For as long as there's been such a thing as democratic elections, there have been people goofing on it. The Museum of Hoaxes has posted its selection of "The Top 20 Satirical Candidates of All Time", including such vote-getters as Stephen Colbert Walt Kelly's Pogo, Gracie Allen, Will Rogers, "Superbarrio", and the Yippie candidate Pigasus, who, in the midst od the chaos of the 1968 Democratic convention, was taken into custody by Chicago police "citing a law that banned bringing livestock into a city", after which he "was taken to the Anti-Cruelty society, given a bath, fed, and placed in an outside pen. His subsequent fate is unknown." Slate has its own slide show tribute to the "fictional presidential candidates" whose campaigns have left junk shops and eBay sellers' lists festooned with buttons and bumper stickers urging people to vote for Snoopy, Archie Bunker, Alfred E. Neuman, Fred Flintstone, and Ken Griffey, Jr., whose fictional status may be open to debate, even if he did share a ticket with Mariner Moose. Left out of all this was perhaps the most notable movie star slash presidential candidate of recent years, who has at least one foot in both the satirical and fictional camps even though evidence exists that he's real and he means it. On this election day, let's spare a thought for Tom Laughlin, who as the writer-director-producer-star of a series of films starring himself as the mystical ass-kicker Billy Jack, managed to bridge the worlds of entertainment and politics as well as those of the white man and the Native American, not to mention those of the counterculture hero and the scary crank.
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