- The Perfumed Prince declared himself a Democrat. Many
Americans may not recognize the nickname bestowed upon Wesley Clarke by
British colleagues as he strutted around Serbia with his set of platinum-plated
general's stars carefully repositioned each day to a freshly-starched and
ironed camouflage cap, wafting a thick vapor trail of cologne. His lack
of judgment demonstrated in Serbia - including an order to clear out Russian
forces that British general, Sir Michael Jackson, had to ignore for fear
of starting World War III - should be enough to utterly disqualify him
as a candidate for President. But this is America, land of opportunity.
-
- The former general scents, through the mists of his musky
cologne, an opportunity for service. Hell, we're at war, and any real general
is better than a former male cheerleader from Andover who cross-dresses
as a combat pilot. Dreams of being the hero on a white horse beckon. A
fatal attraction in the American people to used-up generals is how the
country managed to elect some of its worst presidents - Grant, Jackson,
and Garfield, for example.
-
- Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts announced that he
wants the Democratic presidential nomination. He chose to ask for it from
the deck of an aircraft carrier. I have no idea why he would repeat any
part of Bush's pathetic stunt, but to my mind it is an immediate strike
against his competence. Perhaps he hoped for a promotional deal on a doll
in combat gear to memorialize the occasion? That is, after all, a good
deal of the country's idea of war, limited-edition collector dolls with
lots of cute little zippers, flaps, and pockets (all handsomely made in
China or Indonesia). Never mind real war where pilots drop cluster bombs
and napalm on tiny desperate figures far below, and the occupying troops
slosh through the resulting human gore, a good deal of it belonging to
children in Iraq.
-
- Well, Kerry was awarded some medals during Vietnam, so
that does set him apart from Bush. Kerry's doll could feature cute little
medals to set it apart, but then he threw the originals into a trash bin
at a veterans' demonstration in front of the Capitol in 1971. That's not
the kind of association that excites collectors of expensive kitsch in
America's better class of trailer parks.
-
- By the way, does anyone know whether the Bush Elite Aviator
doll wets? Perhaps you can change its undies as girls did with Betsy Wetsy
decades ago? This would offer opportunities for different editions. Bush
Original could chug little water-filled six-packs while Bush Holier-Than-Thou
used a miniature pitcher of iced tea.
-
- Senator Kerry's involvement with Vietnam certainly reflected
the war's extremes. He earned his medals in questionable actions including
the shooting of a man who was running away and the killing of a child by
a member of his crew. Remember another Kerry, a former Senator, the boyish
one from Nebraska who spells his name "Kerrey," a Medal of Honor
winner in Vietnam, much admired until it was learned that his grisly work
there had been as a member of one of the night-crawling murder squads?
If only Americans could once see what utterly filthy stuff war really is,
the world might be spared a lot of needless horrors.
-
- John Kerry, having become an opponent of the war in which
he served, made a speech to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971,
describing some of what he had witnessed in Vietnam. Americans had "raped,
cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephone to human
genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly
shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan,
shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged
the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war,
and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied
bombing power of this country." I can only admire such truthfulness,
but Kerry's first instinct, years before, had been to contribute to the
mayhem. Only when it was politically opportune did he oppose it. I get
the same morally confused signals today with a speech delivered from an
aircraft carrier while Iraqis suffer miserably from what such killing machines
already have inflicted.
-
- The Democrats held their first debate, hoping desperately
to find an attractive candidate. Senator Joe Lieberman was there, but you
have to wonder why anyone would vote to replace Bush with Lieberman? The
pair remind me of one of those 1950's cheap horror films about a monster
with two heads lurching over the countryside.
-
- Lieberman's many pious-fraud battles over personal expression
suggest that the Two Heads may actually have shared a single brain at birth.
Just like his Twin Head, Lieberman avoided military service out of personal
interests without hint of conscience or principle, and, just like his Twin
Head, Lieberman always stands ready to see people blown up in foreign lands,
just so it's "our boyz" doing the blowing up. Capital punishment
warms his heart, too, and he has organizational connections with Dick Cheney's
wife, America's intellectual gorgon.
-
- Even the Rev Al Sharpton, also a candidate, doesn't bring
quite the same rank smell to the nostrils.
-
- Former general Powell, who once could have been President
and have had his own fancy soldier doll, instead ends his career as a tiresome
door-to-door salesman in shiny-bottomed pin-striped pants, pitching plans
nobody wants to the United Nations. That "irrelevant" institution,
as it was hotly described by Powell's sales manager only a short while
ago, now is being offered something called "a role" in Iraq.
A role, in the weird idiom of Bush's Washington, consists of sending vast
quantities of money and troops to a reeling, miserable country Americans
are already sick of hearing about without having anything to say about
their use or the country's fate. Say-so would stay in the Oval Office,
the source of the vicious tantrums that created all the destruction. As
of this writing, stubborn blockheads in Germany and France had rejected
the attractive limited-time offer.
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