Governor Abercrombie’s faced a tough audience at the State Capitol last week. What started out as an earnest attempt to explain how everyone was going to have to make sacrifices in order to right our state’s “canoe” drew heckles from the audience and turned ugly. The governor doggedly persisted with his “canoe” metaphor, that he first introduced during his inauguration, where he referred to Hawaii as an overturned canoe that had to be bailed out.
At last week’s hearing the Gov’s “canoe” was back with us again when he said, “Everyone has to paddle, you can’t just sit there with your arms folded.” This was a reference to his proposed legislation to curb medicare reimbursements and tax pensions for state retirees.
This drew a nasty response from the audience, who apparently, having worked their whole lives, are retired, like their arms folded, and don’t want their promised benefits nibbled away. One heckler annoyed Abercrombie when he yelled “You’re full of shit” and drew snickers from the audience.
Not one to back down, The Governor’s eyes dilated and he fired off a quick succession of canoe jokes trying to recapture the audience.
“This guy is determined to go paddling, see. But, the weather is terrible…but he get’s up before dawn anyway and drives throught the high winds and downpour to the beach…there’s ten foot shore break and none of his other buddies even showed up….so he goes home. He get’s undressed and slips into bed and snuggles up behind his wife with some new ideas about how to spend his morning. Without turning around, his wife says, “Can you believe my stupid, idiot husband is out paddling in this crap!”
Neil kept em coming:
“There’s this blonde women’s canoe team…and they’re out in the middle of a parking lot, high and dry, in their canoe, paddling away. Another blonde drives by, see’s them, and get’s upset. She stops her car and yells at them, “It’s blondes like you that give us all a bad name, and if I could swim I come over there and kick your asses!”
Neil was now on a roll:
“Knock, knock”
Reluctantly the audience mumbled “who’s there?”
“Canoe.”
“Canoe who?”
“Canoe help me out with this dam budget!”