Republican Convention Special

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello, Buglers, and welcome to a very special issue number 44 of the Bugle for the week beginning Monday, the 8th of September, 2008, with me, Andy Zoltzmann, in London awake and in St.

Paul in bed for the second week in a row.

It's John Oliver.

That's right.

Hello Andy.

Hello buglers.

Last week it was the altitude that was an experiment with how the bugle will go.

This year it is my complete lack of clothes Andy.

What?

Is this the first ever O Naturelle bugle?

I believe it.

I believe it is.

There is absolutely no reason, Andy, why that should affect anything.

No reason.

If anything should improve, I'm completely free.

And if it goes well, Andy, I think you should try it as well.

Really?

Obviously, it'll be a bit more awkward for you, being as you are in the studio with other people.

But it's a commitment to the process.

That's what I'm looking for.

Well, this is good, disturbing present.

I mean, if this turns out to be the greatest ever bugle.

Yeah.

The greatest of the 44 bugles, meaning that you can now have two complete 22-man football squads of bugle editions.

Correct.

And this would be first man on the team sheet.

If that proves to be the case, that is going to set a very dangerous precedent, John.

And, you know, if you then decide that nudity is fundamental to all your future work, you know, it could compromise your burgeoning TV career.

I don't think it could, Andy.

But what a spectacular way to go out.

Well, let's all try not to think about John gently fluttering in the breeze as we progress through.

What breeze?

I'm an old cellar, Mandy.

What do you think this is?

I thought you might have the air conditioning up.

Well, sorry for any bugle listeners who didn't want to think about John's testicles.

But let's press on.

This is the bugle for the week beginning Monday the 8th of September, meaning it's International Literacy Day.

So this week's special Republican Convention edition of the bugle will contain exclusively words that can be written down.

In fact, we encourage all bugle listeners to spread both literacy and the bugle by by transcribing the entire text of the first 43 bugles and then forcing an illiterate non-bugle listening friend to read them out loud at knife point.

So there we'll do our bit to increase literacy around the world.

This is a Republican Convention special and some sections of this special are going straight in the bin including the eight second long supplement about John McCain's alleged first marriage.

which we claim is in fact the most extensive coverage of that rumoured event in any publication over the last week.

And also to help replenish the American Platitude Reservoir, which is at dangerously low levels after the last two weeks, in which vacuous soundbites have been fired out like pellets out of a rabbit's ass.

We give you free commemorative Bugle Convention season meaningless platitudes.

For the Republicans, it's this one.

John McCain will ask you if you want sugar in your tea and put it in if you do.

Barack Obama has never actually stirred sugar into anyone's tea.

And for our Democratic listeners, Barack Obama believes in the right of every American to have whatever hot drink they choose.

John McCain hates ducks,

just like George W.

Bush.

So there you go.

A little touch of convention fever for everyone.

Great oratory at the top of the bugle.

There, I think.

Well, I've been watching the masters at work.

I've been watching John and Cindy McCain, who appear to have taught each other how to read an auto-cube.

So, John, you must be pretty relieved that this two-week festival of communal political masturbation has drawn to a merciful political close.

Absolutely right.

I think it's interesting.

It's been like a controlled experiment of how much democracy the human soul can take.

And I'm here to tell you, it's eight days.

Non-consecutive.

I am very, very glad that this is coming to a close.

It's been spectacular, though, in many ways.

I mean I've talked before about the balloons the Republicans very much held up their end of that bargain.

They have the whole week though like kind of hoped corpses they were strung from the ceiling.

These got like flaccid penises full of balloons

strung up above this ice hockey stadium waiting there for days.

It was very strange.

Surely there was a better time to put them up there.

And then last night finally they came down and I was one of the most uninspiring speeches you're ever likely to see.

There were people actually falling asleep.

Yeah.

Well that's partly just'cause of the kind of demographics of the people involved.

But it was long past their bedtime and uh you know they had a kip.

Who can blame them?

Was one of those people, John McCain?

'Cause he did appear to go a little bit vacant at certain points.

There was one guy who actually featured in a field piece before.

He was campaigning to to have guns in school and he came over at r and rather than what we were expecting was he was going to be taking us to task for the piece that we did on him.

And instead he said, I'm a delegate here.

The roll call for is being called out.

I'll give you my paddle if you like and you can vote.

And they said, oh, as long as you definitely vote for John McCain.

What a commitment to democracy that man had.

He'd come all that way and go, you can do it if you want.

I really couldn't give a shit.

That just shows the enthusiasm for John McCain that exists in the the Republican Party at the moment.

So, do you feel after two solid weeks of undiluted convention that you've basically just been sprayed like a field of struggling crops with concentrated bullshit and are now in need of some kind of spiritual fumigation?

I mean, technically, I should be extremely fertile at the moment.

John, you cannot say that on the back of just telling everyone that you're lying

naked as God intended, alone in a hotel room.

There'll be traffic jams from know, wannabe mums across Minnesota.

Committing mass suicide.

Okay, the story of the convention really is Sarah Palin.

And it is really depressing, and that's true.

It's depressing that a move so cynical seems to have worked.

They went absolutely crazy the other night for her.

They were walking out, all of them screaming, home run.

She knocked it out of the park.

Another crass sporting man, touchdown.

It was a three-pointer.

It was a long blue to the top left corner.

Thanks.

That's one for our British listeners.

Think Alex Higgins of the 1982 World Time.

Oh, what a shot, Andy.

What a shot.

So, John, I mean, have you met many average hockey moms in your time in America?

I don't know.

I mean, that's very much the new thing to be now, to be a hockey mom, which is interesting in a country which has completely turned its back on that game.

I guess I've probably met them all the time now because they've all reinvented themselves as hockey moms.

Right.

There's a certain kind of Stepford hockey mom here.

She'd describe herself as just your average hockey mom.

And now call me old-fashioned John.

I know I'm not American and therefore don't really have a vote in this election.

But

whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, Andy.

Again, we're going back to whether you recognise American independence or not.

I guess so.

To me, it sounds like the average hockey mom is, if not the last person that you would want to be one rogue snooker shot away from the Oval Office, then certainly probably the penultimate person you'd want to be that.

They're just that sliced cue ball that jumps off the table and hits the president, you know, on the temple.

Is that the second snooker joke already?

Yeah, I know.

We're going in hard.

Well, it's just because, you know, it's a convention special.

That's two weeks we've had.

Kind of aimed, I guess, not squarely at our global listeners, more at our American.

So, you know, a bit of snooker.

It's the game that the rest of the world plays.

The incredible thing we're playing as well is the vetting process process for her,'cause it's gradually each day there's been a new, absolutely incredible fact emerging about her, one that she was a member of this party, which was actually part of the Alaskan separatist movement.

Which I suppose is in many ways quintessentially American to want to segregate from the nation.

But that's really taking it back to old school.

But it does seem that I mean that's not that's not even a vetting process that should have caught that.

That's just a Google search.

Well, I know that McCain doesn't use a computer and has talked a lot about that, but surely someone should have just put in Sarah Palin, enter, and seen what came up.

Yeah, but I guess if what came up was that photo of her in a Stars and Stripes bikini holding her machine gun, then all other vets are off.

That's surely enough for any red-blooded American voter.

Actually, next week, Andy, I'm going to be doing the bugle with a machine gun and a Stars and Stripes bikini.

I don't really app approve of your increasingly cavalier cavalier attitude towards the bugle dress code.

Cavalier?

In uniform, Andy.

And also, Sarah Pellin, she only got her American passport in 2006 and has been to a total of five countries, one of which it turns out she went to only while her plane refuelled there.

You can't count that.

You do not get, Andy, the flavour.

I don't want to come across as a liberal hippie here.

You don't get the flavour of a nation from its airport.

I don't know.

You know, when I was a kid, I was was flying to South Africa to see my grandparents.

And we stopped off in Mombasa in Kenya.

And I like to think that ever since then, I've really had a deep spiritual affinity with the people

of all parts of Africa as a result of that half-an-hour stopover at the age of six.

But it does show the same kind of level of curiosity about the outside world that has served George W.

Bush so well as president.

Never to have left America until she was, what, 45?

I think that just proves she's ready on day one, Andy.

She's fit for office.

She has a complete lack of interest in the rest of the planet.

American voters respond to that.

Again, looking at it from a British perspective, they do love to drag their families into these political messes, don't they?

Oh, sure.

And I have to say, Bristol Palin's boyfriend looked like he was really starting to regret frung-doobling with the governor's daughter.

He had that look about him saying, Well, I had a few things planned for this week, and it wasn't standing up in front of the world's media looking slightly guilty.

What's happening with young Levi in that?

He is very much paying for that mistake.

It really must be strange

to be no, just a classic irresponsible team who has now been forced to stand in front of 20,000 hardline Republicans

applauding his courage in knocking up his girlfriend.

I was quite fascinated by the just the ordinary people at the conventions going to looking at the TV coverage.

What they tend to do with a TV.

I don't know if you're probably kind of watching it live.

Yeah.

A mixture of live and the TV coverage.

Keep awake, John.

Was that a yawn?

Was that a yawn?

Oh, sorry.

No, that was a stifled yawn.

They'd have one sentence from a speaker and then a close-up of someone in the audience.

They did look like a slightly odd bunch of people.

They did look like they were basically probably going to sleep upright plugged into a machine or they were one shower of rain away from starting to go

either that or sleeping upside down

there's nothing like what you get with the republican cutaways in denver with the democrats everyone has a new exciting and horrifying surprise attached to it be it they're losers as captain of mergats or whether it feels like you are looking into the very eyes of death i particularly enjoyed there were quite a few cutaways of an Abraham Lincoln impersonator

going absolutely ape shit with excitement.

It is strange that Abraham Lincoln would be so excited when I don't think there's any doubts that you know, were he to be alive now,

he would not be a member of this particular Republican Party.

If the parties have changed, I think he would probably be a Democrat now.

So to see him going so crazy really, I guess, puts that rumour to rest.

He's a hardline hawk.

So who are the hits?

Apart from Palin this week, John?

Giuliani seemed to go down quite well with the press.

Obviously, he's...

With the press, not with the crowd, Andy.

He's obviously a bugle favourite, particularly for his websites, which I did check the other day.

And you can still contribute to the Giuliani for President campaign.

That just goes to show: never give up.

That man never gives up.

He's not a loser.

You cannot be a loser until you've actually lost, and he doesn't recognise that yet.

But his influence is very much held, not only in the September the 11th iconography that was all over the stage when he and others were speaking, but also from the fact that McCain absolutely inexplicably decided that he was going to accept his nomination last night at 9.11.

He thought that was a good idea.

Incredibly crass gesture.

What a way to kick off his full campaign.

They've kind of gone for Obama quite hard this week, particularly in the fact that he talks a lot in generalisations, I guess, as people tend to when they're addressing crowds of 85,000.

I guess he wouldn't have gone down so well if he just drafted three hours' worth of legislation.

Intricate policy detail does not get people to whip out their lighters and wave them in the air.

Yeah, I can testify to that from a gig I did at the Manchester Comedy Store a few years ago.

What a misjudge, Dude.

But Giuliani said this, let's talk briefly about specifics.

And then said McCain will lower taxes so our economy can grow.

He will reduce government to strengthen our dollar.

And he will expand free trade so we can be even more competitive.

Good specifics there, Rudy.

Nice and detailed.

My favourite kind of specifics, Andy, is tweaking generalizations.

Obviously, McCain is not

a natural public speaker, John.

Oh, that is a very nice way of putting it, I think.

I came across fairly potently last night.

I don't think if there was one message from McCain's speech other than let's have a fight, which he seemed to be really majoring on at the end, it was, I'm not very good at public speaking.

But it could have been worse had he not used his two warm-up acts as Tom Ridge, who appeared, who sounded like he'd been put through an internet translation machine

and used a phrase, this is a world in which we both feel privileged to live.

Yeah,

that's right.

That is one of the most meaningless sentences I've ever heard.

Well, shame on you, Andrew.

That's because you arrogantly think you deserve a place in this particular world.

Cindy McCain, as his fluffer before his speech, she doesn't look like she enjoys the limelight.

She also looked like a fish out of water.

To me, John, Cindy McCain during her speech looked like a cross between one of those hostage videos, an audition for a school musical about a naughty penguin, and a late-night television advert for the very latest high-tech catheter.

That level of awkwardness.

Well, I think the main message he wanted to get across was how bad he was at public speaking last night, Andy.

And he got that message across in a long-winded and inarticulate way.

Also Cindy said that John showers us with unconditional love and support that every family dreams of which of course as we referred to on the bugle a few weeks ago included calling her a

little element of the love he showers.

Maybe he just needs to get that shower head on a slightly less broad setting.

But Cindy also did say that John is a man who, quotes, always speaks the truth.

Maybe she's being a little too honest there.

Yeah,

if he always speaks the truth, it's just clearly a k

and another thing McCain really went on a lot about was time in his life.

What was it?

He was

a hostage somewhere.

I can't remember.

They've hardly even mentioned it at all.

I haven't heard about that.

Are you sure about that?

It was somewhere.

It was someone I hadn't really heard of that much.

But anyway,

I don't know if I'll bang on about it a bit.

I think you might slightly be misremembering that.

Right.

He did come across as unbelievably wooden, John.

I guess when there are 20,000 weirdos squawking USA, USA at you every time you string three words together it must be quite hard to be coherent that is a fair point Andy I think you've got to put yourself in his shoes there and see if you were standing in front of that crowd you would be wanting to take your own life at that point

I don't know how I got here but I sure as hell know where I'm going and interesting that he called for the Republicans to go back to basics which of course the Conservatives tried doing that in Britain about 15 or 20 years ago and within about a month half of the cabinet were dressing up like Victorian go-go dancers and humping their coffee tables.

Yeah, well, that's what he suggested.

This will have more of a Wild West theme, though.

And also, he said that this country can do whatever it puts its mind to, which for most of the world is the problem rather than the solution with America.

That's right.

That's right.

Really, the problem is what that mind is setting itself to.

Now, it was fine when it was sending itself to, oh, look, let's go and land on the moon.

Everyone enjoyed that.

It's where they land other places that they don't own.

That's the problem.

Also, I particularly enjoyed the beer who said

I fell in love with my country while I was a prisoner in someone else's.

A very moving statement.

But as a British person watching the conventions, and I'm sure it was even more concentrated for you actually being there, I fell in love with my country by watching American politics at work.

Don't worry, the British Party Conference season begins next week, so I will fall out of love with it again pretty quickly.

Yeah, absolutely.

Republicans are basically Conservative party members with the courage of their convictions.

They could act like this, they would.

I think after the rasmatasm glamour of the American conventions, the British Party Conferences, by comparison, will look like a bouncy castle set against the Waco siege.

So John, after seeing both conventions now, how are you going to vote?

Well, I mean, again, it again comes down to whether you recognise American independence, which, of course, I don't, Andy, I absolutely don't.

So uh what I'm gonna vote is again for the Queen.

I'm voting for the Queen to return.

And who's uh who's her VP?

Princess Diana of course.

What a dream ticket that is.

'Cause you know, they never really got along.

So, you know, she's not just going to be sycophantic.

And Diana's

is and was an angel.

I miss her so much every day.

Yeah, that sounds quite sinister, John, bearing in mind that you are stark bollock naked.

You're right.

I think I think what was discovered is that being naked really editorialises your jokes.

That was probably true for the convention speeches as well.

They would have been very different if they'd all been naked.

Very different.

Yeah, I think Sarah Palin would have got approximately the same reaction.

To celebrate the end of convention season for another four years, we are launching the Bugle US election.

And we want you to email us in who you're voting for and why.

And we want the most spurious possible reasons.

So any tangential links to candidates, you know, maybe as we discussed last week, you've got the same chromosomes, the same gonads, similar socks, or maybe you once went to the same reptile park as one of the candidates or their friends once went to.

We want to know why you're voting.

And this is open to all bugle listeners from anywhere around the world and we will have a new bugle president in interest of electoral balance.

I must repeat the candidates.

They are John McCain, Republican, Barack Obama, Democrat, the Queen,

British Monarchist Party.

Is Ross Perot going again?

I hope so.

Who's that other guy?

Nader.

How's he?

When's his convention?

Nader still hasn't ruled out running and ruining the world once more.

So yeah, you probably better throw him in there.

So you can vote for him, or indeed anyone else who you think ought to be president of the Bugle from the 5th of November onwards.

Well,

we'll have an official inauguration in January.

So do keep your votes coming in to thebugle at timesonline.co.uk and mark your email democracy has gone mad

your emails now and a couple of you have risen nobly to the challenge of writing a poem beginning with the bit of iamic pentameter Obama Biden banners raised aloft as sent in by SW from Washington DC last week and this comes from Andy Post from Livingston in New Jersey anyway he writes ye pussies I heard of the failings of SW from Washington DC.

Hold on a second.

Yeah.

What an absolutely explosive start to an email.

Well, in fact,

I've edited that out.

I've edited out the beginning two paragraphs.

Partly because he says,

my name is also Andy, although Andy, despite having heard every episode of The Bugle, I must confess, I still don't know who the hell you are.

Well, that's clearly not true.

He listened to basically 20 hours of your voice.

It was he also berates you, John, for never mentioning the bugle on the daily show.

Something a bit harsh.

Yeah.

I think that's a contractual situation.

Yeah, I'd imagine so.

Can you not just wear a massive t-shirt with the bugle logo on it?

We'll find out.

Give it a go.

You don't know till you've tried.

You can't eat a banana unless you take the skin off.

That is true.

Andy Post writes, and now I come to the point of my correspondence.

You pussies, Exclamation mark.

I heard of the failings of SW from Washington, D.C.

being stuck after one perfectly good line of iMic pentameter, Obama Biden banners raised aloft.

And that's all for shame.

And imagine two Englishmen of the caliber of yourselves unable to answer the challenge of this charlatan.

So, in response to this gaping hole in an otherwise perfectly decent podcast, thank you very much, I have submitted myself to this challenge, brought on by yourselves and SW.

Ahem, Obama Biden banners raised aloft.

I better put my poetry reading voice on.

I've not been, I didn't go to the National Youth Theatre like John did.

I'm sorry to bring that up.

Sure, you can, Andy.

Sure, you can.

Yeah, he's been- John was at the National Youth Theatre, which means that's certainly not the first time that he's spoken to another man naked in a hotel room at seven in the morning.

Obama-Biden banners raised aloft, now poised to run and wash away the stain of Bush, Rumsfeld, Gonzalez, and Ashcroft that threatens newfound life in John McCain.

For woe, a man once maverick and his own, now feels compelled his party's tune to sing.

He fears a moderate can claim not the throne, and hath deigned to kiss Jerry Falwell's ring.

Really?

But lo, Obama's star shines o'er the west, and helps to light his campaign's slippery slope.

He promises America the best of this dark hour.

We listen, and we hope that we will not be screwed by either schmuck.

Though if Palin asked, I'd totally hurt.

Oh, come on.

All that effort, and then it ends up in a rhyme with schmuck.

And what you want to do to Sarah Palin.

A quick sport section now, and not a lot of sport at the Republican Convention, I'd imagine, John.

Although I have heard the latest hockey moms results, Wayne Gretzky's mom beat Mario Lemieux's mom by two shrieks and a yelp to a squawk and two yelps.

Close one, that's.

That's a shock result.

Mrs.

Lemieux was undefeated before that point.

Yeah, well, obviously, you know, the convention, you know, the big stage.

And it's been a big week in football, John.

I don't know if you've managed to keep up with it at all, but basically, English football has gone stark raving fing mad.

And basically now, it's probably worth more than the global oil industry.

And there will be wars fought over the most plentiful supply of English football fans.

Why has it suddenly become a boom industry?

Probably because it's more boring and less competitive than ever.

Oh, there you go.

Yeah, take that.

But also, the World Cup qualifying is beginning this week, and by the time you listen to or read this out loud, see earlier joke at the start of the show, England will have taught the mighty nation of Andorra a footballing lesson on Saturday, and that lesson is England is okay at football.

That's right.

Take that, Andorra.

So we'll have a proper sports section in the next proper bugle, which is in two weeks, because next week I'm away on holiday in Italy with my wife and child.

And the bugle forecast for this week is: will I be successful in my heroic attempt to eat my entire body weight in mozzarella?

To me, Andy, there's absolutely no doubt you'll be successful there.

Even though the challenge is, of course, that as you get closer and closer to success, your body weight increases.

So the finishing line keeps getting further away.

But you can do it, Andy.

Those buffaloes are going to have some sore tits by the time I'm finished with them.

Well, we may have topped and tailed this bugle's repellent imagery, Andy.

And John has got a bit of time off next week as well to recover psychologically, democratically, and hopefully nudistically from the trauma of having to been to two conventions back to back.

John, do you think you'll ever be able to look at the world and laugh again?

No, I mean, I do think it is somehow fitting that

I've ended this two weeks just naked and alone.

It is a poetic ending to what happens when you're exposed to this kind of democracy.

So next week there is no regular bugle, but there will be a special bugle issue 44, sub-issue 1, in which we will round up the famous Wikipedia page controversy.

So, do tune in next week.

In the meantime, from London, a fully clothed and dignified Andy Zoltzmann bids you goodbye.

And from St.

Paul, Minneapolis, one of the Twin Cities, a naked, shivering, and broken John Oliver bids you goodbye.

Go and have a bath.

It's going to be a long, hot shower.

I just can't get clean.

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.