Alexandre Vigneault
special collaboration

    Pissant. It is the only word that comes to mind when one listens to "Hail to the Thief," a compilation of satirical songs which draw with red balls on George W. Bush, "the large lazy one" who "stole" the presidency of the United States.

    See a little the first lines of "I'm George W." (sung to the tune of Oh Susanna, a song of the American land): "Let me introduce myself, George W. is my name. I am a rich, dumb frat boy and the money and the name of my father help me everywhere where I go. I want to be your leader, though my brain's a little slow."

    The author of these lines is not a licensed humorist. Nor even a professional songwriter. He is named George Mann and is a trade-union organizer. But, with a group of colleagues from the four corners of the United States, he decided that Bush, the imposter, would not get away with it. They recorded an album of 15 satirical songs whose titles do not leave any doubt about their political preferences: ''The Supreme Court Stole the Election,'' ''We Know the Score'' or ''Carnivals.''

    Mr. Mann and his associates do not expect a reversal of the situation. They just want to pass on their message. "We want to say that all the Americans do not believe that the seizure of power by George W. Bush is legitimate," he explained, at the time of an impromptu visit to La Presse. "Many Americans are very annoyed, and we believe that the theft of the presidency of the United States is a thing which one should not forget."

    George W. Bush, let us point out, was elected last year by a majority of a little more than 500 votes, at the end of a new politico-legal comedy. The place of the drama: Florida, the state governed by the brother of Dubya, as Mr. Mann ironically calls him. The object of the litigation: thousands of rejected ballot papers, in counties where the population was likely to vote for the Democrats. The legal examination of each ballot requested by Al Gore was never completed and George Bush, second of the name, ran away with the key to the White House.

    In the words of Francisco Herrera and Bernard Gilbert, that gives: "We know the score, he stole the job from Gore. We've been through worse before, but we won't just lie on the floor." On a folk-Latin air, please. Chris Chandler and Anna Feeney speak rather about an "authentic carnival" carried out by "corporate clowns" who set up an election impossible to win "and which leaves us with the cheap prize which nobody wanted: George W. Bush!"

    The combat in which the American folk-trade unionists engaged is somewhat Don Quixotesque. So fortunately, they don't take themselves too seriously. Then, the boring tunes are skipped and one enjoys the few jewels of irony present on this "very first known compilation about the 2000 elections," like the press release says. One does not raise the nose either at the few scato-politics jokes...

    "Hail to the Thief" is not advertised on television and is not available at all good record dealers. (One would rather type www.georgeandjulius.com and follow the instructions.) Any resemblance to a real and very well known person is not by chance and it even helps to establish the link. Perhaps it will be necessary to add some lines to the story of the most laughable presidential election of the 20th century.
 

(Translation: Jean Rousseau)