Flush With Silly Ideas to Enliven ‘Debate 4’

Here at the column, we normally don’t succumb to cheap advertising pitches from private companies. Unless, that is, they’re very amusing or it’s a very slow news day.

Luckily for publicist Gretchen Kurz, she scores on both counts.

She and advertising partner Colleen Cotton are the brains behind a shameless gambit to drum up publicity for Fluidmaster, a San Juan Capistrano company that calls itself the world’s leading manufacturer of toilet repair parts. I’m in no position to challenge that claim, nor can I spare my research team to find out.

So I’ll take the company at its word, mainly because the centerpiece of its current P.R. campaign is a contest in which people try to imitate the sound of a flushing toilet. If a company is willing to link itself that brazenly to potty humor, who am I to throw cold water on it?

“It’s a legitimate event, but it’s off-center; let’s put it that way,” Kurz says.

Legitimate? “It’s honest competition,” Kurz says, “and we do pay money to the winners.”

Good enough for me. Out of a few dozen contestants, who were required to give their imitations over the telephone, six will compete next Wednesday for the first prize of $1,000. The runner-up gets $500, and the show pony gets $250.

By now, Kurz is playing me like a fiddle. She’s got just the right combination of media savvy and “isn’t-this-a-hoot?” attitude that’s hard to resist. After all, she and her partner also dreamed up a “tribute to Thomas Crapper” years ago to draw attention to their client. Crapper is the 19th century Englishman credited in plumbing lore with inventing the toilet.

Kurz says, “We wanted to go beyond the Thomas Crapper salute and do something a little fresher or interesting or attention-getting. We wanted to come up with an idea that wasn’t expensive and that would attract attention.” The contest, she says, is timed to culminate in October, “which, as you know, is National Toilet Repair Month.”

I reluctantly bid adieu to Kurz and thought some more (that’s my job) about her contest. Then it hit me.

What if, as a fourth debate, President Bush and challenger John Kerry were asked to drop all pretense and show us their other side? Is there a voter in America who wouldn’t want to hear that?

And why stop there? Why not devote an entire 90-minute joint appearance on national TV to asking the candidates, who already would have discussed serious issues in previous debates, about silly stuff?

Instead of the news media or League of Women Voters providing questions, how about a panel of college sophomores?

After hearing Kerry and Bush dissect Iraq and Social Security, wouldn’t you love to see how they’d handle, for example, the following questions from moderator Robin Williams?

* “Gentlemen, let’s hear some yodeling.”

* “Mr. Bush, can you recite from memory a line from any movie that you think might stump Mr. Kerry? Mr. Kerry, you will then be given a chance to reciprocate.”

* “Mr. Kerry first, then Mr. Bush: Using the voice of any cartoon character of your choosing, tell us what you had for breakfast this morning.”

* “Gentlemen, mimicking a 4-year-old, sing the first song you recall hearing as a child.”

* “Mr. Bush, off the top of your head, provide a follow-up rhyming line to this made-up song: ‘I searched and searched and couldn’t find my pants ....’

* “Mr. Kerry, using ‘Egbert’ as a first name, make up a last name for President Bush that you think would make the audience laugh.”

* “And finally, gentlemen, a big finish and you can do this in unison, on three -- would you give us your imitation of a flushing toilet?”