Of all the Republican slurs thrown at Democrats during 2000’s controversial Bush vs Gore election (and the subsequent 36-day recount drama), the one that still rings true was the charge that Dems didn’t have the stomach for battle, that they lacked the resolve to snatch Electoral College victory from popular vote defeat or the willingness to win a presidential race with no-holds-barred fisticuffs.

HBO’s star-studded docudrama Recount hammers this point home. As Bush’s proxy James Baker (Tom Wilkinson) declares the Florida fiasco “a street fight for the presidency,” Gore’s man on the ground, Warren Christopher (John Hurt), claims a street fight is exactly not what it is. His high-minded approach, of course, got Gore curb-stomped.

Very rarely does a singular event change the world so drastically. The hanging chad isn’t quite the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand — but if Gore had won, America would be a vastly different place (and so would Iraq).

It’s an apt time to relive this election nightmare as the Democratic primaries — or, as Jon Stewart dubbed them, “The Long, Flat, Seemingly Endless Bataan Death March To The White House” — deal with near voter parity between two candidates and yet another Florida mess.

The Dems are right pissed about their portrayal in Recount, whinging that former Buffy nerd Danny Strong’s script portrays them as wusses. Warren Christopher told The New York Times it’s “pure fiction” and Baker felicitously added, “I don’t think I was as ruthless as the movie portrays me, and I know [Christopher] was not as wimpish as it makes him appear.”

But despite the retelling’s dramatized scenes — this is TV, after all — the facts largely speak for themselves. While Christopher was concerned with America’s international reputation, Baker bussed in angry, well-dressed white men to stop the Miami-Dade recount through violent intimidation in what became known as the “Brooks Brothers riot.” One of Bush’s election attorneys told a reporter Recount gets it largely right, “except that the chaos they showed down in Florida, with demonstrations and death threats, was actually far worse.”

Before the film reaches its Orwellian conclusion — the Supreme Court stops the recount and then rules it unconstitutional because their stoppage prevented the recount from being completed by deadline — it does admittedly get bogged down in election-law minutiae.

Thankfully, viewer interest is maintained with uniformly stellar acting by Kevin Spacey as Gore’s lawyer Ron Klain, Denis Leary as Dem strategist Michael Whouley and Laura Dern as hilariously narcissistic puppet Katherine Harris, the Florida Secretary of State and Bush campaign co-chair who conspired to give it all to G-Dub.

So who cares if the Democrats come off as wimps who lost by hypocritically requesting recounts only in liberal counties, not statewide — the Republicans come off as, y’know, evil. Butterfly ballots, dimpled chads and Jewish bubbies voting for Pat Buchanan were unfortunate accidents, but Recount also reminds us that Republicans had 20,000 African-Americans stricken from Florida voter rolls — on purpose.

So if Obama becomes the Democratic nominee, he might wanna keep some Clinton-esque scrappiness in his playbook.
RECOUNT AIRS MAY 25, 9PM ON TMN.

Kingdom come
Call it an update on vaudeville or a hipster variety show — either way, the young downtown Toronto arts community has an outlet for its creativity in King Kaboom.

The unconventional broadcast mixes comedy sketches (learn how to make monster cookies on “Baked!”) with urban soap opera (“Lickity Split,” set in an ice cream shop), eccentric animation, spoken-word monologues, circus performers and local music acts like Born Ruffians and Thunderheist. This bits ’n’ pieces format makes it ideal for online viewing (www.kingkaboom.com).
Boasting surprisingly top-notch production values, cool art direction and clever writing, King Kaboom is pretty funny, but it’s no goof.
 
KING KABOOM AIRS SATURDAYS, 11PM ON SUN TV.