Is it mere coincidence that the letters in the blandly descriptive phrase Colorado legislature can be rearranged to spell illegal, odorous crate?
I think not. It’s been said that to name a thing is to know it. Sometimes, to rearrange the letters of a name is to know that thing better, revealing surprisingly relevant insights into the nature of the thing.
When Denver’s mayor announced firmly and probably finally that he wasn’t going to run for governor, many Democrats were reduced to swooning and musing about who possibly could match the political appeal of John Hickenlooper. One can only imagine their plaintive ramblings: “Oh … hip clone. … No jerk.”
This is not a trivial exercise. No less than The New York Times editorial page last month ran many dozens of words of this sort. Analytical anagrams, they were, parsing numerous phrases surrounding CIA leaks, jailed reporters and the Valerie Plame case generally.
The authors, Mike Morton and Sabra Morton, relied heavily on Mr. Morton’s word-rearrangement computer program, Ars Magna. Well enough for them, but devices like that often produce impossibly long lists of gibberish. Feed the name Norma Anderson into the maw of such a mathematical machine and it produces possibly hundreds of phrases, many beginning with the indefinite article “a.”
No, it’s best to sit in a shady spot on a late summer afternoon and, with pen, paper and patience, rearrange letters to produce phrases relevant to Colorado and its government.
Before Mayor Hickenlooper said he wanted no part of the 2006 governor’s race, entrepreneur Rutt Bridges already had dropped out (trust Big Red).
That left only one Democratic candidate. Some Democrats worry because ex-DA Bill Ritter is personally opposed to abortion and might veto future attempts to provide emergency contraceptive prescriptions for rape victims. In other words, he’d be an RX aid belittler.
Not everything is easily rearranged. “Z”s are problematic, and there are three of them potentially in the governor’s race. What can be done with Joan Fitz-Gerald, for example, except to imagine her seeking the Wizard’s advice and journeying to his front door, where she jingled at far Oz.
And Marc Holtzman? Nothing, save possibly a Big Sky resort, Zonal Charm, MT.
Bob Beauprez at least offers the possibility of a school for football referees, where they can learn to blow their whistles in the style of certain jazz musicians: Bebop Zebra U.
But we’re still more than a year away from that election. In less than two months, there’s another important statewide vote, the Nov. 1 TABOR election.
The legislature and governor propose to let the state keep all of the money it raises with existing taxes, and they’re asking voters to pass Referendums C and D. If voters agree, of course, “C” ends refund dream.
They are opposed by the prickly Douglas Bruce and his noisy supporters, who make up a rude club o’ gas. They include the Independence Institute’s Jon Caldara, who is only too happy to jostle the ship of state (can jar load).
They argue that if the state is allowed to put a five-year moratorium on its obligation to give a TABOR refund, the government will run fat, bored.
On the other side, supporters of the referendums deplore the opposition’s claims that not giving refunds is the same thing as a tax increase. That tactic is merely an exit scare, they say.
Democrats are almost uniformly in favor of the referendums, but Republicans are split. One avid Republican supporter is the previously mentioned Norma Anderson. She says the state can’t wait and had better fix the problem darn sooner, man.
The biggest Republican supporter is the governor. But it wasn’t until recently that pro-referendum campaign ads featured Bill Owens. Some had thought he might not be a good script-reader and would blow lines. The spots aren’t exactly riveting, but at least they answer skeptics who thought Owens simply didn’t have the gut for it – nil bowels, in other words.
(The headline, of course, is an anagram of ‘Colorado politics.’)
Fred Brown, retired Capitol Bureau chief for The Denver Post, is also a former national president of the Society of Professional Journalists.
