Posted 6/13/2002 05:10:00 AM by Ocean Guy
Carl Hiassen has written a letter to Katherine Harris. You remember her; the Florida Secretary of State, so prominant during the Election 2000 debacle. Anyway, it seems Ms Harris, now a candidate for Congress,is writing a book about her role in the election. Carl comments: First draft needs tweaks on content, facts, title

"To begin with, we're not entirely comfortable with any of your proposed titles, which I will discuss in order of stated preference.
Tell Al Gore To Kiss My Smokin' Hot Chad is too wordy to fit on the book's cover. Also, the tone is a bit brash for our conservative readership.
While your second choice, Recount, Shmecount! has a nice wry ring to it, the title struck some of us as flippant, considering the heavy historic event about which you're writing."

"...Now, let's move on to your manuscript, which needs only a little tweaking: Our copy editors have noted that you refer to former Vice President Gore as ''a drip'' (pages 13, 27, 88, 92, 107, 185, 310-376), ''a dweeb'' (pp. 14, 44, 98-107, 224, 288, 410) and ''a whiny Ivy League wimp'' (pp. 1, 5, 9, 55, 67, 71, 123, 144, 233, and throughout the epilogue).
For consistency, we should settle on a single pejorative name for Gore. Personally, I'd say that ''drip'' covers a lot of territory and still gets your point across. No more than a half-dozen references are probably sufficient."

"...Look, we're not trying to be sticks in the mud. Nor would we ever seek to dilute your deeply felt convictions about what happened during the presidential election.

Still, we are in the business of selling books. Thus you can understand our disquiet to see the term ''left-leaning Metamucil heads'' (page 169) applied to the Palm Beach County retirees who mistakenly cast ballots for Pat Buchanan instead of Gore. "