What Is the Biggest Joke Played on the American Public?

Sep 8, 1999 at 4:00 am
Cherie Pepin
Field Marketing Representative, EMI Music Distributing

"Road construction. I think it's a conspiracy. I think it's the rats-through-the-maze experiment. You know how they put the rats in a contained environment to see how long it takes them to kill each other? That's what road construction is."

Dale Bolden
Newspaper Seller

"I don't know, I really don't ... except maybe those weathercasters, saying how hot it's gonna get, how cold it's gonna get. Maybe it'll snow, maybe it won't. People carrying umbrellas, but it doesn't rain. I think they make most of it up. You can't play games with the weather."

Laura Veuve
Math Major, Oberlin College

"Coffee. It tastes bad and isn't even good for you — it turns your teeth yellow. Yet we're told it's so cool that we must force ourselves to acquire a taste for it and drink it till we become addicted. They think cocaine is the problem coming from Colombia, but no — it's coffee!"

Sean Hayes
Manager, Mi Casa

"That we actually elect the president. That's controlled by the upper class — the Electoral College, as they call it — and we have nothing to do with electing the Electoral College. So, really, the president is just a puppet."

Suzanne Fulbright
Freelance Photographer/Model-Builder

"Certainly the biggest joke being played on Americans today is postcolonial Chinese imperialism. There's the notion that Asian labor is free or cheap and, as we're beginning to see, the Chinese are exacting a heavy tax on the United States for this "cheap labor' in the form of stolen nuclear secrets and the exploitation of Tibet. In the long term, it's actually a very expensive joke."

T. Bass
Junior Astronaut

"Politics and government — big business and corruption. They want you to vote on this or that — it doesn't matter what comes of it; it's all to line somebody's pockets. It's all a fucking joke, the way I see it."