Red Apple\’s Core Constituency

This week, my daughter has been picked as \”Kid of the Week\” at her preschool, which confers on her the right to choose her class\’ activities for the next few days.  My wife and I thought it would be fun to set up a mini-polling booth for the class, where they could cast ballots for their favorite apple – red or yellow.  Never too early to learn a little civic duty.  We (\”we\” = \”my wife\”) built a little ballot box, and let our daughter design and color the ballots.

When it came time to vote, I was surprised that yellow apple actually won.  Who likes yellow apples?  Then, it occurred to me that ACORN bused in a bunch of kids from a day care in Illinois to stuff the ballot box.  Just a week ago, the polls had red apple up six points – but then yellow apple began running TV ads linking him to William Pears.

(Pause for groan.)

Oddly – and this actually happened – when the kids who voted for yellow apple found out they had won, they began taunting the red apple kids.  So the teacher told me she rigged some system by which both apples won.  Now, I can understand how unpleasant it must be to have to spend the remainder of the afternoon with a bunch of surly kids who feel like losers, but this is actually the most important lesson of democracy.  Candidates win and candidates lose – you have to get over it and move on.  Otherwise, you get bitter and do loony things like trying to im-peach the apple.  (Get it?  Im-peach?  No?)

When reached for comment, yellow apple vowed that in the next election, he\’s going to exploit red apple\’s position on apple stem cell research.