#405 Crazy Talk

My life appears to be a magnet for irony these days. I just got a press release that said this organization is having a first annual event. Another flagrant violation of the first annual rule. There is no such thing as the first annual; it can’t be annual until it has happened at least once. The first event in possible series of like events is called the inaugural event. So if a new President comes into office his ball is not called the first annual ball, it’s called the inaugural ball. And if election night returns leave Republicans across the land asking what the hell happened to our Contract with America, the answer is, this appears to be the inauguration of a whole new era. The winds of change have blown. Interesting little historical aside: three of the congressman who were blown out of office in the recent anti-mandate election were swept in to office on the Republican anti-mandate gale of the nineties, when Clinton suddenly found himself with a different kind of congress and staring into the vortex of impropriety-peachment or sex-peachment, or whatever. And those same three congressman were swept into power on the strength of the now nearly forgotten “Contract with America,” Newt Gingrich’s two-fisted brainchild that was in all the photo-ops. Remember Newt and his neo-cons holding up that big oversized contract poster thingy that looked like a winning check from Publishers Clearinghouse? America responded to the promise of cleaner government, more accountability, fiscal restraint, less taxes and so on. A kajillion dollars in deficit later, an Enron scandal or two, a little Mark Foley and his e-book of pages, and the public finding out how lobbyists have Jack Abramoffed about every congressman, and the contract appears to have been about as good as a pyramid chain letter. But there was one other thing in the Contract with America worth noting: It was implied when the Republicans took over congress that one of the reasons they were given the chance was because the public was tired of the evil Democratic congress and its old, set-in-its-seniority power-broking ways. The Republicans talked loudly and often about term limits. Term limits would cut out the dead wood of congress. Term limits would surgically excise the cancer of special interests and I-scratched-your-back-now-you-have-to-scratch-mine layers of obligation that sent many a Mr. Smith fleeing from Washington. Of course, such crazy talk vanished once the seats in the seats of power developed a decidedly right cheek. So the ironic thing is that these three congressman that were swept out last Tuesday were swept in on the term limits promise. Guess what? They’d each served 12 years. Which is 6 terms in congressional dog years. I guess the public finally took that limit thing in its own hands. Another ironic thing was the name of the organization that sent me a news release on its first annual event. The Literacy Network.
America, ya gotta love it.