Ted Stevens
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Ted Stevens is best known for several things, none of them honorable. Among them: blatant unfamiliarity with modern telecommunications yet still introducing bills concerning their governance; championing very expensive, highly wasteful projects for his home state; pitching a bitchfit on the Senate floor when those projects are voted down; and bribery.
He is also old. Like, Strom Thurmond old. In fact, Stevens has sometimes been referred to as “The Strom Thurmond of the Arctic Circle,” though it remains unclear whether or not he, too, secretly fathered an illegitimate “lust-child” with his family’s underage servant girl.
Nonetheless, Ted Stevens has enjoyed a nearly 60-year career in government. For the vast majority of that time, he was allowed to dick around with relative impunity. However, with the country’s growing interest in Alaska—thanks largely to that show about ice road truckers: Ice Road Truckers—the true measure of Stevens’ dickery has only recently drawn national attention.
Some political analysts consider Stevens a staunch supporter of the “Bridge to Nowhere” or that dude who called the Internet “a series of tubes.” (Interestingly enough, Bridge to Nowhere and Series of Tubes were both alternate titles for the Steven Seagal environmental action-adventure film set in Alaska, On Deadly Ground.) A federal grand jury, however, considers Ted Stevens under indictment for allegedly failing to disclose gifts he received from an oil services company.
Many Alaskans call Ted Stevens by the avuncularly creepophile nickname “Uncle Ted,” although, to be fair, over the last thirty years or so, no one has received funding for anything in Alaska without having to sit on Ted Stevens’ lap.
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Early life
Ted Stevens began selling his influence for the price of a relatively modest home remodeling job from his birth on November 18, 1923, a birthday he shares with Owen Wilson, Metallica lead guitarist Kirk Hammett, and that actress who’s always getting naked in art house flicks, you know, the one who polishes a real on-screen knob at the end of The Brown Bunny.
While Stevens was originally born in Indianapolis, he grew up in the beach communities of Southern California. Successfully keeping himself out of military service in WWII, Stevens attended UCLA, from which he graduated in 1947 with a degree in the super dick major of political science. He then went on, like countless dicks before him, to graduate from Harvard Law School.
Upon graduation from Harvard, Ted Stevens went to work for a Washington law firm with close ties to the office of Secretary of the Interior. It was through this work that Stevens first learned just how ripe Alaska’s natural resources were for corporate rape and plunder. The Secretary of the Interior’s office is still hipping people to that same information.
Career
Ted Stevens first came to Alaska in 1953, ostensibly to join a private firm that specialized in coal mining, working to keep waste as toxic and workplace conditions as hazardous as legally possible. This is surprisingly easy under Alaskan law. Then again, possession of up to a quarter-pound of marijuana is protected by the state constitution, so it evens out.
U.S. Attorney
Despite having been a resident for such a short time that he wouldn’t even qualify for the piddling amount of hush money Alaskans receive each year to keep quiet about the real dough the oil industry makes at their expense, Ted Stevens somehow got appointed U.S. Attorney for Fairbanks, even though he was barely five years out of law school and completely lacking trial experience.
Stevens as a prosecutor was like the Giuliani of the frozen north, cracking down on liquor, drugs, and prostitution, which, along with oil and tourism, continue to comprise Alaska’s top five industries. Soon enough, he was back in Washington, D.C., as counsel for the Secretary of the Interior’s Office, where Stevens quickly busied himself successfully illegally lobbying for Alaska’s statehood.
U.S. Senate
In 1962, Stevens ran for U.S. Senate and was defeated in the general election. In 1968, Stevens lost the primary. However, not one month later, Senator Bob Bartlett breathed new life into Stevens’ political career by dying. This allowed Stevens to do one of the things he does best: get appointed to something.
Ted Stevens has since won a special election and six re-election bids in 1972, 1978, 1984, 1990, 1996, and 2002, making Stevens the longest-serving Republican senator. As such, Stevens served as President pro tempore of the Senate from 2003-2007. That sounds a lot more impressive than it actually is, considering that no one except high school civics teachers knows what a President pro tempore does. He has also served as both minority and majority whip, although Stevens maintains that he has never, in his life, whipped any minorities.
As senator, Ted Stevens has brought the state of Alaska more pork than a Miss Piggy centerfold. To get a better idea of the enormity of the sums involved, they named Anchorage’s international airport after him. He is the architect of the infamous “Bridge to Nowhere” project, which actually entails building two bridges to nowhere, at a cost of $320 million. Each. Like a whiny little bitch, Stevens threatened to resign from Senate if Congress diverted funds from the bridge projects in favor of Hurricane Katrina recovery aid. They did. He did not.
Stevens made news on December 21, 2005 for chucking a spaz when a bill was blocked that would have allowed drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. He claimed it was “the saddest day of his life.” One would imagine he has since selected a different day to claim those honors. Most likely that day is July 29, 2008, the day he was indicted on federal bribery charges.
But perhaps the senator is best known for remarks made during the summer of 2006, when speaking before the Senate commerce committee, he made several technical and technological errors while attempting to explain his opposition to a network neutrality amendment. Most infamously, he characterized the Internet as a “series of tubes,” declaring that the Internet was “not a truck.” Despite this second statement’s accuracy, his gross misunderstanding of a technology he had nonetheless formed a strong opinion about sparked massive media attention, both mainstream and alternative, as well as a good deal of mockery, spread in large part by the Internet itself. If you think that’s embarrassing, you should see the video clip of Ted Stevens singing “Chocolate Rain.”
U.S. Criminal Court System
Apparently, it turns out that Stevens was bribed by VECO Corporation, an oil services group, and its CEO Bill Allen. For anyone who says you can’t put a price on honor, Ted Stevens can: a second floor addition to his house, which raised its value by $250,000. That’s less than the league minimum salary for a major league baseball player.
Stevens is up for re-election in 2008 against Anchorage mayor Mark Begich, who is a member of the new cleaner, shorter breed of Alaskan politician. In fact, judging by the seriously low production value of his campaign commercials, there’s a good chance Begich isn’t receiving any money from anyone, not even legitimate campaign contributors. “Head On!” headache relief makes a more compelling TV ad.
With the Stevens indictment happening in July, rather than closer to the election, there is a pretty good chance Alaskan voters will have become focused on something else—moose season, for instance—and elect him again anyway.
Trivia
- Stevens was named “Alaskan of the Century” in 2000, just barely eking out a victory over Jewel and official state balladeer Hobo Jim.
- The Ted Stevens Foundation is a charity established specifically to “assist in education and informing the pubic about the career of Ted Stevens.” He founded a non-profit to raise awareness about himself; you gotta love that.
- On the senator’s 80th birthday, then-governor and also allegedly crooked Alaskan politician Frank Murkowski proclaimed November 18 “Senator Ted Stevens Appreciation Day.” Alaskans celebrate this day by calling up their friends in the Lower 48 and begging them for money.
