Falls from grace
Fortunately, things we can laugh at also died in 2006 — the previously unchecked power of the conservative wing of the GOP, for example. And the blind faith America’s Christian hard-liners once had in the Bush administration. Could this year also mark the death of ignorance?
Well, let’s not hope for too much. The born-againsters aren’t about to abandon their allegiance to superstition over sense. But at least, in their own slow-witted way, they’ve recognized that G.W. and his moneyed string-pullers played them for suckers. Yes, out of earshot of the overly faithful, it’s been reliably reported, even the Bushies refer to the cap-C Christian constituency as “nuts,” making it almost unanimous.
Given that federal regs on abortion haven’t budged and American public education (with or without an “intelligent design” curriculum) now ranks among the lowest in the solar system, and poor folks are still allowed to collect welfare just before they starve, about the only thing the Bush administration has done for the Jesus loonies is make it harder for them to commute to faith-healing rallies by plane.
The fact that these (almost universally acknowledged) fruitcakes finally realized the clown they helped vote into office has never done a damn thing for them, combined with the toxicity emanating from the Oval Office after the midterm elections, constitutes the death of an alliance of earth-shaking scope. Whatever happens in 2007, one thing is for sure: it’s to the advantage of every Republican to distance him- or herself from the current presidency — and the phony war that comes with it and the phony claims to religiosity that have sheltered it. Since moving further right is impossible — short of applying some method of governance borrowed from the Tonton Macoutes — this can only be a good thing.
The year also marked the death of the possibility that George W. Bush could escape going down in history as the Worst US President Ever. The comparatively trivial traditional Millard Filmore–Warren Harding rivalry has, at last, been rendered obsolete. Even bodacious constitutional crooks like Richard Nixon (once thought to have retired the title) never stooped quite as low as our current national embarrassment has. Of course, while we’re all over here chortling about that, kids like Peter Wagler remain needlessly in harm’s way — over there. This year just refuses to become funny.
Out of it
Okay, well what did make us laugh recently? Surely the unprecedented comic clumsiness exhibited by the GOP as it fell from dominance induced a few satisfying chuckles. Virginia senatorial loser George Allen’s effort to win votes through crude bigotry may have fallen short of the loudmouth prowess of Mel Gibson or Michael Richards, but in the end, it got the laugh it deserved.
More impressively, the precipitous tumble taken by Florida congressman Mark Foley, whose much-anticipated biography is certain to be a real page-turner, would have been hilarious except for the kids he victimized. Again, it’s difficult to sustain humor about 2006.
If you really want a good (and guilt-free) laugh at the expense of reluctantly un-closeted gays, you have to turn away from the federal government and back to the realm of fire and brimstone, where a similar scenario was played out between consenting adults Reverend Ted Haggard and buff Colorado rent-boy Mike Jones. Haggard, until recently president of a spiritual menagerie called the National Association of Evangelicals, had, like Foley, protested too much against the homosexual life while enjoying one behind supposedly closed doors. That kind of irony in everyday life makes for real knee-slappers.
