Wednesday, August 24, 2005
Dredging up the old corpse to see if it still stinks
If the air, the past day or two, has been redolent with the reek of a Rove, it's not because Uncle Karl has been asking Junior to pull his finger. It's a familiar stench, yes, but far more foul than anything Rove could muster up from the brimstone pit of his colon.
For almost a year after the war, lip-diddlers of all political stripes were heard whistling a trite and simple tune, "If you don't support the war, you don't support the troops, you're giving aid and comfort to the enemy and you support the terrorists." Of course, anyone with a salt shaker-full of brain knew that song and dance was utter hooey but it was catchy and like the Macarena, got the best of normally sensible and nominally intelligent people. Democrats and Republicans alike could be heard reciting the verses verbatim and no matter where you turned, the damned song was being blasted out of some pinhead's piehole.
Eventually, the song got old and as those things go, when it piped up people could be heard muttering, "Uh, could you change the station?" As the war dragged on and it became evident to everyone that the war had nothing to do with terrorism, that the reasons for the war were a web of fabrications and lies not worthy of a three year-old, people began to think that maybe supporting the war had nothing to do with supporting the troops, that maybe, by golly, the troops were better off backing out of a turd hunt so completely botched, so perfectly fiddlefucked, that it could have only been hatched in the tiny minds of an idiot child and his oatmeal-brained buddies.
Not many people wanted to hear it. Whenever it got played (usually in places with a playlist limited to 4 or 5 songs, all of them stale), the vast majority was reminded of how foolish they had been to sing along, flail their hands in the air like zombie minstrels and line-dance to a truly awful and inauthentic melody. An ugly memory, it was best buried and forgotten, like a trove of old pornography.
So here's the stench: someone snuck into the back yard to dig up the stinking corpse and dance it around on a stick like it was suddenly new and alive and minty fresh. Bush dangled it around in Idaho earlier today, telling the handful of people who are still willing to endure his bullshit that, "I think those who advocate immediate withdrawal from not only Iraq but the Middle East are advocating a policy that would weaken the United States."
Rumsfeld took his turn shaking the bag of bones (observers were stymied at times deciding who was who), comparing thos against the war to Stalinists. Having seen the corpse dance around like a klansman at a cross-burning, The American Legion decided it ought to have a turn at letting the long pig dance it up at it's Honolulu convention (what with the luau theme and all).
Having subjected you to this lengthy mixed metaphor, I'll drive a stake in its heart and, unlike the perseverators on the right, give this thing a quick demise. I'll only add that if you want to know who revived the tired tune of "If you don't support the war, you don't support the troops," you need only look as far as Karl Rove. I assume he's banking on the collective short-term memory loss of the American people since the reappearance of the played out song occured today in a big way. Which should announce to all of us that their crew has truly run out of ideas.
Unfortunately, we'll hear this song for the next few weeks because Junior and his tittering nitwits will think they have discovered something really cool.
What they won't expect is that the American public has added a new verse to the tired old song, a reprise actually, from an old song that never gets stale:
"We won't get fooled again!"
For almost a year after the war, lip-diddlers of all political stripes were heard whistling a trite and simple tune, "If you don't support the war, you don't support the troops, you're giving aid and comfort to the enemy and you support the terrorists." Of course, anyone with a salt shaker-full of brain knew that song and dance was utter hooey but it was catchy and like the Macarena, got the best of normally sensible and nominally intelligent people. Democrats and Republicans alike could be heard reciting the verses verbatim and no matter where you turned, the damned song was being blasted out of some pinhead's piehole.
Eventually, the song got old and as those things go, when it piped up people could be heard muttering, "Uh, could you change the station?" As the war dragged on and it became evident to everyone that the war had nothing to do with terrorism, that the reasons for the war were a web of fabrications and lies not worthy of a three year-old, people began to think that maybe supporting the war had nothing to do with supporting the troops, that maybe, by golly, the troops were better off backing out of a turd hunt so completely botched, so perfectly fiddlefucked, that it could have only been hatched in the tiny minds of an idiot child and his oatmeal-brained buddies.
Not many people wanted to hear it. Whenever it got played (usually in places with a playlist limited to 4 or 5 songs, all of them stale), the vast majority was reminded of how foolish they had been to sing along, flail their hands in the air like zombie minstrels and line-dance to a truly awful and inauthentic melody. An ugly memory, it was best buried and forgotten, like a trove of old pornography.
So here's the stench: someone snuck into the back yard to dig up the stinking corpse and dance it around on a stick like it was suddenly new and alive and minty fresh. Bush dangled it around in Idaho earlier today, telling the handful of people who are still willing to endure his bullshit that, "I think those who advocate immediate withdrawal from not only Iraq but the Middle East are advocating a policy that would weaken the United States."
Rumsfeld took his turn shaking the bag of bones (observers were stymied at times deciding who was who), comparing thos against the war to Stalinists. Having seen the corpse dance around like a klansman at a cross-burning, The American Legion decided it ought to have a turn at letting the long pig dance it up at it's Honolulu convention (what with the luau theme and all).
Having subjected you to this lengthy mixed metaphor, I'll drive a stake in its heart and, unlike the perseverators on the right, give this thing a quick demise. I'll only add that if you want to know who revived the tired tune of "If you don't support the war, you don't support the troops," you need only look as far as Karl Rove. I assume he's banking on the collective short-term memory loss of the American people since the reappearance of the played out song occured today in a big way. Which should announce to all of us that their crew has truly run out of ideas.
Unfortunately, we'll hear this song for the next few weeks because Junior and his tittering nitwits will think they have discovered something really cool.
What they won't expect is that the American public has added a new verse to the tired old song, a reprise actually, from an old song that never gets stale:
"We won't get fooled again!"
