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 Ethnically Varied Reactionaries are only Bootlicking Stiffs Real GOP = 3-Chinned WASPs & Helmet-haired Stepford Wives |
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An Editorial by BuckcuB
A Minstrel Show for Daddy
A right-wing reactionary is still a right-wing reactionary, even with brown skin or Oriental eyes or a vagina. This isn't a Cabinet; it's a coloring book. And like the line drawings conveniently left blank for kiddies' crayons, underneath the superficial tints this collection of bootlicking stiffs are all on the same page. The Texas Twit and his handlers apparently believe that Americans can be bamboozled by this candy-sampler of a Cabinet into believing there is real diversity there. Republicans relied on the same scheme during their 2000 national convention in Philadelphia, carefully distributing a sprinkling of dusky dimples and epicanthic eyelids throughout the sea of triple-chinned WASPs and helmet-haired Stepford Wives.
Instead of being presented with a Cabinet that looks like America, BuckcuB concludes we are being handed a Cabinet of what the Bushians wish America looked like. Straight, ultraconservative Christian hardliners in charge, leavened with a few suck-up Uncle Toms and social-climbing minorities who know their place, and can be counted upon for a grinning "Yassuh, massa, anythin' yo say!" when their opinion is invited.
To their everlasting credit, more than a dozen representatives -- including most members of the black caucus -- walked out of the House's counterfeit of democracy-in-action, their disgust palpable. Unsurprisingly, black folks have little tolerance for slave auctions, even when they are disguised as Constitutional rituals. Many simply could not sit and watch silently while they and their constituents were sold up the river to Massa Bush. It is, perhaps, a mark of just how little Shrub understands America, if he believes he can mollify the black electorate with Cabinet picks. Less than fifteen percent of black voters nationwide cast a ballot for him; in many urban areas the figure was less than five percent. To put it more tellingly, of those who voted some 90 percent voted against Bush. And that colossal voting bloc is not going to be appeased by the sellout likes of Rice or Powell. Latino voters so far seem unimpressed with Bush's picks, too. BuckcuB did not notice any Latino leaders coming forth to protest after Linda Chavez' nomination for Labor secretary crashed and burned. Her dubious claim to the ethnicity -- a Latino grandfather -- was far from strong enough to gain support from Latino pols. It may also have struck the Latino electorate that Chavez was not exactly one of them, a woman harboring an illegal-immigrant domestic after being nominated by a guy whose main job as governor of Texas was to keep the Mexicans on their own side of the fence. Perhaps, BuckcuB ponders, Shrub thinks that John Ashcroft "looks like America." A white religious fanatic, stridently anti-abortion, unashamedly homophobic, proud holder of an honorary degree from racist Bob Jones University? The only part of America which looks like that is the Ku Klux Klan. Even now, some of those sailing with the Ashcroft nomination are noticing that they may have accidentally boarded R.M.S. "Titanic" instead. Like the reputedly-invulnerable luxury liner, Ashcroft is being heavily laden with staunch claims of his unsinkable success by the right wing. Titanic went straight to the bottom of the Atlantic on her maiden voyage, a happenstance which -- given the hyperbole surrounding her launch -- would have been a piece of hysterically-funny irony, were it not for the tragic loss of life in the infamous maritime catastrophe. When the Ashcroft nomination hits its iceberg, BuckcuB hopes he will not drag quite so many innocent passengers down into the depths with him. And has anyone else noticed a rather Baby Janesque flavor in Shrub's other nominations? Like the aging child star horrifically depicted by Bette Davis, Defense-nominee Don Rumsfeld's glory days are long, long past, rooted in the Ford Administration of the mid-1970's. Now he's being dragged out of comfortable obscurity by the terminally-insecure Texas Twit, in a nod to Bush's psychotic denial of the Clinton administration. In this fantasy-made-flesh, Daddy's still President. The same names from 1990 are back in the newspapers and walking the White House corridors. Rumsfeld. James Baker. Uncle Dick Cheney. Even, god help us, Margaret Tutwiler (remember her?) helping out with "communications planning." It's like the intervening eight years between Bushes never happened. (Cue creepy atonal harpsichord music.) "But they DID, Blanche, they DID happen!" BuckcuB points out. Will citizens be deluded into believing the Bushian claims that this Cabinet, these staffers, "look like America?" Only if they subscribe to the creeping racism that defines nominees strictly by the color of their skin or the slant of their eyes, instead of their philosophies and politics. In the meantime, Bush II is staging his ghastly minstrel show -- "The Fall of the House of Usher," with some new nonwhite actors to augment the familiar ghosts from Daddy's reign, resurrected from the dead to stalk the rotting colonnades of power. There's no diversity in the Texas Twit's nominees. They are ideologically identical actors in a demented production, the wretched purpose of which is to con America. America won't be conned, but Georgie doesn't really care. Just as long as this minstrel show keeps performing his favorite number over and over again -- "I've Written A Letter To Daddy" |
