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"Apt Analogies"
By Nancy Greggs
Ever since I was a kid, I’ve always looked forward to the new fall season, hoping that at least one or two new TV shows would prove to be entertaining. In my wildest dreams, I never imagined anything of the caliber of GOP-TV, which is capturing an audience share that defies imagination.
Thing is, we should have seen it coming. The GOP has been pushing their woogedy-woogedy cart around the political grocery store for months now, trying to keep it on the straight-and-narrow despite those misaligned wheels, grabbing tasty but nutrition-free snacks off the shelves to throw at their constituents just in time for the mid-terms – constituents who now have a big bellyache thanks to all of the sugar-coated garbage they’ve swallowed over the years, only to realize there was nothing but crap under all of that icing.
Due to all we’ve been told, ad nauseam, about the marketing genius of the Roverites, we dared not imagine the obvious: that one unexpected, uncontrolled monkey wrench thrown into the works would land the pristine GOP machine at the bottom of the hill, a wheel-less pile of junk destined for the scrap yard.
In a world so carefully orchestrated by heretofore invincible cockroaches, the lone light bulb of Foley-gate sent them scattering across the floor with the kind of precision one would expect from the Rockettes after spending the night at an all-you-drink buffet.
Like I said, we should have seen it coming. If there’s one thing we’ve learned from Iraq and Afghanistan, the Republicans are pretty damned good at planning everything – except an Exit Strategy.
The game of He Said/He Said became the hit sit-com of the season within twenty-four hours. Hastert knew what he knew, until he didn’t know it. Reynolds said what he said, until he didn’t say it. Emails went from being naughty to nice in a twinkling of Santa’s eye, and the hits just kept on coming.
Timelines were revised every news cycle, then every twelve hours, then every twelve minutes. Someone forced someone to resign, someone volunteered to resign; someone was totally sober while being drunk, and someone was not the abuser but the abused. Within a matter of days, everyone was lying, no one was lying, DC pages went from being kids to being adults to being kids again – and the GOP leadership scanned eBay on a regular basis, willing to pay ANYTHING for an official Peabody & Sherman Way-Back Machine in fair-to-fixer-upper condition.
In a laugh-a-minute landscape, the punchlines quickly fell out-of-sync with the sizzle of the snare-drum. These pages were nothing more than teen-aged ‘beasts’ determined to ‘egg on’ a fine man like Mark Foley – and there went the support of holier-than-thou parents from California to the New York islands. The we-can-keep-America-safe mantra lost its luster when it became apparent that they couldn’t even keep little Johnnie and Ricky safe in an allegedly well-supervised dorm, and last time anyone checked, the NASCAR dads, the soccer moms, and the Bible-thumpin’ Fundies were arming themselves with a lethal combination of pitchforks, tar and feathers.
As Homer Simpson would say, “That stuff may play in the sticks, but this is Capitol City.”
Suddenly, spinning the unspinnable loomed in the distance like a ship-sinking iceberg, and as of this writing, the Republican powers-that-be were hurriedly handing out the sheet music to “Nearer My God to Thee”.
But as God would have it, the Foley fiasco was just the beginning of the kind of pre-election month that Democrats dream about.
While we are all familiar with the amnesia-of-convenience that has swept through Washington of late, the plague suddenly hit epidemic proportions. Condi never had a meeting that she later remembered having, only not the way Tenet remembered it, until she was reminded of how it went down, at which time she conveniently fled the country – having suddenly remembered she was supposed to be in another meeting somewhere, to accomplish something. The details are still a bit sketchy, but at least we know she’s wearing the right pair of shoes to do whatever it is she does.
And then there are those pesky Abramoff emails, chattering on about tickets to sports events, and freebie dinners and bottles of on-the-house wine, and an upcoming War in Iraq that was yet to even be imagined in the mind of George W. Bush and his cohorts, to hear their side of the tale.
But wait, as the infomercial voice-overs tell us, there’s MORE.
Abramoff operative Ralston resigns from her myriad of positions in the White House, an NIE report is leaked stating that the War on Terrorism has actually increased terrorist activity (unofficial title: “The Bleedin’ Obvious”), casualties in Iraq hit an all-time high, Senator “Oh, no, he Di’ent Say That” Frist announces that the Taliban – the guys we went to Afghanistan to annihilate – should be invited to take a hand in governing the country being as they’re in control of it anyway, Jeb Bush hides in a closet to escape angry citizens (insert your own joke here), and Daddy Bush warns the nation that if the Democrats regain power, they’re gonna make his little boy piss his pants even more than usual.
And as though we needed a cherry on top of the Perfect Storm parfait, Fox-News identifies the erstwhile Mark Foley as a Democrat on their bottom screen banner – a white flag of surrender that blatantly says, “Even WE can’t spin this, so let’s just pretend he’s one of THEIRS, instead of one of OURS.”
In the midst of all of this hilarity, the GOP (aka Blackest Pot on the Stove) scream at the Democratic kettle about the timing of the disclosures of their wrongdoing, amusingly riled that someone on the other side of the aisle might be using traditional Republican dirty tricks* (patent allegedly pending).
As the tangled web crafted by deceit begins to ensnare the incredibly guilty, one wonders where it’s all headed, where it will all wind up in the end. Personally, if I were a Republican, I’d put all of my investment dollars in seatbelt futures – because it’s pretty damned obvious they’re in for an incredibly bumpy ride.
As for me, I’m just enjoying the show. I think we’ve got the classic ‘instant hit’ on our hands, and I have an inkling it’s going to run for many seasons to come.
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