visible occasionally among tlie numbing political advertisements of tlie 1993 election season was a commercial promoting tlie New York City ballot initiative proposing term lim-its for elected officials. The spoken text was reasonably predictable, but the visual image was striking: several enormously fat men sit- ting together, chomping on large cigars, and chortling-as if expressing tlieir contempt for tlie law, or the people, or both. Wlietlier tlie commercial had anything to do with tlie over-...