from 24 miles below the Earth's surface.

Let's skip forward now to 2016 and the last time in human history when a world in which Donald Trump had never been and would never be US president was still possible.

Here is the last episode we did before the

f that.

I cannot do that to either you or myself, but I can do this from Bugle213 looking ahead to Barack Obama's second term.

This election is now fully over.

A winner has been declared in every state and President Obama has been re-elected as America's new old president.

and that whooshing sound was the bullet that almost every country in the world dodged with a Romney presidency unless you live in Pakistan in which case that whooshing sound was an Obama drone strike whizzing past your house.

Either way, we all got lucky.

Now the truth is, Andy, that this election ended like any other American election ends with just under 50% of the electorate absolutely devastating.

Because that's the way it goes here in this country.

Under a two-party system, America has become as divided as one of King Solomon's babies.

Unhealthily, straight down the middle.

There is no doubt that, like Florida, this is not a good state for American democracy to be in.

Because, not to labor a point, I'm not sure what the f ⁇ Florida thought they were doing, Andy, because this is all over, no thanks to them.

The result was announced before midnight on Tuesday, which was surprisingly quickly and certainly a lot earlier than most Americans had braced themselves for because when you have a presidential election, Andy, that involves the state of Florida, which unfortunately is most of them, you have to prepare yourself for the worst.

I wasn't just ready for a long night.

I was ready for a long few weeks.

I'd stocked up on canned goods and candles in the office just in case Broward County decided they wanted to start f ⁇ ing with the rest of the country again.

Well, it just seemed the,

well, clearly the American people are split, but the American media also seems split on, as you say, whether America had in fact dodged a bullet or whether it had deliberately stood in the way of a bullet and head-buttered it while shouting bang.

And, you know, it's very, I mean, it's hard to, you know, it's a bit too early to say, you know, who this is good news and bad news for.

I guess an Obama victory is very good news, as you suggested, for the Pakistan roofing industry.

Also good news for Mitt Romney, because being president is, frankly, a really shit job, and I would not wish

on my worst enemy, which explains why I've never voted for either Osama bin Laden, never really got on with him, the former al-Qaeda frontman and professional scripture misinterpreter, and I've also never voted for Sam Taylor, the former comedy critic from the Observer newspaper.

Grindingly mediocre.

I was only on for 20 minutes.

You can't grind in 20 minutes.

The point is, Andy, this election has left me an empty husk.

This election season and this election week took what was left of both my energy and my will to live.

And if the result had gone a different way, it might have taken the rest of my faith in human nature as well.

And so once more, President Obama walked out onto a stage in Grant Park in front of an adoring crowd who gave him a messianic response despite having four years of pretty hard concrete evidence that this was far from a perfect president, let alone the Messiah.

And he went on to give the kind of fantastic speech that just made you wish that he could govern as well as he talks about governing.

Because when you listen to him deliver the kind of speech that brings a lump to your throat, you find yourself thinking, why can't someone like him ever be president?

Before reminding yourself, oh shit, he is president and he has been for the last four years.

Except that guy on the stage giving the speech, Andy, has not been president.

It's been just a very tired man who looks a lot like him and has been trying to negotiate the bullshit minefield of DC politics.

I don't know if you can tell from the tone of my voice, Andy, or read between the lines, but I am so, so glad that this election is over.

This has been an incredibly expensive, incredibly cynical, and incredibly depressing election.

Having said that,

watching Herman Kane run for president was like watching the most entertaining car crash that I've ever seen.

If only it could have gone on longer.

2016.

Kane for 2016.

He has the official bugle endorsement.

Don't rule it out, Andy.

He is as interested and as qualified then as he is now.

Also, lest we forget, this election has actually made U.S.

history, Andy, because it has never, ever before cost so much money to not become president.

That is something that's well, what does he spend?

It was almost, what did it almost $2 billion, was it?

I've seen various figures bandied around between $2 and $6 billion on the overall cost of the campaign.

I mean, that's, you know, I mean, that's pocket money for Romney, but it does seem like they could possibly have spent it on

better things, maybe just, you know, a giant

50 metre-high statue of Herman Kane dressed as Abraham Lincoln perhaps.

Well I think I think it's a fair point Andy you know if it was Eastside spent over a billion dollars in the course of this campaign and Americans might well find themselves asking well what could that two billion dollars have been better spent on and I actually think I have a couple of key suggestions one they could have just set fire to it

I think that literally might have been a better use.

For a start, you don't get any of the poisonous campaign media that was that the money was used to buy.

So you're already up on the deal by getting nothing.

Plus, you know, burning $2 billion might actually in a small way help reduce inflation slightly.

Or two, they could have just simply put the money in a glass box so that the American people could look at it and appreciate what both campaigns had not spent the money on.

Thus, putting the approval rates of most American politicians in general up around 10,000 percent.

Well, was that better or worse than four years of Donald Trump?

Let's let history be the judge.

Since we're talking about Americans and we don't want to talk about that American, here is the first coverage in the bugle of another controversially provocative American back in issue 170.

Other news now, the celebrity international celebrity chef Scluton Malvane has defended using a fast-acting poison in one of his dishes.

At his famous New York brassy, Belchima, after a non-life endangering starter of regretful wood pigeon hand-haunted in a memory of asparaguate wrongdoings, bondish to a bed of covertly assassinated scallops and hard-punched potato faces, Malvain served his custom as a plate of penisless chicken supremes in a potassium cyanide jou.

The dish, described as quotes initially delicious, succulent and moorish, but subsequently rapidly fatal, is then swiftly followed by a palate cleansing cafelime red peppercorn and hydroxycobalamin granita, providing a refreshing and life saving antidote for the desperately gasping diners.

Most make a full recovery in time for the main course, a high high-speed car crash tenderised paragon of overbearingly mothered beef groin

with a Hasidic reducio, gruffly manhandled chanterelle mushroom willies, and a pert bouncler of cabbage tits.

Some have described the experience as, quote, an interesting twist on the traditional dining experience.

Others say that, quotes, almost dying early in the meal makes you really appreciate being alive for the cheese board.

Although some have complained that the cyanide left them with irreparable physical and psychological damage that no amount of doggy bags to take home and complimentary napkins can compensate for.

Malvaine's other restaurants include Testiculate in Chicago, La Jolie Fonicateurs in Paris, The Screaming Shithead in Buenos Aires, and London's new controversial abusively stuffed Mexican Antarctic Fusion Insulter Bistro.

These of course all run alongside his famous San Francisco delicatessen and sex shop, Gherkins and Merkins.

Malvane commented, Food is about more than flavours and textures.

It's about emotions and passions.

When do people get more emotional than when they think they're about to die, other than when they're rescued from the precipice of oblivion?

Now put your hands in the air and stop breathing, or I'll shoot you.

Just kidding, have a pickled onion.

Tastes pretty sweet, eh?

Die, motherfer, die.

Ah, I've got you again.

Spam fritter, don't mind if you do.

You've been very rude today, Andy.

Sorry about this.

Very rude.

You're overtired, Andy.

All right.

And you're showing off.

18 fks and three already.

Really?

Wow.

Well, there you go.

I think we can all agree that was rather more fun than another week chuntering on about the brutally sadomasochistic self-desecration and deliberately orchestrated putrescence of American democracy.

Or more virus news.

Let's just check the latest on that.

Yeah, definitely a good call.

We will be back with our post-election bugle next week.

Until then, fingers crossed.

Good luck, America.

You may need it against yourself.

Goodbye.

Hi, Buglers.

It's producer Chris here.

I just wanted to very quickly tell you about my new podcast, Mildly Informed, which is in podcast feeds and YouTube right now.

Quite simply, it's a show where me and my friend Richie review literally anything.

So please come join us wherever you get your podcasts right now.