Ralph Nader is an Idiot

When I was in college, every year student government would host a speaker. We didn't have a lot of money, so most of the time the speakers were third tier. One year, we decided to go for broke and get Ralph Nader.

With the other speakers, it was pretty much routine. They'd fly into Philadelphia, someone would drive down and pick them up at the airport, bring them back to Reading, the speaker would have dinner with members of student government, the speaker would speak, get a nice room at the Reading Motor Inn for the night, and we'd take him or her back to the airport in the morning.

This did not fly with Ralph.

First off, he had some issues with the safety record of Philadelphia Airport. He refused to fly into it. Fine. He's only down in DC. So we said we'd make arrangements to pick him up and drive him back. No. It seems that for "safety reasons," he only travels in chauffered limosines.

No, I'm not making that up and I'm not exagerating.

And then, here was the kicker. Ralph refused to have dinner with us! First his people said it was because he was a strict vegetarian. We said fine. We could work with that. We found a restaurant that had some good vegetarian options on the menu and faxed the menu down. Ralph's people got back to us and said the restaurant looked great, but Ralph only dined alone. He would not be sharing the table with us.

He was Ralph Nader after all.

What a total asshole.

And the speech he gave? It was awful. Rambling. Incoherent. All about him. "You should all strive to be me" were words that actually crossed his lips.

How bad was it? When it came time for questions, there were none. Not a one. Not even from one of the nuns, just to be nice. Just tepid applause while he left the stage and got back into his chauffered limo and headed back to Washington DC.

Michael Moore has always struck me as being on the a similar path to insufferable self-proclaimed messiah megalomania. Whaddya bet that eight years from now, Michael Moore will announce his third party candidacy, pretty much assuring President Jeb Bush a second term?

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