Scenes From An Election Ways to irritate a newspaper staff, lesson one. 1. Desperate phone call from local political party. 2. A particular candidate is going to be in town in less than an hour and we are told in breathless fashion with a large amount of adamant disregard to the fact that we have a thousand things going on that said candidate will be here soon. The kicker is that that same political party probably knew the candidate was swinging through here a few days back and the local political party forgot to call and needs us to fix their faux pas. 3. The statement goes "You have to come and take a picture of him." We really don't have to but that makes no different to local political heads who WANT A PHOTOGRAPHER right now. 4. Question comes from scoop reporter (not me, Mockingbird Girl) "Let me rearrange my schedule and what time will he be here?" although unless said candidate is juggling wombats, his picture probably isn't going to make front page or even inside due to lack of newspaper real estate." Consideration is given to that this senatorial candidate wants a picture of himself eating lunch (that's shocking and oh, so newsworthy CANDIDATE EATS FOOD AT LUNCH) that me and my staff can hardly quit yawning. 5. Schedule is rearranged in professional fitting fashion at breakneck speed to accomodate candidate. 6. After the newspaper is threatened with the gates of hell opening if we don't show up at this impromptu (yeah, right) event, Candidate doesn't show up. 7. His wife does which may have been the plan all along, but that little tidbit of information was not shared with us as we were rearranging our schedule. 8. Things were cancelled for this? So now the story has changed to CANDIDATE'S WIFE EATS FOOD AT LUNCH, which of course is not the most inspiring news headline either. 9. If you are a candidate for office, don't do this to small newspapers because if you have a schedule, we can make arrangements ahead of time. And you do have a schedule, to say you didn't would be ridiculous. Third of all, tell your local party affiliates to not panic when calling the newspaper and demand for someone to show up to see a candidate who doesn't even buy ads with us and doesn't show up anyway. Time is valuable. Not theirs, mine and Mockingbird Girl's 10. You have no idea how irritating it is when local political parties get all excited and don't tell us the whole story. In all honesty, it was them, not the candidate's issue, but I digress. Is the election over yet? Argh. Guess who the candidate is. Hell, I'll just tell you. It was Bryant. He was busy yesterday and I think they knew ahead of time what was going on. The End. Happy Damned Election Eve.  ¶ 8/02/2006 05:38:00 AM