Barry Crimmins: '2006: A second-quarter scorecard - Summer fiction bonanza'
Barry Crimmins
It's always summer to George W. Bush, our lazy, hazy, crazy commander in
chief who puts in shorter presidential work weeks than Woodrow Wilson did
after he was paralyzed by a stroke. Having stolen his way into the Oval
Office what now seems to be several bad lifetimes ago, GW has treated us to
a scorching five years that have inflicted on the world a pandemic of son
burn. We have been continually baited and switched by an administration that
promises sinsemilla and delivers oregano. As we sweat out the fifth summer
of this affront to everything this nation could be, we all need a break.
For those of us who have resisted television's answer to the morphine patch
and live Tivo-less lives, summer is still a time to catch up on reading.
Reading books is increasingly quaint because, truth told, the average
American reads about as often as Donald Rumsfeld peruses the Geneva Accords.
Some of us now absorb the written word by ear, from books on tape or CD, as
we drive from one job to the next in the struggle to survive what Bush touts
as "economic expansion" -- itself a fictional depiction of growth that's
really an insidious weed creeping from beneath the gates of mansions to
strangle what's left of middle-class American life.
But some of us still get time off and will be reading at vacation
cottages -- though this year, the shore line will probably be several feet
closer to the veranda. On the bright side, after a stormy spring that left
rivers overflowing like Halliburton's vaults, many formerly landlocked
properties have skyrocketed in value due to the addition of beach frontage.
Climactic shifts have become so obvious that Al Gore's nonfiction An
Inconvenient Truth, a Seurat-worthy mural of environmentally friendly
fuel-injected power-points, was rolled out to the most sensational
act-of-God publicity campaign since Three Mile Island provided jillowats of
juice for The China Syndrome. Gore certainly provided a vigorous (by
boneless Democratic Party standards) reminder of where our priorities could
have been if it weren't for the madmen warmongers who stole his rightful
job. Talk about inconvenience ...
But it's almost August and, at least at the moment, the sun is shining and
daisies and black-eyed Susans are swaying in a tender zephyr. It feels
positively lyrical, so why ruin it with thoughts of madmen warmongers? It's
time to pursue a gentler agenda of lovely days spent lazing about and
flipping through pages of mindless fiction.
But how can one think of mindless fiction without reflecting on madmen
warmongers? Fiction creation and distribution is a year-round activity at
the White House and, to borrow one of the most ubiquitous terms in our
president's tape loop of catch phrases, "It's hard work."
Liars' fatigue
It's such hard work that former White House press secretary Scott McClellan
finally succumbed to fiction fatigue in April. After a few years of
repeatedly avoiding obvious questions and telling us that "the American
people aren't interested" in the details of the Bush-Cheney crime spree, he
had all the credibility of a greasy, sweaty John Wayne Gacy saying, "Smell?
What smell?"
Eventually McClellan was given his outright release by the big club, which
immediately restored its credibility by bringing in Rush Limbaugh's former
caddy Tony Snow to fill Scotty's teensy shoes. By the end of Snow's first
briefing, McClellan appeared fortunate for having been thrown out of the
Rose Garden and into the Briar.
Snow debuted with diplomatic aplomb while lying about the
NSA-wiretapping/data-mining/"Big Brother on Inhuman Growth Hormones" scandal
by citing a USA Today poll, explaining, "Part of it said 51 percent of the
American people opposed [wiretapping], if you look at when people said, if
there is a roster of phone numbers, do you feel comfortable with that -- I'm
paraphrasing and I apologize -- but something like 64 percent of the polling
was not troubled by it. Having said that, I don't want to hug the tar baby
of trying to comment on the program -- the alleged program -- the existence
of which I can neither confirm nor deny."
Say, this new press secretary sure does have a gift for speaking directly
and clearly to the American people!
The next day, Snow slowed his rhetorical verve and thus stopped short of
quoting Little Black Sambo chapter and verse. But he still came spinning at
top speed at a smirking press corps.
"Well, apparently, what's happened is, apparently some people are unfamiliar
with the pathways of American culture, and don't realize the old Uncle Remus
story where somebody hugs a tar baby . . . "
So it was his belief in his own cultural superiority that caused Snow to
fall in May. Of course, the same line of thinking did in the Third Reich and
the Confederacy. Coincidence?
While we were distracted by his "tar baby" reference, we failed to note
another White House fiction. Snow had claimed that 64 percent of us believe
it's fine for the sons of Joe McCarthy to rifle our underwear drawers in the
defense of liberty. This from the same White House that again and again
tells us that polls don't matter when 65 percent or more of those questioned
disapprove of the administration. I guess you don't have to make up your own
mind about the relevance of anything, including polling, when you have no
qualms about ignoring millions of other people when they make up theirs.
More shit, sir?
The White House Press Corps annual dinner, in April, was memorable for two
things. The first was George W. Bush's de facto confession that he couldn't
even appear as himself without the use of a stunt double. Better yet was the
way satirist Stephen Colbert landed a twofer on both Bush and the assembled
media by pointing out the Cheney-orange bull's-eye on the president's smug
puss. He then effortlessly hit the target with a barrage of material that
garnered some laughter and much cowardly silence.
The story was quickly spun by mainstream-media members, who explained away
their own weak-kneed response by informing us that Colbert bombed. Like hell
he did. A huge portion of the nation roared approval when it either watched
him on C-SPAN or saw or read his remarks online.
The biggest laugh of all came when Bush's talking-head defense team agonized
over whether Colbert had gone too far by smuggling truth disguised as satire
into a gathering of media and politicos in Washington, DC. They were also
concerned that the president was subjected to 15 minutes of public
discomfort as he sat trapped on the dais, characteristically devoid of an
exit strategy. While the most powerful mouse in the world sat glowering, the
courageous Colbert stayed in character and on point. The only way that
quarter-hour could have been more magnificent would have been if Bush had
been forced to watch the Comedy Central star while treading raw sewage in
the New Orleans Convention Center.
Always ready indeed
In a spring dominated by fiction, one truth emerged. Our war president
always, always sends the National Guard where it doesn't belong. Already
stop-lossed into extreme disrepair as temp workers in Bush's perpetual
occupation of Iraq, the Guard was handed a new assignment: secure the
Mexican border. Dubyahoo announced the deployment during yet another speech
deemed crucial by the media.
The custom goes thusly: Bush's public standing nose-dives, some simmering
issue gets magnified to distract us from more serious problems, and then
word comes from the White House that the president is going to take his case
to the American people. It's once again make-or-break time and it's all on
the line. Bush then delivers a factually bereft assessment of the latest
crisis and closes by reminding us that God is guiding us towards freedom. In
this case, the price of freedom will be paid by troops who should be loading
the sandbags, rather than the guns, of August.
But Bush's move makes political sense, at least for him. This very month,
Mexicans have reacted to what looks to be a rigged presidential election by
quickly and clearly documenting electoral fraud. At one point, 500 people
reportedly surrounded 10 Mexican election officials they caught
red-state-handed vote tampering in the Tabasco town of Comalcalco before
they could disappear ballots that overwhelmingly favored alleged loser
Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. Obrador's purported defeat came by the
razor-wire-thin margin of 0.6 percent of the vote. Despite what you might
read in the New York Times (which has a south-of-the-border editorial policy
that would lead one to believe it's a sister paper of the Washington Times),
the populace is in an uproar and this thing is far from over.
Bush sure as hell doesn't want Mexicans making their way to places like Ohio
to spread their backward ideas about one person, one vote.
(For more on Ohio, be sure to read Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s painstakingly
researched Rolling Stone piece, "Was the 2004 Election Stolen?" For the
scoop on Mexico, support the campaign for authentic journalism being waged
by former Phoenix staffer Al Giordano on his vital Web site, the Narco News
Bulletin.)
Death be not proud
On July 5, while the rest of us were recovering from the long weekend,
convicted mega-swindler Ken Lay died of (of all things!) a heart attack
while awaiting his sentencing in Aspen, Colorado. At least he was in a gated
community. Former Enron employees and shareholders pooled their resources to
buy a stamp and sent Lay's family a gracious bereavement card that read: "As
ever, we share your loss."
Some people contend that Lay's GOP cronies faked his death to help him avoid
30 years in prison while saving a cool $40 million in restitution payments.
But there's no doubt about the authenticity of another casualty of
second-quarter 2006. The littlest president's greatest deadly moment this
spring came when a thousand pounds of US bombs turned the hideout of one Abu
Musab al-Zarqawi into a gravel pit. Thus ended the life of the
Jordanian-born, grandstanding terrorist who never grasped that his line of
work required stealth rather than a publicist. Also killed were two women
and a young girl, but such details have long since become insignificant to a
US government that has more important things to do -- such as blow up photos
of blown-up people like Zarqawi for barbarous public display.
Zarqawi was hated by almost everyone, including Al Qaeda, a group with which
he reached an agreement of convenience, in 2004, to handle its Iraq
franchise. Hey, they needed a presence in the market. Zarqawi happily
overplayed his small role in the violence that permeates Iraq: he's now the
super villain who organized the freedom-hating resistance to George W.
Bush's altruistic gift of liberty.
Right after Zarqawi was killed, an even more despised character slinked into
the devastated country -- George W. Bush. This surprised even Iraqi prime
minister Nouri al-Maliki, who was notified of Bush's presence only a few
moments before W's pre-emptive arrival. The poor guy barely had time to tidy
up and, quite frankly, Baghdad could use a grunt-load of tidying at the
moment.
To cover the enormous security tightening required for Bush's
photo-opportunism, the appearance of even more boundaries and checkpoints in
Baghdad was explained away as the preliminary infrastructure of a campaign
called "Operation Forward Together." That means they actually announced an
insurgent roundup several days in advance just to cover Bush's scrawny ass.
I think they used Zarqawi's publicist.
At the same time we were inundated with stories of how a "treasure trove" of
intelligence was unearthed from laptop hard drives found in the rubble from
which a dying Zarqawi was dragged. The insurgency would soon be smashed!
Those must have been some pretty tremendous computers because if I so much
as spill coffee on the keyboard of my Powerbook, a thousand dollars later
I'm lucky if they can tell me they're pretty sure it was a Mac. The CIA is
now likely in possession of the world's largest repository of Arabic
solitaire software.
The lost city of Baghdad
Zarqawi's death, Bush's visit, the treasure trove of intelligence, and
"Operation Forward Together" were all part of a spring bullshit offensive by
the White House meant to connive the American people into believing that
stability for Iraq was just around the corner. Anyone who bought this tripe
hasn't rounded many corners in Baghdad lately.
The truth about the power and stability of the mannequin Iraqi government is
clear whenever we see any of its officials make public appearances, which
are never conducted in public. These leaders see less daylight than Juneau
in January. They're always speaking with their backs to the wall of one
catacomb or another. This is because whether or not George W. Bush shows up
for visits shorter than the time it takes you or me to renew a driver's
license, the situation over there is desperate.
A startling piece of leaked administration nonfiction corroborates this. US
ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad signed, if not wrote, a memo that
documented that the situation is grave, which is also the likely destination
for more and more Iraqis and occupiers. Let's stop kidding ourselves; a
full-fledged civil war was bound to occur when Saddam Hussein was removed
from power in an unnatural nation made up of what would have been at least
three countries if not for Britain's imperial designs on the oil beneath its
1920 sands.
For now, the Kurds are happy to watch Shias and Sunnis kill each other and
any American troops who happen to follow orders into a free-fire zone laden
with IEDs and suicide- and car-bombers. According to the Khalilzad memo, the
new Iraqi government that so enthuses Bush is "irrelevant." The memo states
that "even local mukhtars have been displaced or co-opted by militias."
Baghdad is now negotiated one block at a time, and the morgue, with an
increasing number of execution-style victims, is now SRO.
When Bush brags about all the native police and security forces the United
States have "stood up so that we can stand down," he is explaining how he's
supplying both camps in this vicious struggle. Basically he put up a sign
that said "free guns," and then told us that it would help stabilize the
country. All the while, lurid details come out about events like the Haditha
massacre, further enraging locals and fortifying anti-occupation
recruitment.
As I write this, an e-mail has arrived with James Hider's shocking Times of
London account of how Baghdad is ready to "fall" and how the 889,000 Iraqis
who have fled the country may only be the "start" of a mass exodus. This
partly explains why North Korea's bottle-rocket Fourth of July display
received only a few news cycles of attention. Gosh, what's a charter member
of the Axis of Evil got to do to get noticed these days?
No bang, no whimper necessary
Bush has made us all bit players in his two-term historical novel, War and
Fleece. The unintentional moral of the story? When someone starts a war for
fictional reasons, other people will find good reasons to start and/or
continue the violence. Israel, a nation notorious for becoming what it
resists, is embarking on a full-scale war of its own. The Israelis responded
to the Hezbollah militia's tit for rat-a-tat-tat invitation by retaliating
for what they describe as the "kidnapping" of soldiers in a war zone and
several instances of shelling Israeli neighborhoods. Post- 9/11 George W.
Bush must be beaming with pride watching his number-one ally in the region
react to assaults on innocent people by massacring innocent people
throughout Gaza and Lebanon. American airwaves have been bombarded with talk
of how Israel has no other choice but to punish these (and this is the word
I've heard most often) "animals." Well, sign me up for PETA because I don't
believe anyone, not even an animal, should be subjected to what Hezbollah
and Israel have wrought.
The greatest fiction of all is the way so many Americans presume that we
live in a nation that is basically well-intentioned and therefore can do no
wrong. The results of subscription to this fable can be seen throughout the
war-torn planet, in a cemetery, VA hospital, or homeless shelter near you.
We live in a country that's in hock to the rest of the world so it can
deficit-spend to fuel a war machine designed to dominate the rest of the
world. Pretty soon somebody's gonna get sick of it and say the magic word
that brings the whole thing to an ignominious and unavoidable end:
PetroEuros.
It's July, and I don't even feel like hearing about the holy hell in which
so many innocents are forced to live and die, in large part due to greed,
hubris, and a variety of religious superstitions. The "flames of freedom"
George Bush frequently speaks of with such reverence are now engulfing Iraq,
Afghanistan, Lebanon, Israel, and perhaps by the time this has been
published, Iran and even Syria. And things ain't too swell in Sudan either.
I will give our ultra-religious crusader Prez Bush credit for this much:
he's forced many of us to look into our own souls.
I believe that George W. Bush and his allies venerate the same God
worshipped by their radical Islamists enemies. I think that God's name is
Thor.
In fact, more and more I am leaning on a spiritual explanation for all this.
My best guess is that the universe is actually a giant corporation and the
God worshipped by earthlings as divine and omnipotent is just a bungling
regional manager, to whom corporate big-wigs barely pay any attention. The
Milky Way has always been a disappointment to the front office, and sooner
or later it will be quietly and coldly decided that our corner of creation's
only true value is as a source of energy for consumption by the one true
conglomerate, the Black Hole.
ConglomoGod will do the same thing to Earth, and all that surrounds it, that
has been done to cities and towns all over our world by profiteering
corporatists and the military machinery on which they waste such an insane
proportion of our resources. One of these millenniums, our planet and galaxy
will be called into the ultimate meeting at the home office and never
return. And when that happens, all the lies, phony rhetoric, fears, sins,
and foibles of petty little men like George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden will
evaporate, along with all that's truly dear and vital on this planet.
Like I said, we all need a break.
Nearly 70 percent of the American people at least sense they've been had, so
why waste good weather on a futile attempt to enlighten the intractable
minority? Particularly when that fraction is populated mainly by a human
lint ball of frothing, paranoid, bigoted, ignorant, mentally ill, and
brain-damaged die-hards who still believe that supporting the dundering
dictatorship in Washington is an act of patriotism. r Each one of us is a
soul that deserves the pleasure of a cool breeze on a summer day as we
frolic and rest with those dear to us during the fleeting hours we are
allowed to relax, celebrate, and enjoy the time we have this side of the
mystery of eternity.
Perhaps I'll turn this concept into a novel and get it out in time for next
year's light beach reading -- presuming, of course, we make it as far as
summer 2007.
Political satirist Barry Crimmins will appear at the Payomet Performing Arts
Center, in Truro, on July 28 and July 29. His new album, Blues in the Key of
W can be downloaded from his Web site,
http://www.barrycrimmins.com.
--
NOTICE: This post contains copyrighted material the use of which has not
always been authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material
available to advance understanding of
political, human rights, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. I
believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright
Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107
"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson
