4/20/2004

Why No Impeachment, Part 1: If It Doesn't Involve Pussy, It Must Not Be a Scandal:
If we are to believe George Bush (via Bob Woodward), Americans are basically stupid fuckers who would rather be led around like submissives on a thin chain at a leather club than to actually have to think for themselves. According to Woodward on 60 Minutes, Bush "chastised me at one point because I said people were concerned about the failure to find weapons of mass destruction. And he said, ‘Well you travel in elite circles.’ I think he feels there is an intellectual world and he's indicated he's not a part of it … the fancy pants intellectual world. What he calls the elite." A rational person might be slightly self-reflective about disparaging the "elite" when that person attended Yale and Harvard (not on scholarship, one can be assured), but then again "elite" is apparently in reference to those who paid attention in class. And, then again, when dealing with Bush, we can be assured that we are not dealing in a rational realm.

Bush may be irrational, but he is a political animal. And he has an understanding here that goes beyond a simple dissing of the world of reasoned thought. What he's actually saying to Woodward is that if Americans can't grasp something in their guts, we just don't give a shit. Thinking is hard. Bush knows this first hand.

What he's saying, and it's what he campaigned on last time, is that Americans only care about blood and pussy. And it ain't a scandal if it doesn't involve pussy. Why? Because pussy is easy to think about. We can nod and say, "Bill Clinton lied under oath and therefore he deserved impeachment." But that's the intellectual approach. The way most of America understood Clinton was in terms of pussy: Clinton loved pussy, ergo Clinton was a disgrace.

So the intellectual elite (which, let's be honest, despite Bush's attempt to portray us as faggy demi-men and lesbians who hate Jesus and hug trees while living in crowded cities and fuck each other with abandon using condoms inscribed with quotes from Proust, we're really just the people who are actually paying attention) flails around, agonizing over the fact that the crimes of the Bush Administration eclipse anything Clinton might have done. Even though it's reductive as hell, check out Eric Alterman's scorecard of Clinton lies vs. Bush lies. But the rest of America, who have been bludgeoned by the media, the economy, and the environment into complacency, just goes to Wal-Mart and wonders about pussy.

Violation of the Constitution by using $700 million appropriated to Afghanistan to prepare for war with Iraq? No pussy. Lying to Congress, the American people, and the United Nations about the reasons and timetable for war? No pussy. No WMD? No pussy. Don't believe the Rude Pundit? Check out the recent polls that show Bush more solidly leading Kerry and still enjoying approval that should be in negative numbers. Jesus, you realize that Watergate would have been boring to contemporary Americans? Watergate was fucking complicated - it wasn't just about a break-in, which it's been boiled down to, like Richard Nixon entered Ellsberg's shrink's office a la Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible.

So, somehow, somewhere, we need to get pussy into this story, 'cause blood alone ain't working. Howzabout this: start a rumor, something like Bush likes to make Condi watch him jack off to images of Iraqi women wearing burqas on their upper bodies, but nothing below the waist, with their brown-skinned legs spread wide open, pussies exposed to Allah and the world. Say that Condi has kept a spooge-stained jacket, but she gets off on watching Bush jack off, but Bush is a selfish masturbator - whenever wet Condi tries to fingerfuck herself, Bush orders her to halt or he'll brand her with his "presidential seal." We can say that the photos are being taken by a special elite porn operation paid for by military budget. Just to make it extra sweet, we can say that Bush believes Jesus wants him to fondle himself to orgasm before the high-definition flat screen pictures of Sunni snatch.

At that point, even the aisles of Wal-Mart, the cheap seats at NASCAR events, the bars that only serve Bud and, of course, Coors, might murmur at the whiff of scandal.