PHASE V: SWORD-FALLING

Next semester I get the privilege of teaching 200 undergraduates in a class about the Presidency. The office and its powers, mind you, not the people who have filled it.

Every Presidency goes through multiple stages. The honeymoon, the rude awakening, a productive agenda-setting phase, etcetera. After Clinton and now Bush, I think that revised editions of Presidency textbooks will need to add Phase V: Indictments and Phase VI: Mass Resignations. Thanks for the memories, Scooter Libby. We hardly knew ye, Harriet Miers.

I said all throughout the 2004 election that the most frustrating part about it was that you knew America was going to turn on George Bush like a motherfucker about 9 months after he got re-elected. There's a fatigue inherent in any presidency that sets in after about 6 years, and it's accelerated with utterly incompetent Presidents such as our current model. Somehow the voting public managed to convince themselves that Bush was competent to serve for four more years and then they suddenly realized halfway through 2005 that, hey, maybe that war isn't going so well after all. And maybe the administration is corrupt and incestuous to its core.

Congratulations, America. And good luck to George Bush and his pals over the next couple years. Ignorant masses giveth, then they taketh away.

Polacks versus Prescott's Children

For the historical record: Channel 12 Chicago Fox showed, right after the commerical break after the Sox swept the world series, the disappointed faces of H.W. Bush and Barbara Bush in the Houston stadium.

The idea that the Chicago southside not only won the World Series, but also ruined the day of that aristocratic wealth-bearing family in the process, just makes the whole damn thing even better. "Barabara, how do you say that name....Pier-zan-ski?" It couldn't have been better than if they were then thrown in a pool afterwards. Picture to follow if I can find it later.

God Bless Chicago. God bless everyone reading this. God bless it all.

On the final day, near O'Hare airport...

It's well known the city of Chicago is trying to keep us down, with their noise violation tickets and anti-public-urination ordinances, but did you realize Mayor Daley is trying to fuck with your chances on the day of The Rapture? For quite some time, Chicago has been trying to add runways to its giant airport O'Hare. Part of where they are supposed to be built is over St. Johannes Cemetery. The city has agreed to move all the remains and monuments located there to other locations and cover all of the costs.

Just as it looked like the bulldozers were ready to go, another court order showed up demanding a halt. Here's the tribune's coverage (free reg required):

In their filing, the attorneys said the city's plan to relocate more than 1,300 graves in St. Johannes Cemetery violates a federal law designed to protect religious freedom...The opponents argued that any removal "of the remains of a Christian once he or she is committed to the sanctified final resting spot [could prevent] the physical resurrection of his or her body on the Day of Resurrection."

At first I thought this was a lawyer's trick so cynical it was compellingly beautiful (like some sort of jaded rose), but no, it's the true believers. From the Becket Fund (protecting the free expression of all religious traditions):

aside from the historical significance, the desecration of the cemetery would be a savage affront to the congregation's beliefs. The congregation believes that to remove the remains of their fellow believers from the place they have been laid at St. Johannes to await the day of resurrection would be a desecration of holy ground. Disturbance of the believers laid to rest is not something that they believe should ever happen other than at the direction of God himself on his appointed day of resurrection.

The funny part is, with the Left Behind series having sold more than 60 million copies in the United States, the defense will be a hundred times better off by not arguing about compelling interests, and instead findind a theologian or priest to get on the stand and say "Oh yes, if those graves are moved they can still definitely be resurrected on the final day."

At the end of the day, I'm sympathetic to the cemetery's argument. I hate seeing the old bulldozed over for the new and more profitable. But something about this latest lawsuit just screams of a cynical exploitation of the power of belief, and our deference to religion. For shame.

UNSUBSTANTIATED RUMORS OF 49 OTHER STATES

Do people in New York really have their heads as far up their own asses as their attitudes indicate? Or is the rest of the country just projecting inadequacies onto the helpless citizens of our nation's largest city?

I've always been firmly in the "heads in asses" camp. I saw something this morning that strongly reinforced my admitted bias. A New York sportswriter described this World Series as "the greatest Series ever played that no one saw" (pretend for a moment that he's not talking about a subject you don't care about....after all, you could punch in "Senate race" or "new Musical" and find the same comment being made about anything happening west of Manhattan).

I will assume this man has an atlas, internet access, and an old dusty World Almanac either in his posession or available to him through the company that pays him to write such nonsense. I will also assume that he realizes that the topic on which he speaks has played out between Los Angeles (2nd largest city), Chicago (3rd), and Houston (5th), with a combined metro area population of over 20 million. Not to mention some other little villages like Atlanta, Boston, and St. Louis.

As I like to say about politics, in order to make such a statement this writer must be either totally ignorant or a complete asshole. I have to strike out ignorance here - surely this man is aware that Chicago and Houston are rather populous. Therefore the only remaining possibility is that he and his legions of readers are complete and utter assholes. Because when he says "no one" he means "we", and of course nothing could possibly be important unless New Yorkers, the only people whose opinions count, care about it.

This man and his ilk may simply be oblivious to the existence of 250 million people in this country outside Manhattan. Or they may be conscious of it and honestly believe that their judgment is the sole arbiter of what is and is not important in the world - if William F. Buckley isn't writing about it and Annie Liebovitz isn't taking pictures of it, it might as well not be happening.

Fuck you, New York. I cannot stress that enough. Please. Get a running start down one of your long boulevards, hit the trampoline in full stride, and land ass-first on something long, thin, and cylindrical. And spare the rest of us two years of writing and news coverage about the Great Manhattan Ass Violation Spree of 2005.