BallotVox

Howard Dean the Fish

Look like anyone?
[Jason Michael / Flickr]

With thanks to Ann Raber, an amusement for Friday evening. This is admittedly only tangentially related to Campaign 08, but as Ann points out, Howard Dean is in the pre-convention news these days. And so here, from Emily Oliver, a pastor at Christ Church in South Florida, is the story of his namesake, a fish.

Emily’s parents make a hobby of salt-water aquariums, and when Emily got married, her husband chose and named a new fish:

His fish looked a lot like Howard Dean, who was, 4 years ago you’ll remember, an early contender to be the Democratic nominee for president. So– not because of any political feelings one way or the other, but just because the fish truly did look like the guy– Andy named the fish Howard Dean.

A few months later (in fact, right after Howard Dean’s infamous “we’re gonna win Florida, we’re gonna win Michigan, we’re gonna win California…” outburst), we were in the grocery store and my parents called to tell us that the fish had died. I was shocked, and immediately called Andy to give him the news. Well I should have paid a little more attention to the fact that people could only hear one side of the cell phone conversation– “Howard Dean died?!! Oh no!” “Hey Andy, I’m sorry to tell you that Howard Dean is dead!”

By the time I figured it out, I think the rumor had spread around the whole store that the real Howard Dean was dead. I ran around to everyone I heard talking about it and explained “Oh, no, sorry for the confusion. It’s just our fish.”

Some day there may be a really good moral to that story (like don’t assume you know the whole story, or don’t talk so loudly on cell phones in public)…but mostly it just makes me laugh every time I see old Howard on TV.

This story begs to be worked into a sermon — once Pastor Oliver figures out just what the moral is.