Dumpster Diving for Dirty Direct Mail

OK, so I like to go dumpster diving... But there's no need to wash your hand after you shake mine. This happens at most once a year, only on the eve of Election Day, only near the Post Office, and only for paper.

My dumpster quarry: last-minute, nasty political mass-mailers, discarded by disgusted or just apathetic voters.

This year's prize goes to the Columbia County Republican Party, which evidently sent out a ton of oversized postcards trying to use Governor Eliot Spitzer's driver license plan to drive voter turnout against Dems.

The card blares on the address side:

DRIVER LICENSES  FOR  ILLEGAL ALIENS?

The reverse says:

The 9/11 highjackers had multiple state-issued driver licenses so New York tightened the rules.

NOW GOV. SPITZER WANTS TO GIVE   DRIVER LICENSES TO ILLEGAL ALIENS.

Fortunately, Republican Supervisors   are fighting Spitzer's plan [...]

Send a message about Spitzer's plan for illegal alien driver's licenses. VOTE REPUBLICAN FOR SUPERVISOR.

This, evidently, is the best the local Republicans can do to try to maintain their thin majority on the County Board of Supervisors. And I wouldn't be surprised if this card is being used in other counties (targeting Legislators, rather than Supervisors, since Columbia County is one of the few still using that form of government).

Nevermind that the whole purpose and true ramifications of Spitzer's plans have been grossly distorted by the media and the right wingers... and nevermind that Spitzer should have known this would blow up in his face, if he didn't market the idea correctly.

What burns me is that there are far greater terrorist risks—and far greater threats to voter (dis)enfranchisement, the other fear tactic being invoked by the plan's opponents—but these Republicans could not care less about such lapses, because they can't make any hay out of them.

For example, airport security remains a joke six years after 9/11, with journalists and the government's own testers routinely getting simulated "bombs" onto aircraft. Another infamous lapse: in 2002, the Bush administration's Immigration Service re-issued visas to Mohammed Atta and other hijackers. Yeah, driver licenses are the problem.

Anyway, the rest of the election day mailers were quite tame, at least the ones that were discarded.

I Put a Spell on You

UPDATE: Jesse Sheidlower has forwarded a copy of a long-lost email I sent eons ago with a blow-by-blow, word-by-word account of the 1995 Rebar bee... click HERE.

The common elements between this recent media spelling bee and the one I organized in 1995 at Rebar are Jesse Sheidlower (whom I enlisted as judge after meeting him at Liesl Schillinger's weekly salon) and Alex Kuczynski (pre-plastic surgery) who was among the original gang of contestants.

It's arguable whether the notion of making writers grovel spell in public is original to me, but that event (arranged with the help of Oberon Sinclair, with John Alger emceeing) was a first for NYC, to my knowledge.

It was covered in the front of New York Magazine by Michael Krantz, with obligatory Andersen-era snarkiness, and in New York Press, with obligatory bile. Other contestants included Chris Weitz (pre-American Pie), Jenny Lyn Bader, Schillinger and Anthony Haden-Guest—who left in a huff after misspelling "chihuahua.

The winner was Jim Holt, then a writer for The Wall Street Journal, who bested Matt Heimer, then of Facts on File, who some speculate threw the contest after it became clear that neither he nor Holt was likely to misspell anything, and we could be there all night. I think the word was "dirndl"; it was all captured in an issue of my long-defunct 'zine, Ersatz ("the magazine of cheap imitation"), but my back issues are busy growing mold in storage.

The second media bee, again with Sheidlower as judge and Alger as emcee, was held in an empty, cavernous Soho gallery space, with contestants including James Linville (then of the Plympton-era Paris Review) and Judith Shulevitz (then of Lingua Franca). It was notable for (a) John Simon going out early and leaving in a Haden-Guestian huff; (b) a drunk New York Observer reporter trying to disrupt the proceedings by yelling out spellings from the back, (c) Toby Young protesting that a bald man should be asked to spell "barrette," and (d) that the finalists, TV humorist Louis Theroux and Giuliani ghostwriter Ken Kurson, turned out to live in the same Chelsea apartment building.

Theroux wrote up his thrill of victory at this web 0.25 link.

The idea for the bee came after I won the adult contest on the summer colony of Squirrel Island, Maine, a decades-old tradition there. The main challenge of these things is to come up with a good word list. Alger added a lot to both bees by dramatizing various word games devised with Sheidlower to break up the action.

The twist of limiting participation to media people guaranteed that the event would be funny to watch, as it turns out that many publishing types can't spell very well. I was always amazed that anyone agreed to play, since every contestant except one was eventually going to look silly. Writers think they're great spellers, but spelling live is much harder than spelling on paper. And audiences get to feel superior to those brainy writers, thinking "I could have spelled that."

And invariably, there is plenty of suspense, and funny situations arise without even planning them, e.g. Young and the barrette. Nothing could convince Toby that assigning him that word was an accident, but it was.