Josh Blue, November 27, 1978 (Cameroon) -
VP candidate for Independent (2016)
Running mate with nominee: Ronald Dee White (b. 1956)
Popular vote: ? (0.00%)
Electoral vote: 0/538
The campaign:
The Ron White/Josh Blue Blue ticket of 2016, comprised of two stand-up comics, brings to mind something Bob Hope said when he was given an award by Congress for his efforts in entertaining US troops. Hope told the politicians something like, "It is great honor for me, as a comedian, to be honored by my peers."
The White/Blue team was not the first color-coordinated ticket. In 1960 Gabriel Green and Addison Brown of the Outer Space Party created the Green/Brown option. White had originally asked comedian Lewis Black to be his VP.
Comedian Ron White announced his run for the Presidency in Nov. 2015. Some quotes from his campaign--
--"For the last 30 years of my life, I’ve done nothing but non-stop touring across this country, back and forth, making these people laugh, eating with these people, drinking with these people ... I know what they need, I know what they smoke, I know what they say, I know what hurts them, I know what they’re worried about."
--"This country is still at war. These guys and gals are coming home, blown to smithereens, worse than any war in the history of war. And it’s appalling how we treat them. They’re ours. They’re our young men and women forever, and we have to take care of them forever. They’ve given a sacrifice to this nation that should humble every one of us."
--"It’s the same trick every four years on the American people and most of the American people are gullible enough to fall for it every time. 'Here’s what you need to say, here’s what your buzzword is going to be, they want to hear this – now go say it and the louder you say it, the better it is'. Look, even though I think I have an 11th grade high school education, but I do have a G.E.D; which is really nice and if you don’t know what G.E.D. stands for then you probably have one too. I’ve gotten where I am by stacking words together, which is a really complex thing to do so I doubt the candidates are going to question my intellect. I hope they don’t anyway. Yet, me getting into a debate with any one of them would be a lot like playing ping-pong with a chicken. It would be very easy. I was watching that debate and they were talking the next day on the news about 'zingers'. Here I am thinking 'really, 'zingers' that’s what you’re giving points for? Well I’m in!' If you want to sit around a trade insults with each other then I’m president already.
You look at how qualified these people are. I like Donald [Trump] fine but should he be president of the country? NO! You cannot say the stupidest thing anyone says in the world every week and be president of the United States, you just can’t do it. For example, the wall between Mexico and the United States is the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard in my entire life. Do you have any idea how good the Mexican people are at digging tunnels? Do you know where El Chapo is? No. You don’t. Do you think he went over that wall? He went under that wall. It was the nicest tunnel I’ve ever seen, a mile long. It had lighting, a fountain, a dairy queen and he was just gone. It makes more sense to build a net between the United States and Canada to keep the geese out, which I would LOVE to try."
--"My campaign slogan is 'Vote Smart' not 'Vote For Ron White', it’s 'Vote Smart'. Think about this, this is really important. I don’t have the candidate that I want to elect; there is nobody there that I want to be the president. I look at the field and I’m like 'where are the best and the brightest in this country'? They don’t want this job, it’s a horrible job. It pays nothing compared to running Google or any other major corporation. It’s just nothing. You get a book deal, which is great if you make it through eight years of hell and you look forty years older. We need to make it a better job so we can attract more talent."
--"Well, I’ve never been a straight party, one party guy. In fact, it’s really hard for me to understand how somebody can be. I think both parties have great ideas as well as horrible ideas. If I were president, I would let you keep your guns and if you want to break into somebody’s house, I wouldn’t break into mine because I got my guns, my father’s guns, his father’s guns and it would just be a really bad idea. In Texas though, it’s legal to brandish a loaded AK-47 at a McDonalds because of open carry handgun laws. I would make that an act of Terrorism and put that person in prison.
You can have these guns and to say that you can’t or make guns illegal in the United States is like making glaciers illegal, it’s just ridiculous. However, I want those guns in cases and I want them unloaded. You cannot walk up and down the street carrying a gun, you just can’t do it. I would say let’s control what we got a little bit better, that way when we see somebody carrying a gun that’s somebody we need to keep an eye on."
--"I say we legalize marijuana nationwide and tax it. And then I say we have a real war on drugs – this will not be your grandma’s war on drugs. We have a serious problem with meth dealers and meth houses infecting this country. We’ll take some of that tax revenue from pot sales and offer American citizens $20,000 to find the meth houses and labs and just bust in and start blowing them away. We’ll give them an 8-minute warning to get the meth babies out. No reason to hurt the meth babies – not their fault."
--"I’m not talking about stopping the drug war. I’m talking about a twenty-thousand dollar bounty so you show me where a meth lab is, operating with people in it, we will have boots on the ground, go there and give you two minutes to give up your meth-babies and if you show one inch of resistance we will kill everybody in the building, including the people there that are visiting their meth lab buddies. Everyone will go straight to hell, which is exactly where they belong and deserve to be. I wouldn’t even think two seconds about it."
Josh Blue, the Vice-Presidential choice, was born in Cameroon to American parents. His cerebral palsy condition is sometimes used as a springboard for his humor.
[Washington State trivia alert!!!] Blue is a graduate of The Evergreen State College, which also happens to be my undergraduate alma mater. We did not attend at the same time. In fact, he was born during my senior year, so there is a bit of a gap there in time. However, when he was attending Evergroove I was also living in the area.
As the campaign season heated up White cooled down the political jokes and rhetoric in his gigs, "Because my fans are pretty much a dead split on the issue, anything I said would piss off half the crowd."
Election history: none
Other occupations: comedian, actor, sculptor, painter
Notes:
Comedian Ron White should not be confused with USA Memory Champ Ron White, who ran for President in 2012.
Brush with fame: My brother once worked with Lewis Black in NYC in the 1980s.
