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MONKEY SEE, MONKEY DO
BY PETER KURTH (published 01.28.04)
Last week, in anticipation of
George W. Bush’s State of the Union address, I took steps to prevent
a full-scale attack on my intelligence and credulity by shutting off the
television, powering down the computer, turning out the lights, canceling
the newspaper, drawing the blinds, locking the doors, hopping into bed and
pulling the covers over my face. I
believe this is what the people at Homeland Security recommend during a Red
Alert, which, in my opinion, any speech from Boo-Boo automatically is.
Well, it didn’t
work. I got a nice rest, but that
was all. Because, when I dared to
come out again, there he still was, reprinted, re-broadcast and re-spun,
lying through his teeth about “peace” and
“prosperity,” vowing to keep the world safe from “tair-ists,” posing, strutting, taunting,
smirking, turning black into white and tin into gold.
“Jobs are on the
rise,” said Bush, when jobs emphatically aren’t. "We can cut the deficit in half in
just five years," although, in truth, we won’t. We’ll throw some money at
“traditional” marriage, beef up the Patriot Act, put men on the
moon and build ranches on Mars.
“No child,” of course, “will be left
behind,” and there’ll be Starbucks in Baghdad
by Christmas. It might take a little
longer in Kabul, but, hey
– the warlords are working on it.
As soon as they get a taste of gingerbread latte, they'll stop
growing opium in no time.
“We've not come all
this way,” Boo-Boo concluded – “through tragedy, and trial
and war -- only to falter and leave our work unfinished.” So, tair-ists,
watch out! Rogue states,
beware! Homosexuals, come to
Jesus! In the Chinese calendar,
it’s the Year of the Monkey, and you’d better believe our
monkey means it. The reason he wants
to ban teaching evolution in the schools is because he doesn’t want
people looking too closely at his face.
Happily, and to my surprise,
a lot of people didn’t fall for the gag. CBS News dismissed Bush’s speech as
“politics without fingerprints,” “rhetoric,”
“spin.” The Arizona Republic called it “really just a
stump speech, using half-truths to pitch a failed presidency.” And Molly Ivins – a bona fide
Texan! -- wondered “why anyone would believe anything the president
says about our fiscal situation. Keep in mind,
this is a man who took three Texas
oil companies into bankruptcy.”
“It’s got that
reek,” says Mark Morford in the San Francisco Chronicle, commenting
specifically on Boo-Boo’s plan to colonize space. “It's got that reek of typical
macho Republican election-year BS … all war and guns and rockets and
oil and big slabs of chemically blasted hormone-injected semi-rancid Texas
beef … Our schools are desperate.
The Wal-Mart/SUV mentality is a national
cancer. Basic services nationwide are
being starved and shut down as cities scramble for fiscal scraps. John Ashcroft still has a job.”
So does Dick Cheney,
I’m sorry to say. The Vice
President of this pack of rats went to Switzerland
last week to represent the United States
at the World Economic Forum at Davos and
instructed the assembled billionaires, once again, that when diplomacy
fails force will be used. Why he
mentioned diplomacy at all I don’t know, since force will be used in
any case.
“Direct threats require
decisive action,'' said Cheney, mentioning no threat in particular, much
less a direct one, but adding that the events of September 11 – well,
you know the rest. How many times do
you need to hear it? And who wears
the biggest boots in town? We must
“nurture democracy” where we find it, said Cheney, and impose
it where we don’t:
“Democracies do not breed the anger and the radicalism that
drag down whole societies or export violence. Terrorists do not find fertile recruiting
grounds in societies where young people have the right to guide their own
destinies and to choose their own leaders.''
Like where, for
instance? Not in Florida,
where a lot of votes from the last election were made to disappear. Not in Iraq,
where the “Coalition Authority” still prefers an appointed
government to an elected one. Not in
Azerbaijan,
that “oil-rich Muslim nation,” according to Sunday's Washington Post, whose leader, Ilham Aliyev, came to power
last year by “blatantly fraudulent” means.
“When members of the
opposition tried to protest, they were brutally beaten by police,”
the Post reports. “There followed a massive,
nationwide crackdown in which more than 1,000 people were arrested,
including opposition leaders, activists from nongovernmental organizations,
journalists and election officials who objected to the fraud.” Aliyev is now
the absolute ruler of his country, a dictator of the kind we were so
recently urged to regard as “evil” in other parts of the
world. But he grants “billions
of dollars in contracts to such companies as BP-Amoco, ChevronTexaco
and ExxonMobil.
He also has supported a $3 billion pipeline that is to carry oil
from the Caspian to a port in Turkey.”
"The United
States has a relationship with this
country,” says Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. “We value it." We value it so much, in fact, that
Boo-Boo, while Governor of Texas, gave Aliyev honorary Texan citizenship “in
appreciation of his support for American oil companies.” The Post,
which normally can be counted on to kiss this president's ass, now asks
him, strangely, to put his money where his mouth is: “Azerbaijan, in short, might look
like a good place for President Bush to start implementing his frequently
declared policy of `spreading freedom’ to the world.”
That’ll be the day
– Bush’s money isn’t going anywhere but into the same
family trusts and concealed accounts that spawned him to begin with. As the light returns and the year grows
darker, keep that fact in mind: We
didn’t put him there, but we can lose him anytime -- if we want.
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