Call Me A Face-ist

The nation narrowly averted complete disaster this month with the demise of Justice Antonin Scalia. Almost immediately a low-pressure system of murder conspiracies appeared ready to collide with a strong front emanating from Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Kingdom Of Coal); sources say conditions had the potential of turning into a Category 4 shit storm. But once the Fox News weather reporters, clutching their hats and any available light posts, were blown out of camera range, some of the more dangerous elements dissipated, leaving only a persistent ridge of high pressure from Republican leadership, and the nation is used to that.

It is not expected to have an immediate effect, or a long-term effect either, and the public can now rest assured that although we may experience a lot of wind, nothing at all will happen for a long time.

Senator McConnell, according to his Wikipedia entry, was "raised as a young child" in Athens, Alabama, thus putting the lie to the rumor that he was raised as a honey badger. He contracted a mild case of polio as a youngster, but his only lasting disability was his tiny sphincter of a mouth. Mr. McConnell's mouth is now so small that he can only push a "no" out of it.  "Yes" would require the extravagance of lips. When you're two Q-Tips and a wine cork away from suffocation, you learn to be on your guard. This may account for his stubbornness and intractability, now that we know he was not raised among honey badgers.

At some point just before Justice Scalia's internal temperature matched the ambient temperature of the bedroom he was found in, Mr. McConnell assured the nation that the jurist's memory would not be sullied by replacing him as though he were an old light bulb, especially given that President Obama only has the squiggly kind. He announced that the Republican majority in Congress would not consider any new nomination until the American people have had an opportunity to have their say in the November election. Not the American people who said they wanted Obama to represent them for eight years--other American people. Real American people. "We will consider a nomination as soon as we're done with Mr. Obama," he explained liplessly, "and we were done with him seven years ago."

Republicans, meeting behind closed doors, were unanimous in their agreement that the business of government should be put on hold indefinitely. Government doesn't work, they point out, so neither do they. All across the country, eager new Republican candidates are lining up to get in on the inaction. The Constitution, they say, does not require them to do anything at all if they don't feel like it.
   
"Neener neener," Mr. McConnell clarified.

The President responded by vowing to submit a candidate in due order, and spent the rest of the day chasing Mr. McConnell around the Senate chambers wiggling his finger. "Make him stop," Mr. McConnell said. "I'm not touching him," Obama said.

The Chair of the House Subcommittee on Mining and Undermining, responding to allegations that the Republican leadership is deliberately disseminating falsehoods about the President, issued a strenuous denial. "There has been no such activity," he said, affronted, "either conscious or musliminal."

Justice Served

Well it's always shocking and sometimes titillating when someone turns up dead who used to be alive, like, a few minutes ago, but there it was: Antonin Scalia's big old face right there on the internets with X's over his eyes, figuratively speaking. And I kind of went huh and I'll be and went about my day, wondering about the circumstances (head first in a platter of manicotti?) and possibly humming Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead to myself--these things come unbidden, you can't turn them off--and maybe I was humming out loud, because I was abruptly reminded that one is not to Speak Ill of the Dead.

I don't know where that rule came from. Seems like once they're dead that's the perfect time to speak ill of them, when they can't come after you by, say, accidentally sitting on you because you're little and they haven't been able to see their own dick for decades. But even if you have been speaking ill of someone for years, once he's dead you're supposed to stop.

"I don't wish death on anyone," people will say, primly, even though that's usually followed by a big "but." I'm just being honest here: there are all sorts of people I think could improve the world by not being on it. I'd trade a thousand poachers for a rhinoceros any day of the week and consider myself money ahead. Most of us are not all that crazy about the fact of our mortality and so we get all precious about the Big D. But my goodness: there are seven billion of us swarming this marble and we can't all of us be worth saving. Nor would it be possible. I think Scalia has ceased to exist in any form but carbonaceous debris, but if it turns out he's working on negotiations for the hereafter--they can get pretty baroque when you're a Catholic--I wish him the best of luck, and a good lawyer. He knew some.

He was in the majority in the Citizens United case, touting the constitutional imperative of protecting expensive speech. Free speech, I mean. One imagines him dutifully appending his name ("Fondly, Nino") to his Christmas cards to corporations without complaint, although he probably had people for that. I believe he would have defended the rights of gay fetuses, but one wonders. He wrote colorfully. And "jiggery-pokery" came up in the Obamacare dissent, not the gay marriage dissent. (At least it wasn't "jigaboo-pokery.") He eloquently enshrined traditional (one might say hidebound) viewpoints on the basis of their sheer historical persistence, but one can't help but sense that his animus toward gays was entirely rooted in his conviction that they're icky.

Oddly enough I don't bear any personal ill will toward Antonin Scalia. I think he was pretty smart, and an entertaining wordsmith, which always puts people points ahead in my book, and he was consistent about his principles. It's the principles that need to die, and since a lot of them reside in a particular generation, maybe it's time to start getting that generation's things in order, bequeathing the china, taking a load to Goodwill, and disposing of the photos in the underwear drawer.

So it's not so much that I want to engineer anyone's death. I can't even skoosh a bug, but I'm not beyond suggesting that they've got to go sometime, and now's as good a time as any.