The Republican All-Star Game
March Madness is here kids, and with it a general fascination with any and all things whose greater meaning can be divined from a competition-style bracket. With that in mind, I offer some of the latter-day All Stars from the Right; a menagerie of goons so hopelessly bent they could only find company with each other, like maximum-security murderers and pedophiles whispering to each other through cracks between cells.
Ah, Spring!
YOU’RE FIRED!
All hail Domo Arigato Mr. Alberto Gonzales, looking his most What, Me Worry? outside his office yesterday. His non-apology for removing generally liked Bush-era appointed federal prosecutors across the country deserves applause for its apathetic attitude as well as its cold Mafia-like execution. The greater message is for all you right-leaners out there: Sure you’re Republican…but are you Republican enough?
An honorable mention is surely due to the Justice that never was–White House council Harriet Miers–who, in a fit of Cesarian dedication, has thrown her name under a bus to ensure Gonzales needn’t remove himself out of such motives as, say, honor or propriety or responsibility for your actions.
DON’T ASK DON’T TELL DON’T THINK
Hey, let’s not forget to raise the roof for Gen. Peter Pace, chairman for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for FINALLY addressing the pink elephant in the room. Addressing the editing board for the Chicago Tribune earlier this week, he equated being gay with adultery.
“I believe that military members who sleep with other military members’ wives are immoral in their conduct, and we should not tolerate that,” Pace said, showing everyone how not-gay he was, “I believe that homosexual acts between individuals are immoral, and that we should not condone immoral acts.”
Hear that, adulterers? Next time you’re banging someone else’s wife, know that Gen. Peter Pace thinks it totally makes you a gay.
What I love most about this is the fact that it reinforces the official Bush policy on gayness. For those so terrified by gays they became Bush supporters, they can look at this and say, “Good. We can’t officially keep them out of the military, but at least it means we don’t have to stop hating them for what they are. And then they can die for our cause. Everyone wins!”
PARDON ME, SIR
Okay so Scooter Libby was found guilty last week and I had to mention it because I’d been tossing around the following sentence…If you don’t like the outcome of your case, trial, trial again!
He’s only got to appeal a couple of times. The presidential pardon is only 21 months away.
I think the real winner in all of this is prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who succeeded in taking four years to bust a man who didn’t lie smart enough, as opposed to going after the architects of the entire ordeal. He’s proven to everyone how hopelessly bureaucratic the Justice Department has become. He comes off as a bigger shemp than Libby himself, who will at least be taken care of in time. Fitzgerald’s a man who went after wrong-doing because of a dedication to law and order and ends up aiding the Bush Administration by slapping them lightly on the wrist for one of the greatest violations in Executive history. I hope he is eternally haunted by this, posing his guppy and always ruing the ones that got away.
ELECT-RIC SLIDE
Keep an eye on Republican Presidential hopefuls John McCain and Rudy Giuliani. The two Right-boys that terrify me most for their crossover appeal will slowly but surely move center on most of their truly defining positions, like their acceptance for gay-mos and their idea that guns that shoot lots of bullets real fast shouldn’t really have a place in your double-wide. McCain has already made nice with America’s Sweethearts, The Christian Right, as he slouches his way across the country, and Giuliani at one point will have to break his (up until now) brilliant vow of silence on any and all positions. Mass. ex-Gov. Mitt Romney who had to tolerate “alternative lifestyles” is painting himself wisely as someone who did it because the people wanted it, not because he did. Now he can run around the country and gay-hate a lot more effectively.
Cobb is a freelance writer and regular sonuvabitch based in Los Angeles.