A Most Excellent Candidate

Andrea Chalupa reports from Denver: Forget swing voters. Who would Mr. Burns vote for this election?

"He owns the Republican Party so he'd vote for the guy he owns. He'd probably send Smithers to vote for him. He's the only guy who'd vote by proxy!" says Harry Shearer, the voice of Burns and about a dozen other characters on The Simpsons.

Shearer is relieved to be packing up and leaving Denver today, having been here since Sunday when he, an adopted son of New Orleans where he splits his time with Los Angeles, hosted the New Orleans All-Star Jam-Balaya, a benefit for Hurricane Katrina victims, an issue that still infuriates him.

Busy having just put out a comedy CD "Songs of the Bushmen," developing J. Edgar Hoover: The Musical, and doing a weekly one-hour radio show Le Show, Shearer could use a vacation not a convention.

He's fighting a cold and looks a little convention weary. "It's a kabuki. It's a big expensive kabuki," he says of the star-studded, corporate-funded pageantry.

"The thing that stuns me about being here is how removed this place is from what's really going. These conventions seem to exist as bubble worlds of their own."

One issue that isn't being broken down or glossed over in the hundreds of panels this week is who's the funnier candidate?

"By virtue of not having been in the political meat grinder as long, Obama might have a human response or two left in him for something funny to come out," he says.

When asked if Hillary has a sense of humor, Shearer abruptly responds, "No."

"If she does, she'd find this whole catharsis thing a laugh riot." He's referring to comments Hillary made weeks ago at a private function about the need for a roll call vote on the third night of the Democratic National Convention, which produced a leaked video on YouTube.

"A catharsis is something between you and your shrink, not 1,800 delegates. (the late Chicago) Mayor Daley would be spinning in his grave that a political convention was for catharsis."

Shearer likens Hillary's ardent supporters out here this week, standing on street corners with billboard size signs, as Confederate flag-waving Southerners. "You want a big neon sign that says, 'You lost.'"

As for which candidate as president, Obama or John McCain, he's looking forward to making fun of more, it's a tie.

"Either one basically because I believe in the wisdom of the founders who said power turns everyone into crap."

Shearer is impatient to see Bush go for a lot of reasons, including the staleness of political jokes about the administration.

"It's not an inside baseball world anymore. You find that people who normally do jokes about airlines are doing political jokes because everybody gets them. I'm tired of these people. Bring in somebody new."

As for which of his Simpson characters would support Obama, Shearer thinks this over very carefully then says, "Otto." And then laughs.

Andrea Chalupa

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