Love Boat's Gopher Goes for Gingrich, But What GOP Candidate Can Get Isaac The Bartender's Vote?
Fred Grandy—best known as Gopher on the Love Boat but also a former GOP congressman from Iowa and an embattled radio show host—has endorsed Newt Gingrich for president:
"I am proud to support Newt's campaign for president," Grandy said…. "I believe that his optimistic, solutions-oriented message is resonating well with the people of Iowa and with all Americans.
"As someone who worked with Newt while in Congress, I also am saddened to see some of his former colleagues attack his leadership style. Newt's leadership is the major reason Republicans won control of Congress in 1994 and enjoy a majority today. I believe that Newt is the best candidate to unite our party as we seek to unseat Barack Obama next year."
This raises more questions than it answers, of course. Such as, who would Doc, the ship's improbable poon-hound medical officer, endorse? Or Julie, the activities director with a heart of gold and a deviated septum undone by cocaine? And Capt. Merrill Stubing, whose bland exterior hides doubtless hid an monomaniacal fixation not seen on the high seas since Ahab was taken under by Moby-Dick? For various reasons—interest in medical freedom, drug legalization, and a shared experience in uniform, I see all of these characters going hard for Ron Paul.
But what about Isaac the bartender, mixing endless pina coladas up there on the Lido Deck? Would he have been a Cainiac merely out of some sense of racial solidarity? Indeed, would he have already been in the tank for Obama, who captured fully 105 percent of the African-American vote in 2008? Would he, like Gopher, be tempted by Newt Gingrich's bold vision for a lunar colony? All the Love Boat crew were clearly running from terra firma and wouldn't space be even farther away from whatever heartbreak or legal hassle that drove them all from dry land? I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that he too would vote for Ron Paul because he digs the 76-year-old, 12-term ob-gyn's ethic of personal responsibility and autonomy.
I'm just guessing here.
Related link: Skip ahead to the 6.30 mark in this communique from a lost civilization (read: American TV in the 1980s as captured on low-fi VHS) for what is arguably one of the greatest episodes of the Love Boat every, featuring among others Milton Berle (with porn star mustache), Andy Griffith, Oscar winner Cloris Leachman, David-Doyle-doppelganger Tom Bosley, and… Andy Warhol.
Would Warhol have been a Paulite? Or a (Gary) Johnsonian? He had a history of being trendily Democratic in his politics (including doing an ambiguous pro-McGovern poster in 1972), though espoused frank agnosticism: "The reason I don't sort of get involved in [politics] is because I sort of believe in everything. One day I really believe in this, and the next day I believe in doing that," he said in 1968. Elsewhere, he averred, "I know I should be for the Republicans, because I hate paying taxes…[but] artists just can't be Republican, can they?"
As with all great art (and this clip reel), we end up with more questions than answers.
Hat tip: Sean Higgins of Investors Business.