Last Days of a Great City

God Hates Fag Wars

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The House of Representatives approved a Republican-sponsored resolution today defining the Iraq War as between a man and a woman.

Congressmen speaking in favor of the resolution argued that it would help preserve the sanctity of killing people.

I’m glad they got this off their chests before the fall elections.

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Image source: bartcop.com

Crime Does Not Pay ... As Well As Politics

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CEO:  Leaving this lavish, privately-funded golf junket so soon, Senator?

Senator:  Yes, I need to get back to Washington to address an important national security issue.

The New Miscegenation

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On the eve of Senate debate on an amendment to ban gay marriage, I adapt the verse appearing on a racist postcard of the 1900s …

Not Particular

I know you’re not particular to a fault
Though I’m not sure you’ll never be sued for assault
You’re so fond of sex that even a mensch
Attracts your gross fancy despite his man-stench

Size Queen

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From the Washington Post:

At Saturday’s commencement ceremonies, McCain and Falwell marched side-by-side onto the stage in the university’s basketball arena. After a sometimes raucous faculty processional, in which students and faculty doused one another with aerosol cans of string, Falwell warmly praised his guest, saying, “The ilk of John McCain is very scarce, very small.”

But did Jerry Falwell actually see John McCain’s ilk?

The FOX News Report

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Roving Last Days reporter Rachel Tension watched FOX News for fifteen minutes today and filed this report …

“Well, Felix, it’s looking pretty Right Wing on FOX News tonight.  The lead item on Iran was clearly written to stir up anti-Iranian sentiment.  FOX News reported that Iran had essentially dared the United Nations to impose sanctions.  ‘Prices at the pump will rise,’ taunted the Iranian Foreign Minister.  Looks like they’ve got us by the balls.

“There was a story on the ‘Day Without an Immigrant’ protests planned for May 1st.  As you know, Felix, pro-immigration activists urged immigrants and their supporters to stay home from work on May 1st to underscore the importance of immigrants to our national economy.  FOX News reporter Adam Hauser pointed out that ‘May 1st is also a Socialist-Communist holiday, and that may not be a coincidence.’  It isn’t every day you hear reporting of this caliber.

“I sat through the commercials at the break, Felix, and I noted that sponsors included Ditech Financial Services, Bayer Aspirin, a dietary fiber company, and the manufacturer of a product for head lice—giving the impression that FOX News viewers are constipated, heavily indebted neuralgics with head lice.

“Back to you, Felix …”

The South American Way

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An eye-catching item from the May 1, 2006 New Yorker:

In the ongoing South Americanization of political culture north of the border—a drawn-out historical journey whose markers include fiscal recklessness, an accelerating wealth gap between the rich and the rest, corruption masked by populist rhetoric, a frank official embrace of the techniques of “dirty war,” and, by way of initiating the present era, a judicial autogolpe installing a dynastic presidente—what has been dubbed the Revolt of the Generals is one of the feebler effusions.*

South Americanization.  It’s a wonderful conceit that will no doubt make the rounds of dinner parties and earnest discussions of the failings of the current junta.  Of course we can expect our overly sensitive neighbors to the south to object to this characterization.  They’ve not forgotten, like we have, Allende, Arbenz, and the other democratically-elected Latin American leaders we removed from power—all of this before we sank into the depths of our South Americanization.

But what progress this new political culture represents!  Before we were South Americanized, “dirty war” was out of the question and we had to resort to killing people like the Vietcong by tidier means.  When we enslaved the Africans and interned the Japanese we were no doubt forced to use a purer, more nuanced North American form of state brutality.

But now it’s cojones all out, people.  Ay, caramba!

From my vantage point here in the heartland of America, I see, quite frankly, more signs of Disneyfication than of South Americanization.  I see field after field of anaesthetized, consumerist sheep only vaguely aware of the nefarious forces that maintain the flow of corporate profits and, by logical extension, our American way of life.  The Devil may doff his hat and show us his horns because we’re simply much too sated to care.  Baaaaa!

If our country is headed South, it simply doesn’t have far to travel, so let’s enjoy the ride because detrás de nosotros viene the fucking lluvia.

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* “Rummyache” by Hendrik Hertzberg.

Dialogue Concerning Samuel Beckett and Snakes on a Plane

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I’m sitting with Raul (another gay philosopher) on my front porch, and we’re celebrating the Samuel Beckett centenary by exchanging silences.  We had been discussing the second act of Beckett’s Happy Days, in which Winnie, a middle-aged woman is buried to her neck in a mound of dirt.  Raul reminded me of Not I, where the stage is in total darkness except for the character Mouth, “about eight feet above stage level, faintly lit from close-up and below, rest of face in shadow”:

“Winnie has an obsession with her gewgaws, but she can’t manipulate them.  Mouth is worse off.  She has a shattered consciousness that she tries to reintegrate without the assistance of her own corporeality,” says Raul.

“I'm totally into your corporeality …”

He ignores me.  “She’s just a mouth floating in the void.”

“You’re saying that Beckett turned the stage into some ghoulish specimen jar.”

“No, just the opposite.  The fact that the characters are constrained makes their struggles more poignant.”  Raul pauses to dab a tear with the corner of his Kleenex.  He’s getting agitated.  “Popular media go the other way.  It’s all about the possibilities inherent in excess, not constraint.”

“Endless, inane chatter; quick-cutting of images; ever bigger explosions—”

“Right, but we can't sustain that.  I think the Blogosphere’s overwhelming response to Snakes on a Plane signals a newfound regard for constraint in art.”

“As in the constraints on the agency of the creatures that would terrorize the passengers?  Is that what you mean?  Like, where are the snakes going to hide—the beverage cart?”

“Yeah, like Samuel Jackson yelling into his radio, ‘We got motherfuckin’ snakes!’”

Scalia's One-Fingered Judgment

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Here's an excerpt from a recent UPI item:

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia startled reporters in Boston just minutes after attending a mass, by flipping a middle finger to his critics.  A Boston Herald reporter asked the 70-year-old conservative Roman Catholic if he faces much questioning over impartiality when it comes to issues separating church and state.  “You know what I say to those people?” Scalia replied, making the obscene gesture and explaining “That's Sicilian.”

Actually, the gesture is not half as obscene as many of his rulings.

Believing Passionately in the Palpably Not True

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This item from the March 31st Washington Post:

Greeted by anti-war protesters at almost every stop in a tour of working-class England, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Friday that the Bush administration has probably made thousands of “tactical errors” in its handling of the Iraq war.*

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* “Rice Admits Thousands of ‘Tactical Errors’ in Iraq” by Glenn Kessler, Washington Post Staff Writer, Friday, March 31.

Downtime for the Veep

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They set up Cheney's room,  but they forgot the small child.  And the chalk for drawing a pentagram on the carpet.