Democratic leadership candidate Joseph Lieberman has
admitted, after much rumour and innuendo, that he is
part Muppet. "My mother left the Children's Workshop
when she was a teenager to try and make it in the
human world. There she met my father and they fell in
love."
Lieberman says he has been secretive in the past about
his heritage because of the discrimination he faced as
a child. "People can be very intolerant of Muppets,
and I got into the habit of lying about it. But now,
it's time to be open, for my heritage is nothing to be
ashamed of."
One of Lieberman's rivals in the Democratic race,
General Wesley Clark, told Chris Matthews on the MSNBC
panel show "Hardball" that Lieberman's comments were
"a load of hooey." Clark was quick to say he had
"nothing against" Muppets, and felt discrimination
against them was "unacceptable and un-American" and
that some of his "favourite Pentagon officials" were
Muppets, but that it was clear to him Lieberman has
been influenced throughout his career "by the powerful
Muppet lobby in Washington."
Clark pointed out that
Lieberman had voted for the
"cookies-and-milk-Thursday" bill in 1998, which made
it obligatory for the House and Senate to take a
fifteen minute break every Thursday morning to have
cookies and milk. He also reminded Matthews that
Donald Rumsfeld and Lieberman had worked together "on
a program to introduce singalongs to the people of
Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban" and that on
the campaign trail Lieberman can often be heard
humming "Which of these things does not belong."
It
won't be long, asserted Clark, before "a President
Lieberman would be taking orders directly from Oscar
the Grouch's garbage bin."
