What a difference a year makes. A year ago this time, an
archival search reveals, the esteemed Mme. Hillary was capturing
Enemy of the Year honors for 2002. Now a whole host of vigilantes
is telling us it would like to see her repeat this year. Or better,
tied to a stake opposite the enlightened Sandy Day O’Connor. But
must we rush to predictable judgment?
Let’s face it. Honesty and our reputation for integrity require
that we come right out with it to say we plum forgot giving Hillary
the prize last year. (This despite all the campaign funds she
funneled to us from Beijing via Panama and Vancouver.) Yes, it’s
true: like the entire Clinton collective, we could not recall,
perhaps owing to a medical condition America’s unnationalized
health care has yet to treat. But the fact is that those of us who
suffer from Enemy fever retain no memory of who our laureates have
been. Is this any way to pursue justice, properly understood? Is it
time we turned ourselves in to ourselves?
Reviewing the 45 Enemy of the Week winners for the past year,
we’re shocked at not only their variety but their similarity. Some
happen to be men, others women, not that we discriminate against
those who are a combination of the two. Some are American, others
non-American, though not necessarily more anti-American than the
Americans. Some work in Washington, or Hollywood, or at ABC News or
on Times Square. Some even served in Iraq, be they Saddam Hussein
or Tony Benn or Rep. Jim McDermott. Some have names, others have
acronyms, a few even live in France (which Americans should
actually colonize rather than boycott) and only one of them is
running for the Democratic presidential nomination. The PG version
of his name is John Kerry.
Aside from the absence of other dwarves, the shocker here is
that the Massachusetts Tall Man wasn’t named until last fall, and
not for anything he muttered as a presidential aspirant. It was for
an insult he directed at Rush Limbaugh, at a moment when Limbaugh
happened to be down. After what the pip-squeak Howie Dean has done
to Kerry, we expect his insults to grow more self-referential,
unless he cleverly takes the lead in ascribing Mad Cow disease to
its Vermont exemplar. Either way, if so-called Democratic
presidential hopefuls can’t score in Enemy precincts, how is the
eventual Democratic nominee ever to carry a single state next
November outside of Ontario? We seriously urge the Democratic Party
to decline to nominate anyone for the presidency in 2004. Its
constituents will be better served if more attention is paid to the
crumbling infrastructure of our nation’s interstate bike path
system.
To be sure, there are those who think we should quarantine Dr.
Dean right here and now. But that would only be giving in to the
hysteria endemic to any disease seen as a threat to the meat-eater
class. According to polling, Howard Dean is far less known, let
alone popular, than last year’s Enemy laureate. He may be leading
the Democratic pack, such as it is, but a hungry, desolate,
scavenging collection of mini-wolves it remains.
Republicans have their perennial stars too. One such is New York
Gov. George Pataki, whose recent statesmanship consists of an
unconditional pardon of a late speechwriter to Senator Clinton by
the name of Lenny Bruce. We look forward to the release of Bruce’s
records, so that our unsalty culture might benefit from the litany
of original obscenities under seal ever since his arrest back in
the Era of Repression. One good turn will propel another, as the
competitive Howie Dean will feel the urge to unseal access to his
own hall of records, all of them recorded in the colorful language
he mastered in his year of basic training as an avalanche-causing
maestro among the prols of Aspen, Colorado.
As we write, there has been regime change in Washington, as the
most hated executive the capital has seen these last two years has
caved to political pressure and announced he’ll not be running
again next year. That is, running practices. So long, Steve
Spurrier. For a while he seemed to be preparing a Clintonite exit,
as word leaked that his wife was unhappy in Washington, and thus
the Redskins’ losing ways could be blamed not on her husband but on
the loser of a city even her husband couldn’t save. But according
to the latest version of his resignation, Spurrier is for all
intents confessing he wasn’t up to the job. By American political
standards, that qualifies him as a class act. One suspects he’ll
vote Republican next fall.
Which leaves us desperately searching for a qualified winner of
this year’s Enemy super bowl trophy. Once again the Democratic
ballboy Howie comes in handy. Recently he let on, amid claims that
George W. Bush knew in advance about the impending attacks of 9/11
just as George H.W. Bush knew about Japanese plans for Pearl
Harbor, that Osama bin Laden, when found, will deserve the services
of the finest lawyers the ABA can provide him. Perhaps Dean said
this to curry favor with Sen. Patty Murray, who long has regarded
Osama as a model social worker and mentor, and whose endorsement
Dean now needs to complement Al Gore’s in stature. In any event,
alas, whatever path Howie is on can be regarded as the wrong one,
no matter the congregation.
Enemy Central is therefore proud to announce that its winner
this year is a dead man, or person, as Time magazine would
have it. The New Hampshire-based coroner Mark Steyn pronounced him
dead in 2002, a finding confirmed by a medical commission headed by
one Dr. Tyrrell. Subsequent claims that the dead man is alive have
all the credibility of those that fall under the “Elvis lives!”
rubric. Most recently, after the humane rescue of Saddam Hussein,
some terrorist fans of Howard Stern released a tape purporting to
carry the reaction of our winner to the event. The tape proved to
be older than a rerun of “I Love Lucy.”
So here’s the score: Osama bin Laden, Enemy of the Year 2003, is
dead, as good as dead, and as such, deader than dead. Once the
reality sinks in, the Howies will respond that while America may be
safer, the Afterlife sure won’t be. Eternity won’t last long enough
to cure them of their fears.
