There, we returned.
The 112th Congress began this week and today, the odious John Boehner has succeeded the fine-and-dandy Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House. I’ll miss Pelosi, but unlike Boehner, I’m not gonna blubber about it.
I’m not an End-of-Dayer like the Tea Partyers or like Huffington Post. I don’t believe America is able to slip into socialism or Nazism. I don’t believe we’ll slip back into McCarthyism. I believe that in our day and age the most important thing in the world to us is stasis. If damage is to be done within, it must be done slowly, like the Economic Meltdown. Conversely, if good is to be done, it must be done slowly, like the Economic Recovery, or the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell Repeal.
The GOP are a slippery bunch. They have insisted upon new rules for this Congress: It must begin with the reading aloud of the entire Constitution. They’re even going to take turns reading it a line at at time, like we’re Junior English. I delight at imagining the booming voice of Boehner extolling the right to bear arms, choking each syllable through a veil of tears. And then Mitch McConnell having to murmur and lend no volume to talk of civil rights.
This sounds too much like the Sass Family Christmas Dinner group sing-a-long of the Twelve Days of Christmas for me to think of this symbolic gesture as anything more than an embarrassing waste of time. Shouldn’t they all already know this by heart? Isn’t it their job?
Tea Partyers badger on and on and on about wanting a return to the Constitution. I wasn’t aware we got away from it. Oh, I forgot! They only care about this “return to the Constitution” so that they can dismantle the Health Care Bill.
That’s what so silly about this. All this yelling and screaming and “returning to this” and “returning to that” is about a confused, jobless populace allowing themselves to be Pied Pipers into voting against their own interests to rob themselves of (barely adequate) health care coverage.
Our national hysteria and faultless ability to be led astray is eeking us closer and closer to being the citizens of South Park or Springfield.
I can’t wait for this reading of the Constitution to illuminate that there is a separation of church and state, as well as a call for a limited states rights vs. far reaching federal government. Oh, the GOP will probably just mumble their way through those ones as well.
Next up in Congress’s Big Constitutional 360 is a Very Special Episode on separation of powers with Guest Star Supreme Court Justice Scalia. Scalia made headlines this week by saying he doesn’t believe the Constitution makes any case for rights for Women or LGBT folk. So, self-hating woman Rep. Michelle Bachmann invites a Justice, oh, anyone, let’s try….Scalia, to speak on Constitutionality to Congress during a talk on how the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches must remain separate.
On the plus side, Scalia does not look like a healthy man.
So, without falling prey to any scare tactics, let’s all buckle ourselves in and see what the new Congress has for us.
What’s that? Oh, they’ve scheduled a vote on Health Care Repeal for January 12th. Whoo! Just like Harry Potter 7, we’re starting with a bang!
Who is equipped to resist this sucky new Congress? Why, down-and-dirty LGBT rights startups Get Equal, who organized the nonstop DADT protests that got many people arrested. And what do you know? DADT is gone. I look to them in the new year. We’re gonna get dirty, and they know how to get dirty.
I’ll say this for gays, don’t feel sorry for us. We can look out for ourselves. Don’t fuck with people who know how to live in the gutter and waiting patiently for our time to strike.
Hey, while we’re waiting, did you hear that Streisand is set to direct and star in a new film version of Gypsy??
