I mean, c'mon, finding someone who has no opinion is not easy. Heck, we have opinions on whether the guy in front of us turned on his left signal too soon. So what to do?

At first, Zen monasteries were thought to be a fertile breeding ground for subjects with no opinion. Unfortunately, the obstinate monks insisted on answering every question with giggling, nonsensical paradoxes and requests for brown rice and seaweed snacks. The spin meisters grew impatient with these silly no-mind games and split.

Not eager to waste time, network executives told these intrepid journalists to simply "look it up" in Webster's. What did they find? Let's put it this way, what they didn't find was "Undecided: an unattractive, inarticulate member of the human race (from a battleground state) who wants to be on television."

Okay, okay. Who are the Undecideds (you ask)? According to the pollsters (a fast-growing class in themselves) they are the least informed segment of the population, with rudimentary educations and no particular interest in politics in the first place. Their main function seems to be remaining undecided so they won't lose their seats on the focus groups (they are unceremoniously booted off your TV screen when they finally decide). In other words, my friends, we are dealing here with a milling, sullen, embittered, ignorant mob who are going to decide the election. Unless they don't vote. Which is a strong possibility, believe me. Which, of course, raises the question: why are we polling them? Why are we polling, period?

We're nothing if not pseudo-scientific in these United States. As George the Pretender is fond of saying, we need accountability. We must have our polls, but the subject of those polls has become increasingly obtuse. Polls about whether Gore should have stuck with the blue tie from the second debate. Polls about whether the candidate's wife's mother should have worn the same color dress as, you got it, the candidate's wife.

The next step will be negative-evaluation polls: "If you were not going to choose either candidate, which one would you be least likely to reject?" (This was found to allay most voters' fear of seeming too biased.) Incidentally, negative choice is the idea behind the whole election process this time round. It is based on an old Tarzan comic strip in which the king of the jungle is presented with a horrible alternative by the fiendish witch doctor. He is shown two boxes: one contains the sacred ring of Zar, the other is empty. If he chooses the box with the ring, he goes free. If he chooses the other box, he will be thrown into a pit of snakes. The wily Tarzan, knowing that there is no ring in either one, points randomly to a box and says, "It's not that one."

Still, we love to poll for likeability because pop culture doesn't deal in issues, it deals in images. And the principal dupes of the images spewed out by popular culture are the sacred undedecideds. Confused, resentful, and endlessly gullible, they are fodder for infomercials, shopping channels, dopey movies, political propaganda, and sit-coms with laugh tracks. In other words, entertainment that tells you how to react to it.

Bush is an honorary member of this group. He's easily confused himself by issues, figures, facts, who he's had executed, and words of more than two syllables. In other words, he speaks their language. They want to remain in their coma and Bush isn't going to disappoint them. His pollyannaish themes of bringing the country together and no big government are especially easy to grasp because they've heard them all before. These were the topics of the Carter, Reagan, and Clinton campaigns. Like Pavlovian dogs, they hear the buzz words and they obey.

They mostly resent Gore for waking them up. All those statistics! All those programs! All those concepts! All those nutty bills (heretofore they'd thought Dingle Norwood was a character on a sit-com).

The whole event confused them. The set, for one. What was that? A town meeting? Where? On the planet Pledge? If they connected this bizarre wall-to-wall carpeted ampitheater with anything, it would be the Star Trek Lounge where Captain Kirk comes out and sings a few verses of "My Funny Valentine." And if they related the candidates to anything familiar, Al Gore would be straight out of Jurassic Park, a velociraptor lunging at George Bush and about to snap his head off at the neck. Bush would be the hapless character on a Saturday morning cartoon just before the anvil falls on his head.

In any case, the Undecideds were already over-extended. They'd already had to make one decision the night of the third debate—Yankees or Mariners? What more do you want from them?