Thanks to Ohio's
stratospheric corruption, the near-universally loathed governor of Alaska, Frank Murkowski, is somehow
not the least popular chief executive in the nation. (You can find the new state by state poll numbers
here.) With a 31% approval rating, Murkowski stands out as one of the worst governors under whose rule I've had the misfortune to live. This includes the years I spent writing my dissertation in Minnesota, greeting each day with a newfound bafflement that Jesse Ventura was in charge. I won't bore you with the details about Murkowski, except to note that the governor's mansion — which sits about a mile from my house — has become a popular destination for local hounds in need of a good morning bowel clearing. Too many times to count, we've driven by the rather modest estate and witnessed a disgruntled canine hunched over in mid-act, legs twitching with sweet anticipation, squintingly depositing on the front lawn a little steaming metaphor for the governor's political future.
Indeed, our governor has become so closely associated with dog shit in the state's political unconscious that some enterprising
local dissenters have taken to planting tiny flags — each bearing a picture of Murkowski's goofy, flabby face — in the little mounds of egesta that adorn our 200 miles of hiking trails. Evidently, the local Fourth of July parade in Juneau even included a giant float resembling one of these organic monuments. (On a not-unrelated note, the parade also featured a "Logging is Good" float that urged people not to buy recycled toilet paper because — and the phrase "No, I'm not fucking with you" comes to mind here — recycled toilet paper has been used before. As the float's creator
described it, "We want people to have new stuff. New wood, so new trees are cut.")
