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"IT'S YOUR FUNERAL" |
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The "gate" business is booming, and doesn't show any signs of a downturn. Whether it's the latest sleaze concerning financial corruption, influence peddling/buying, or sexual boo-boos, you can be sure there's some politician in our midst somewhere who has a future of "stinking things up." And then we've got another great "gate." The stink of scandal emanates from political offices probably because it's simply the nature of the beast. You look at a candidate and you say, "That guy is corrupt." And then another one comes along and you say, "He's worse yet!" But while it's in the nature of the beast, these folk could control themselves, probably, if they had to. |
Do we want another four (or eight) years of scandals smelling up the land? Do we want a stench in our nostrils unlike anything that may or may not have been there before? Do we want to wake up to the latest eruptions and charges, more tired denials, congressional hearings, and all the rest? It's up to us, then, to watch these candidates while they are candidates. And to listen to what they have to say, if anything. And above all, to nip 'em in the bud if they look corrupt, sound corrupt, and act corrupt. The time to send 'em packing is before they're elected. Don't wait till afterwards when it's too late. Otherwise, it's your funeral. |
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"SOMETHING SMELLS" |
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Marcellus in Hamlet said, "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark." It seems the nose indeed knows! You don't want to take out the garbage, because, you reason, it can wait until after the football game. But one game becomes two, and two becomes three, and then The Simpsons. And now the wife is saying, "Haven't you taken the garbage out yet?" Suddenly your own nose gets to thinking, "Maybe it's time," when you go to the kitchen for a beer. Well, there were some smelly dealings in Hamlet. The king in the play of course was Claudius, a terrible fellow, with the ghost of the late king actually still roaming around, not only scaring the various ones on watch but probably adding a little odor of his own in his wake as well. But Hamlet didn't have a special prosecutor, and had to depend on the play being "the thing," all without a single subpoena! |
The whole thing about the sense of smell that really gets us, as opposed to, say, the sense of sight, is that there's not necessarily any warning. With sight, you can see a truck coming in your lane and move over to miss it. But with the sense of smell, it's just on you! You go along and there's the odor of a freshly killed skunk, as Loudon Wainwright III once sang, "Stinking to High Heaven." Actually, it's a lot like what King Claudius had to say after the murder of his brother, "O! my offence is rank, it smells to heaven." Maybe if they'd had patriotic websites in those days someone would have posted how rank this whole Denmarkish affair was. And the same for the ancient Grecians with Socrates. Take a whiff today! "It appears no other thing to me but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours." |
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"STINKY ACRES" |
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There are various places you can live that are not so desirable. And sometimes it's through no fault of your own. Let's say you buy a house and they decide to put in a sewage lagoon about a half-mile from where you live. You didn't bargain for it, you didn't expect it, but there it is. Or maybe a big factory is built across the street, and now you have all the foulness of that facility. There's a saying we have for this kind of thing, how undesirable it is: "Not in my backyard." If you're ever unfortunate enough to pass through one of these neighborhoods, you think, "Oh my, how do they stand it? How could these folks ever hope to sell their home? Maybe they pray for a breeze from the other direction when people come looking?" They give fine neighborhoods fine names, like "Wildwood Estates," "Cherry Grove," "Dalton Lane," and so forth. They never use a name like "Stinky Acres." |
Can you imagine if they did? "Stinky Acres -- When Your Cesspool Backs Up Here You're The Last One To Know It." And you walk around breathing normally and you end up with a color around your jowls like Fred Flintstone's beard. Not good. Well, you can get some politicians and policies that you didn't bargain for, too. And they will stink up the place just as much with their Stink of Scandal. If they were employees they'd have their hand in the cash register all the time and not just when they're giving out change! We've heard of some corrupt discount-house employees passing an entire canoe through the check-out lane without anyone paying for it. That stinks right there. If the politician has one job and 90 sources of income, something stinks there. Sniff these things out. Put 2 and 2 together. Don't let these stinkpots keep getting away with this stuff. Stinky Acres isn't anywhere you want to live or even drive through. It's fit for neither man nor beast. The same for our government! |
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"GET USED TO IT?" |
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One job we seriously can't imagine having is that of restroom attendant. You show up on your first day and they give you the usual orientation, then turn you loose. To do what? Greet the gentlemen who come in and provide them with towels before they go out. All this time you're in there with three potent producers of bad vibes: porcelain, metal, and tile. The sounds bounce around the room like the Tasmanian Devil. Echoes have nothing to absorb them except your little stack of towels and own pair of soft, bruised eardrums. A headache is very easy to get and maintain, as you face not only the small talk but all this bouncing noise. And (the following may be a bit indelicate) then there's the offensiveness to the sense of smell. We don't want to spell it out, frankly, because the level of our discourse here is already fairly low. |
To their credit, however, there are those few timid souls, who come in and do their business quickly and quietly. They're quick, and nothing has a chance to linger and become a raging offense. These are the ones who make it almost worthwhile. But then there are those who are extroverted, both in their upper half, and more relevant here, in their lower half. Your first guess is perhaps he's Australian, or the descendant of pirates. This is the kind of treatment we get at the hand of many politicians. These are the ones who come in like the talk-show host on the Immodium commercial, but they're also swashbucklers to boot. They let it all hang out. You stand there so they can towel off, and they have no shame. You look again because you can't believe what you feel: They're wiping their hands with your shirttail! |
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"ODOR OF HISTORY" |
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We're not going to compile the list of America's scandals, the political variety. But you know that it's a list that details a lot of terrible shame. The common man wants a government he can be proud of, not this other garbage. |
But what we get are those looking to take whatever they can get their hands on. We get the ones whose backgrounds and history promise more scandal to come. Let's not let the stinkers in. The Stink of Scandal is all they know. We need better! |
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©1999 NegativeSpin.com
E-Mail: tom@hauntedbookstore.com
