209. COMFORTABLE AS A FLOAT

From the Archives (April 2006)

BITTERNESS
by Olga Broumas

She who loves roses must be patient
and not cry out when she is pierced by thorns.
—Sappho

In parody
of a grade-B film, our private
self-conscious soapie, as we fall
into the common, suspended disbelief of love, you ask
will I still be
here tomorrow, next week, tonight you ask me am I really
here. My passion delights

and surprises you, comfortable
as you’ve been without it. Lulled,
comfortable as a float myself in your real
and rounded arms, I can only smile
back, indulgently
at such questions. In the second reel—

a season of weeks, two
flights across the glamorous Atlantic, one
orgy and the predictable divorce
scenes later—I’m fading out
in the final close-up
alone. As one

heroine in this
two-bit production to the other, how long
did you, did we both know
the script
meant you to wake up doubting
in those first nights, not me, my daytime
serial solvency, but yours.

Yesterday—the same day that a child was testifying before Congress about being abused by online sexual predators—a high-ranking Bush official was arrested for pedophilia. Yes, Bush’s deputy press secretary for the Department of Homeland Security tried to solicit sex from a fourteen-year-old girl.

This also from the Post:

Another Homeland Security official—Frank Figueroa, special agent in charge of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Tampa—faces trial this week on charges of exposing himself to a teenage girl last year at a mall. Figueroa, who has been suspended, pleaded not guilty.

As my Baptist mother used to say, be sure your sins will find you out, yo.

SANG IN SHOWER: Pat Benatar’s “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” (which dates me, huh?)

READING: The search warrant for 610 N Buchanan St. (AKA the lacrosse team house beside Duke campus).

BEST-OF SPAM: I FAILED AND STILL MAKE 94K! [but apparently cannot find the caps lock key on his computer]

196. PRESIDENT FOR LIFE

From the Archives

(February 2006) DC's City Paper used to call Marion Berry “Mayor for Life” before he got busted for crack cocaine.

If Bush & Co had moved forward with their plan to cancel the recent presidential election (citing the threat of a terrorist attack), as Newsweek reported, then the City Paper would have perhaps revived this phrase while kicking it up a few notches.

Yep, the White House and DOJ seriously considered cancelling the elections (no doubt before those computer programmers devised a way to change Kerry votes to Bush ones).

So, who knows, we could have had a president for life who raises the terror alert to high whenever someone protests his position on the throne.

•

Meanwhile, an Austrian court has sentenced a historian to three years in prison for espousing his belief that the Holocaust never existed.

That’s in Austria.

In the US, people like Dr. Paul Cameron—who was kicked out of the APA long ago for announcing manufactured and bigoted results—continues to spread their homophobic crap far and wide.

And politicians like Rick Santorum continue to pronounce Cameron’s fictions as fact.

Cameron is the one who broadcast the lie that gay men routinely insert hamsters into their rectums.

Research groups failed to find even a single queer who practices this sex act and Cameron was uable to back up his claim with evidence, yet Santorum et al. repeat this data as if it’s accurate.

They also repeat the rumor that queers die in their forties, which is a lie even when you factor in the AIDS epidemic.

And no. I don’t believe one should be jailed for espousing opinions, even when they’re misguided and hateful and ignorant.

The Klan had the right to their ignorant opinions and so does Dr. Cameron. I’m glad that thinking people challenge their lies and logic though and kick them out of societies that require e-v-i-d-e-n-c-e. . .

(and don’t you wish the press still had to offer fair and balanced news? Thanks a whole lot, Ronnie.)

Telling historians that they cannot explore controversial theories—even about horrific events such as the Holocaust—limits knowledge. And I believe that scholars should be free to pursue their theories.

That’s how we learn new things and expand our knowledge.

•

And now a quote.

The now busted Ralph Reed said the following to Christian teens:

We will never know how many marriages and lives were saved, or how many children were spared the consequences of compulsive gambling, because of our work to shut down casinos.

To quote Ecclesiastes, all things shall come to pass, Asshole.

•

Okay. I’ll close with this factoid. It’s 27 February 2006. On this date in 1991, President Bush the Older declared “Kuwait is liberated. Iraq’s army is defeated.”

Prescient, wasn’t he?