Profiles in Dis-courage

Last year, the world watched transfixed as the governments of Libya, Egypt and Tunisia fell in large part due to the ability of the freedom fighters to communicate via cell phones and computers. Looking back, it is becoming more and more apparent that the age of the tyrant is coming to an end. Wherever people unite via these remarkable methods, governmental greed and stupidity will be called on the carpet and soundly thrashed.

Take Occupy Wall Street, for instance. This movement, which began with some campers in a park in New York’s Financial District, has spread worldwide in large part due to Twitter and Facebook. Occupiers are now um, occupying everywhere that perceived injustice is being done throughout America. And in true democratic fashion, the local governments have immediately responded to their demands. Our economy is now on an upswing thanks to the government bailout of the pepper spray industry. Way to go governments! Pepper Spray America and save a job!

Whether you realize it or not, we are bearing witness to a cataclysmic shift in how we are and will be governed forever. Politicians, tyrants, dictators and crazy people can no longer count on the ignorance of and lack of communication among their citizenry. From now on, everything they say or do will be visible and audible with the click of a virtual button.

I have this theory that the American Government’s Executive and Legislative branches have for the most part always been occupied by crazy people who, if they were ordinary citizens, would be dressed in togas and roaming Times Square with megaphones, raving about interplanetary aliens among who are destroying our free will by injecting artisan cheeses with mind-altering bacteria. There hasn’t been an original thought in Congress since the invention of the vacuum tube brought these bubbleheads into our homes through the miracles of radio and television. With few exceptions the elected ‘leaders’ of our citizen government spend most (if not all) of their elected terms, working to get re-elected. They live in a biosphere of perks, where their constituents are a nuisance that must be occasionally placated so that the perks will continue. From a purely business viewpoint, they realize that they must at least give the illusion that they are ‘of the people’, so they have hired teams of people to make them appear concerned and caring through the use of sound bites.

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The result is a crop of people, who have been entrusted with the future of arguably the greatest nation in the history of the world, having the collective intelligence and ethics of Foghorn Leghorn. All of which brings me to the Campaign of 2012, and the Presidency in general. There’s a whole lot of Presidential stuff in the air and it helps to occasionally sniff it, no matter how bad it smells. Let’s start with Willard “Mitt” Romney.

Call it my own personal prejudice, but I always feel that if I ever looked at Romney’s record collection, I would find nothing but Pat Boone and Andy Williams records in it.

Not that being an ethnically vanilla guy is a bad thing, it’s just that I see him as being so far removed from any relation to the life that I and millions of others lead, he couldn’t possibly have the slightest clue as to what needs to be done to make our lives better. I can totally see Mitt eating spareribs with a knife and fork at a Chinese restaurant, and asking for an endless supply of moist towelettes to wipe the grease off of his high-lanolin content hands.

But in his never-ending attempt to appear more human and less like a Disney Animatronic Robot, Mitt’s ‘people’ have decided that he needs to have more pop-cultural references in his repertoire. A secret report (which I just made up) reveals that about a six months ago, Mitt’s Minions purchased the board game Trivial Pursuit (no, the irony did not escape me) and have been playing it on the campaign bus all across Iowa in the hopes that Mittens will be able to connect with ‘regular folks’. This carefully constructed and ingenious plan to bridge the ‘hipness’ gap began in 2008 when, Grand Master Mittany sampled the lyrics to “Who Let the Dogs Out?” in one of his stump speeches.

Oh he has his manicured finger on the pulse of America alright. In May of 2011, we learned that Mitt’s favorite book is Twilight, a series of novels about a teenage girl who falls in love with a 104-year old vampire. More about vampires later; right now I want you to picture Mitt as the Leader of the Free World, sitting in front of a roaring fire at the White House, trusty dog at his side, reading the four Twilight novels. It boggles the mind doesn’t it? And that’s not all.  .  

Last week, he referenced I Love Lucy, in what I can only assume was his attempt to validate his immigration policy on illegal Cubans who have come here with conga drums to keep everyone awake with their incessant singing of Babaloo.

Finally, on New Year’s Day, Romney demonstrated his encyclopedic knowledge of all things popular by pointing out to the just-plain-folks of Iowa that President Obama’s “gap between his promises and his performance is the largest I’ve seen, well, since the Kardashian wedding and the promise of till death do us part.”   I’m sure that Mitt and his people smiled knowingly to themselves as they hit this home run. If you watch the video of him, you can almost see the thought bubble over his head read; Wow... so this is what it’s like to be a real boy.

Speaking of vampires (like the way I came back to that?), it has come to my attention that a new movie will be released in June of 2012 involving Abraham Lincoln, perhaps the greatest president America has ever had. It’s title? Abraham Lincoln; Vampire Hunter. And no, I am not kidding. And no again if you think the screenplay was written by Rick Perry and Ron Paul.

This film, produced by Tim Burton, is an adaptation of a novel by the author Seth Grahame-Smith in which Lincoln and William Seward (the guy who got us Alaska at a great price) are both vampire slayers. Lincoln is out to avenge the death of his mother, who was apparently killed by them and Seward is just along for the ride as his wacky sidekick. Also featured in the movie is Edgar Allen (you can call me Al) Poe as the man who informs Lincoln that unless the vampires (slave owners) are stopped, they will not rest until they enslave ALL Americans, which includes the white guys. Pretty lucid thinking on Edgar’s part, no? This is the same guy who was high on opium and liquor for most of his life and whose death, it has been speculated, was caused by one or a combination of the following; alcohol, brain congestion, cholera, drugs, heart disease, RABIES, suicide, and/or tuberculosis. Not only that, but Poe died in 1849, twelve years before Fort Sumter was fired upon. Yes, I can certainly see Abraham Lincoln traveling to Baltimore to confer with this lunatic on matters of importance like the fate of the nation.

Lincoln... A vampire hunter... Four score and seven years ago... That Lincoln. Vampires. It almost sounds like something Michelle Bachmann might have heard from one of the voices in her head. What the hell is wrong with America, people?

My final Presidential story today has to deal with Richard Nixon, the only President who ever resigned from the job. He has been the subject of numerous books, but none quite as bizarrely titillating as the latest biography by former United Press International Washington Bureau Chief, Don Fulsom. It is entitled Nixon’s Darkest Secrets; The Inside Story of America’s Most Troubled President, a title that I would question given the last eight years we spent with George Bush and his craziness. But Mr. Fulsom is obviously way more qualified than I am to debate the relative sanity of the men who would be kings.

The book is apparently chock full of gossip. He was, according to Fulsom, a heavy drinker who was referred to as “Our Drunk” by his staff, and who frequently beat his wife Pat, called her a “f***ing b**ch” before, during, and after his presidency. But the biggest, juiciest chunk of news from Fulsom’s book is the unfounded claim that Nixon was, and I can’t believe I’m typing this, GAY.  

Fulsom claims that it was common knowledge to Washington insiders that the object of Nixon’s affections was his best friend, Cuban-American playboy Charles (Bebe) Rebozo. Both Nixon and Rebozo, Fulsom writes, laundered money for mob kingpins in Florida and Cuba, but the relationship was much more intimate than that.

You know, having grown up in that era I have absolutely no trouble believing that Nixon and Bebe laundered money. It’s the gay thing that I find absolutely stunning. Who would have guessed? If it’s true, there are a whole lot of Republicans who have an awful lot of “splainin” to do Lucy, regarding their vehement anti-gay stances over the last forty years.

So there you have it folks. The next time Grandpa and Grandma are sitting around the dinner table talking about how the world has done gone plumb crazy, since they were kids, explain to them that it’s always been this crazy. It’s just that now we all know about it. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to cover my windows with tin foil, throw out all my artisan cheeses and take my anti-mind control serum to protect me from the aliens... and the government.

That’s it. I’m done bitching. Everybody hug, everybody eat. Abbondanza!