The American Spectator

Enemy of the Week

Are you ready for some football? Not if you're one of those demonstrative Democrats tailgating in old New Mexico. In happier days future Democrats of America all escaped to Canada or Denmark or Albania. Now they prefer the middle of a nowhere place, where they are more likely to be watched by coyotes and cactus poachers than by potential voters. Then again, when you've got nothing you've got nothing to lose. According to the latest scientific polls, two-thirds of adult America can't name or recognize a single Democratic candidate for president. As for all those Texas state senators who've taken to calling Albuquerque their new permanent home, they don't even register on the EPA's endangered species lists. It's not that Democrats need to reintroduce themselves to American and New Mexico voters. Their situation requires something more drastic. Here's the plan.

They all move to Mexico itself. Not too far into the hinterland. Don't want to tire them out. Then on the next available moonless night they all cross over into San Diego County as full-fledged illegals. Under the still functioning Gray Davis, they'll each be welcomed with open arms and handed jobs, public housing, a regular welfare stipend, and a driver's license, keys to their own car, a voter registration card, and a lifetime pass to any Indian-owned casino. As honorary citizens of the U.S.A., finally they may become a known commodity.

By next year, just in time for the big enchilada elections, they'll headline the pre-game extravaganza from the NFL National Mall in Washington. If it pleases them Britney Spears will reprise her performance from last night. Or if they want something saucier they can have her go mouth to mouth with aging Madonna, Al Gore's onetime kissing consultant.

The country is in permanent recovery from last night and all those other nights Madonna has entertained her conscripts. Tom Shales, the world's foremost couch potato, was appalled, and rightly so, that President Bush lent his name to yesterday's bacchanal, especially when he told the assembled slobs that football "celebrates the values that make our country so strong." To which Shales replies, "Like what, violence and greed?" This is where the Democrats would come in to add: cheap shots, late hits, illegal holding, chop blocks, personal fouls, trash talk, taunting, illegal motion, arbitrary penalties, dropped passes, hitting out of bounds, lost yardage, and late-game fumbles -- all the tricks of their political trade.

They are a bumbling lot. Last night the Democratic warriors inducted themselves into the Albuquerque hall of fame. The most moving speech was Dick Gephardt's, in which he called the man he would replace a "miserable failure" a great many times. In case anyone missed his point, he was hoping it would be clear that it takes one to know one. Next time he'll remind us he hails from the Bushwacker state. John Kerry kept to himself, wondering if he should again boast of having once voted to "threaten" Saddam Hussein. On his first trip to Latino land, southern belle John Edwards felt lost. His first instinct was to call the National Translation Center hotline. But then he realized there is no such center. So in shrewd executive fashion he called for the founding of one. By next year it'll translate Southern English into Hispanic English and vice-versa for any speaker of either, though it's not clear who will handle the sign-language interpreting. That's where his trial lawyer friends will come in handy.

It wasn't a good week for the Democratic press either. The coolest good guy of them all, Charles Bronson, died. The liberal papers couldn't forgive him for cleaning up New York well before Rudy Giuliani did. And for all their fixation on identify politics and ethnic pride, they couldn't figure out what his real surname was. One day the New York Times had him down as Charles Buchinsky, the next as Charles Bushinsky. The Washington Post, meanwhile, and this in a piece by a Pulitzer Prize winner, called him Charles Bunchinsky, as if he were one of the Brady Bunchinsky originals.

Before you knew it, the Post was turning unsatirizable, a quality everyone had assumed was exclusive to New York Times. Or maybe it was just plagiarizing Tom Wolfe. Under the headline "Family Copes With Teen's Violent Death," the paper reported on the fatal shooting of a would-be car thief by the Bronsonesque owner of the vehicle. We learn the victim was "short and husky," "an avid fan of rapper Pastor Troy, as well as the Green Bay Packers and Washington Wizards," and that he "dreamed of playing quarterback for a high school team." Above all, although "too young to have a driver's license, he had an interest in automobiles."

We don't make this stuff up. They do. They know who they are. Their EOW prize awaits them at Enemy Central outlets on the National Mall, in Albuquerque, or along Mexico's border with California.

topics:
Trade, Law, NATO