No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

Barnie Day

Zell Nation

You're right, Ross, the presidential election was all about "moral values" -- not war, terrorism, scandal, healthcare or the economy.

If the Democrats need a voice to listen to, they can end their search at one of their own: Zell Miller.

-- Ross Mackenzie, Richmond Times Dispatch, Sunday, November 7, 2004

You’re right, Ross. The issue was not a pre-emptive war in which Americans continue to die — more than 1100 now, and counting—not a war without strategy, exit or otherwise. The issue was the Ten Commandments.

You’re right, Ross. The issue was not a wobble-

wheeled economy, an economy based largely on debt, consumer and government, an economy that spends today what we must pay back tomorrow. The issue was prayer in schools.

You’re right, Ross. The issue was not a foreign policy that seems truly foreign to anyone who knows anything about policy, a foreign policy void of coherence. The issue was what consenting adults may or may not do with their lives.

Used to be, when America looked into a mirror she saw Jefferson, Madison, Lincoln, King, Roosevelt, Kennedy, and Shirley Chisholm. Used to be, she saw statesmen, and thinkers and artists. Used to be, she saw Buckley and Cronkite and Sevareid. Now when she looks, the visages of the Christian jihadists, the Zell Millers and Pat Robertsons and Jerry Falwells of the world, glare back at her, as does that of Limbaugh, the porcine, thrice-divorced, drug addicted, puff-faced, self-appointed, un-elected arbiter now of our family values, and Anne Coulter, a crane-necked shrew with the intellect of a ferret, and not your average ferret, but one of those runt of the litter ones, who said on MSNBC last night in what appeared to be a self-induced vein-popping moment of glassy-eyed sexual release that Democrats don’t believe in God.

In Zell Nation, the church has become state — not just state, but martial state. (Let us sing now, "Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war…")

Not so long ago, what has happened to the price of gasoline would have been enough to topple a presidency. Not anymore. Not in Zell Nation. In Zell Nation an energy policy written by the gas and oil industry doesn’t blip the radar screen. It takes homophobia to do that now. Homophobia lights it up.

Not so long ago, the wholesale strip-mining of our manufacturing base and the export of millions of our jobs would have been enough to topple a presidency. Not in Zell Nation. In Zell Nation, Ross, we can get right with the Lord and make the world flat again and put Druids in charge of that flatness and not have to worry about stuff like that.

Not so long ago, a record — and reckless — deficit would have been enough to topple a president. Not anymore. In Zell Nation the future doesn’t matter in that regard. In Zell Nation we’re all huddled on a mountain peak somewhere, waiting for the spaceship to come.

Not so long ago, the Halliburton scandal, and Dick Cheney’s proximity to it, would have been enough to do in a presidency. No more. In Zell Nation, graft may not be good, but, hey, it’s just graft. What’s a little graft when resurrection is just around the corner? THE resurrection!

Not so long ago, a health care system that leaves 44 million Americans to the mercy of the Tooth Fairy could have ginned up serious debate. Not in Zell Nation. In Zell Nation, sh-t happens. Hey, it says so in the Bible!

Not so long ago, the Abu Ghraib prison scandal would have brought administration change. Not now. Not in Zell Nation. Let the heathen rage. The more the better.

Not so long ago, America was a member of the community of nations. Not anymore. Not in Zell Nation. In Zell Nation, we are the landlord and the world must now bow and scrape before us.

Lookit, in Zell Nation, yer either fer us, or agin us, right, Ross?

Not so long ago, Americans believed that right makes might. No more.

In Zell Nation, might doesn’t just make right. In Zell Nation, might makes righteousness.

You’re right, Ross. Say ‘Amen!’ 

Amen. Amen. Amen.

-- November 15, 2004