DREGULATOR YEAR-END ROUND-UP

The More Things Change, The More The GOP Blows

2007! Whoo! 

Let’s  hope it was the penultimate year of the “New Paradigm” of limitless executive power and Permanent Republican Hegemony…or 2008 may be the year  we are all forced to marry Canadians to survive!

Anyway, it was heavy.  The predatory mortgage sucker-punch; the round-the-clock color-wheel of GOP scandals; the Federal Government becoming all hollow and empty on the inside like a concrete Easter egg and  the private sector drinking our blood like it was Red Bull and vodka.

 It was perhaps best summarized by Holly Sklar of the McClatchy-Tribune News Service: “Wealth is being distributed from poorer to richer…(Last year) the highest paid CEO made $647 million, and the average worker made $34,861, with vanishing health and pension coverage.”

 In short: it was pretty much like watching a roving pack of sneevy, concave Harvard MBA’s in blue blazers go to the poorest public schools in town, slap kids around and take their shoes.

The public trust will never, ever, trust anyone, ever again, and it probably shouldn’t. 

Most Dregsational Abuse of Power went to Our President, for  the juicy National Security Presidential Directive/NSPD 51 and Homeland Security Presidential Directive/HSPD-20 -- Executive Orders that our Executive ordered so he could Order himself to make larger Executive Orders, thereby granting himself the power to grant himself the powers of both the Executive Branch AND the entire Federal Government, if he deemed such orders necessary to maintain order. Next stop: mandates to grant himself titles of Holy American Emperor, Supreme OverCommander and SuperPope 3000 for Life.  We can only hope for a proper Bokassa-style coronation with lots of gold eagles, 84-carat diamonds and cannibal options on the catering menu.

2007 was a huge year for clarifying the social role of our Societal Whipping Blondes, who were subjected to vicious public stonings of a high moral dudgeon and zeal ordinarily reserved for Somalian rape victims. 

Most Dregsational Whipping Blonde of 2007, naturally, was Anna Nicole Smith, who ushered in a whole new standard when everyone refused to stop kicking her even after she was dead.  We clicked the empty chambers in our dismay-guns at her until that got frustrating, then threw them at her corpse.  It was so much easier than trying to figure out how to beat up the President.

Most Dregsational Disappointment of the Year went to DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency) -- that wiley old skunk-works, who are still so hard at work winning the Cold War with advanced erector sets that they completely botched a perfect PR opportunity to make Heather Mills McCartney grow her leg back in time for Dancing With the Stars.

But Most Dregsational Peg in Hole went to Utah Republican Senator Larry “Wide Stance” Craig , after failing to disappear into the Closet of Mystery after a Missed Encounter in a public men’s room. Lo, another loyal Bushie ate the inkpad in the wild, wild world of rubber-stamp legislation. 

(Cough. Well, maybe he shouldn’t have left the men’s room with Iraq hanging out of his pants like that. Ahem. But hey, if it’s above the zipper it can’t be subpoenas, right? Buh-boom-boom, Tsssssh.   Serving at the pleasure of the President never sounded so S&M.)

The Most Dregsationally Creative Drug Habit went – unsurprisingly -- to runner-up Whipping Blonde Britney Spears, who, according to the National Enquirer, is partial to FDA-approved, fentanyl citrate lollipops intended for cancer patients.  Original! 

Well, there are obviously things that are more painful than having cancer  -- being Britney Spears, for example, or her pregnant 16-year-old sister, Jamie Lynn, The Most Dregsationally Great Example of the Success of the Administration’s Abstinence-Only Programs.  She’s so young, she probably doesn’t even know how to manipulate physicians into writing prescriptions for opiate painkillers all by herself, begging the question:  How will the child eat?  

The most Dregs-asperating Lack of Outrage from the American Public was when Rupert Murdoch admitted at the World Economic Forum that FOX News pulled a classic wag-the-dog, domestic propaganda consent-manufacturing for the War in Iraq. The result of this bombshell admission: 

 Yawn.  ZZzzzzzz.

Larry Birkhead: so-o-o-o much more interesting. 

And then Murdoch bought the Wall Street Journal.

Finally, Most Dregsationally Frightening Noun on Earth again went to Dick Cheney, whose daring disregard for the well being of anyone outside of his own bunker enabled him to beat out Polonium 210 and the deadly MRSA Staph Infection for causing the most actual visceral horror to the American people. 

The Most Dreg-Affirming Moment of Hope, however, came from 78-year-old Gil Won-ok, a South Korean woman forced to be a sex-slave for the Japanese military during World War II, who told the New York Times, “Truth survives and lies never win.”

Let’s hope we can co-opt her optimism without adopting her process. 

Happy New Year, fiends.

Just 334 more days until November.  Don’t grind your teeth. 

CintraW@gmail.com

Artwork: “Hanuman,” oil on linen, Cintra Wilson 2021