Wisdom of Old Jokes
Old jokes seem to embody enduring truths for me, and sometimes their punch lines become mental summaries for many of the categories (conceptual file folders) into which I slot this and that bit of ridiculous information. (I was just talking yesterday with someone about the gag that ended a McDonald's TV commercial once: "Feet! You had feet!" — very useful when spending too much time with more-martyred-than-thou control queens.)
Anyway, here's a rhetorical question from The Baltimore Sun
He [House Majority Leader Tom DeLay] just can't seem to figure out, though, how to put to rest the flurry of ethics allegations now being hurled at him on almost a daily basis. He tried dismantling the House Ethics Committee, changing the subject to Terri Schiavo and launching an offensive against the federal judiciary. Yet the attacks against him have only intensified. He's fallen back on the familiar tactic of blaming the Democrats and liberal media, but that won't make the spotlight on him go away.
Doesn't that immediately bring to mind the "Doctor! It hurts when I do this" joke?
In seems incontrovertible that politicians, especially the current breed of Robber-Baron Republicans, in their undeniable moth-to-flame trajectories towards power, believe that they can get away with it, whatever the "it" happens to be for them that leads them to slip into denial about their own corruption. Didn't their mothers ever teach them that truth and honesty are the better course to follow? Sure, all of them think that they'll be able to remember their lies and keep them sorted, that they won't be the ones to get caught. Most of them may even be correct, but they're still not right.
Since I've become such a liberal-pinko-homo-* partisan now though, I tend to go along with those who'd prefer to see DeLay not give up too easily. Inflating him even further as the iconic hot-air balloon leading the Republican parade could be quite damaging to them — a good thing. Using DeLay as the change-of-subject for a failed social-security reform campaing may be surprising but useful. Forcing fellow Republicans to swear fealty oaths should keep them careening down the slippery slope for months to come.
The longer they're embroiled in the relatively innocuous but ultimately pointless pasttime of trying to make Delay look like an honest politician, the less time they devote to destroying American governance in less obvious ways.
Wouldn't it just be easier not to do it in the first place?
One Response
Subscribe to comments via RSS
Subscribe to comments via RSS
Leave a Reply
To thwart spam, comments by new people are held for moderation; give me a bit of time and your comment will show up.
I welcome comments -- even dissent -- but I will delete without notice irrelevant, rude, psychotic, or incomprehensible comments, particularly those that I deem homophobic, unless they are amusing. The same goes for commercial comments and trackbacks. Sorry, but it's my blog and my decisions are final.
on Monday, 11 April 2005 at 18.45
Permalink
I wish I could agree with you about the forces of darkness being distracted by all the fuss surrounding DeLay, but I can't. They seem to have legions of people at it 24-7, coming up with new and worse ideas for bringing back feudalism, etc. And what Republican insiders don't come up with, their lobbyist friends and corporate keepers do.
Going by what they do and how they do it, these people were taught in childhood that it's not how you play the game, but whether you win or lose. Always.
The reason they believe they can do as they please and get away with it is because, so far, they've succeeded in spinning their way out all their screwups and messes.
Apparently, Ms., Mr. and Mrs. America are too busy to notice or maybe too convinced all politicians are mess makers and screwups, so what else is new?