At last weekend’s Republican Convention, U.S. Senatorial Candidate Linda Lingle seemed to suffer a catastrophic technical failure only five minutes into her prepared keynote speech. Just a few minutes into her dissertation on the need for more robotics-based industry in Hawaii a large patch of Ms Lingle face appeared to flop down. At that point she removed her glove which revealed a large mechanical hand and began to paw at her face, making things worse, and uncovering more electronics and mechanized underpinnings. At this point her media advisor, Lenny Klompus, placed a blanket over her and dragged her offstage. Within a couple of minutes, Mr Ted Liu appeared with another Linda Lingle, wearing a slightly different suit, who began her speech from the beginning, and continued for 20 minutes, after Mr. Liu made some adjustments to the back of her head.
The incident was missed by most of the audience, who appeared only mildly interested in the presentation. They may have simply been lulled into a state of deep relaxation by Lingle’s soothing monotone delivery, punctuated with slight beeping noises. When asked about what had happened and if she was feeling alright, Lingle would only say, “Must build more robots.”
One delegate questioned about Ms. Lingle’s odd behavior said, “No, she pretty much always talks about robots, that is not out of the ordinary at all.”
When asked why the convention organizers did not allow her primary opponent John Carroll to address the group, while allowing Lingle 20 minutes as the keynote speaker, one answered, “Well, she has more money!”
Party officials also brushed off criticism about Lingle’s speech being blatant campaigning even though Carroll was told this would not be allowed.
“I don’t see anything in her speech that could be construed as a campaign message,” said Lingle supporter Miriam Hellreich.
Here’s a brief recap of the first part of Ms. Lingle’s speech:
“Hello, press 3 for speech, press 6 for sign waving. Hello I am LindaLingle, vote for me. I am the only candidate. Please ignore that John Carroll man in the lobby. We put him next to the Ron Paul and Willis Lee tables for a reason. He is not a candidate…I am the only candidate. Hello, my name is Linda Lingle. Vote for me. Must build more robots, must build more robots….pause, pause, pause. Deleted. OK. Please disregard the previous statement it is not relevant and has been deleted. Hello, I am Linda Lingle. Vote for me.”