All’s well that end’s well. A spent Trent Lott, the Republican
Party’s Monica Lewinsky, according to Jesse Jackson Sharpton, Jr.
(if we heard right), has stepped down, but he’s not going to go
into the ladies’ purse business. He has burned his Dixiecrat Party
card, and removed from his linen closet anything in white and even
off-white. But just so the coverup can continue in another guise,
he’ll stay on in the Senate, serving the military-industrial
complex of Pascagoula, and depriving the Hon. Lincoln Chafee of his
rendezvous with destiny. President Bush interrupted his war on the
world to rehabilitate Trent, pronouncing him “a valued friend and a
man I respect.” For once it’s Lott’s turn to say, “Thanks a
lott.”
All that’s left now is to declare Sen. Bill Frist majority
leader by acclamation and to learn what people make of his surname.
Some will think he represents NFL referees, as in “frist and ten.”
Others are convinced he’s a creature of John Ashcroft and his
determination to increase federal “search and frist” powers. As for
Washington, D.C., it shall remain frist in war, frist in peace, and
last in the American League.
Billy Clinton, the little great one, or great little one,
whichever you prefer, continued his newest comeback by pronouncing
the Republican Party fundamentally racist. There he went again,
projecting like someone still deeply troubled for going ahead with
the execution of a lobotomized black prisoner on the eve of a
critical Democratic presidential primary in early 1992. In
happier news, Clinton is back to competing with Jimmy Carter
overseas, writing for the International Herald-Tribune
that America must not “dominate” but rather focus on supporting
such institutions of “global community” as the United Nations.
Well, at least the Clinton-Carter competition isn’t over a
woman.
In a different rivalry, neo-cons and con-cons are squawking and
pecking and plucking at each other’s feathers over who on the right
brought about the ouster of former Democrat Trent Lott and which of
these wings is the true conscience of conservative commitment to
racial sensitivity, not to mention equality and color-blindness. On
this one let’s just say we report, but can’t decide, and so will
hide behind the skirts of the Constitution, properly
understood.
In more normal times we’d do our hiding behind the skirts of a
maternal figure like Sen. Patty Murray, famous for winning her
Senate seat as a “mom in tennis shoes.” What we didn’t know is that
instead of letting the family dog chew on those shoes she decided
to do so herself, and now their rubber and plastic residue has
entered her brainstream, leading to hallucinatory pronouncements
about all that the popular Osama bin Laden has done to build roads,
health-care facilities and day-care centers around the world. Could
she be confusing Osama with Jimmy Carter and his many good works?
Or is Jimmy not violent enough for the little mom? Not since
Squeaky Fromme and Patty Hearst have we heard such an eruption from
a seething cauldron of suburban angst. For once we understand why
Sen. Thurmond found her attractive. He has this thing about women
with the odor of death about them.
So will Sen. Murray be forced to resign from the Senate? Or will
it be said that like most politicians she was only telling her
audience what it wanted to hear? After all, her remarks were
delivered in Vancouver, which sounds like Canada (though this
version is actually on the U.S. side of the border). Besides, she
immunized herself by emphasizing that “we have not done” any of the
good things Osama has. Heck, we can’t even provide day care
facilities for our own people. While lamenting the idea of bombing
Iraq, she stopped short of calling for the bombing of the U.S.
Nonetheless, so long as she remains a senator from Washington
state, can Seattle’s Space Needle be thought to stand secure?
This late-breaking development about Sen. Murray, first reported
nationally by Drudge (unless it was OpinionJournal.com that beat
him to it) and at this writing not yet available to consumers of
the Washington Post and New York Times websites,
spoiled our many plans for a special tribute to perennial punk Sean
Penn. Suffice it to say he liked Baghdad, because there at least no
one hassled him when he chain-smoked. New York’s Mayor Michael
Bloomberg promptly retaliated by outlawing smoking in Manhattan
bars, just the sort of half-measure that’s bound to hurt his raging
popularity. Will it take another Elliot Ness before drinking is
also outlawed in New York City bars?
Now Bloomberg needs an enforcer. If her surprise selection as
Enemy of the Week doesn’t spoil her, we’ll be happy to recommend
Patty Murray. For as we’ve seen, she’s got connections.
