The Hall of Blame

Hey, How About An Award for Finger Pointing….
Or the Next Best Thing…

It is time to show we appreciate all the work being done by this Administration to rewrite history. You know, we, the great unwashed, think that history takes care of itself. Well, I’m here to tell you that nothing could be further from the truth. History is hard work. It demands constant attention; otherwise, people could start believing anything. Goebbels understood this when he was rewriting history some sixty years ago. In fact, most successful leaders, tyrants and dictators have learned the tender art of revising history should not be left to chance.

So as a matter of course, people are constantly reinventing history for any number of reasons—although usually it’s to avoid something if it’s recent history—like jail or perhaps exile or even worse! Those who take the longer view, are usually thinking in terms of their family’s reputation. I mean who want to say that I am the great grand grandfather of the guy who shot Lincoln? Unless of course, he lived in the south where he might receive a warm ovation. Or would it be quite proper to admit that “my grandpa shot the Arch Duke and started WWI.” It’s just not good taste. And who knows, there still might be a vindictive grand-child around with blood in his eyes or, what is worse, a pending law suit that’s been building interest for nearly a hundred years…….

Now, we should warn you that we have had presidents in the past who took pride in saying what they meant and meaning what that said. Guys like Truman who said something about ‘the buck stopping here.’ These ‘anomalies’ fortunately no longer exist; otherwise, there’d be a hell of a lot of revisionists out of work. Of course, that was a long time ago. Today, the buck stops anywhere but ‘here.’ Usually, the buck stops on some assistant’s desk, some lower level flunky who will say anything to keep his job or stay on friendly terms with his superior in the mistaken belief that falling on the sword will be appreciated. Because rewriting history can’t be left to say chance. In fact, off the record, one of the most popular courses in journalism today is Rewriting History 101. This was first noted in the Time of Nixon, and in response to Donald Segretti’s advertisement that spawned an entire new industry suggesting “An immediate need for people with good imaginations who could write and weren’t troubled by moral issues.” . The fact is that, today, any graduates who demonstrates an appropriately sufficient moral turpitude and a strongly anti-humanistic bent would seem to qualify and can be assured of several job offers at graduation. Just check the guys who work for all those Think Tanks that are nothing more than ‘fronts’ for a litany of clients with special interests..

Anyway, rewriting history has become one of government’s most lucrative jobs. This government is constantly engaged in it and the schools are having trouble keeping up with the demand despite all the money the NRA keeps pumping in.

Now, it’s poor old George Tenant’s turn. When it was his turn in the barrel, the issue was British Intel. Never mind, as long as we have our scapegoat de jour. It is not the point of this little light-mot to question why Mr. Tenant, a survivor who came from the streets of Brooklyn, has decided to play sap of the day and take a bullet for his selected leader. Nevertheless, my point is that if we have to sit through such sugar-coated melodrama, we should at least be able to get a chuckle out of it.

Thus, the reason for my proposal.

Would it not be fun to turn their “who me? You must be kidding…” Alfred E. Newman pose when queried about responsibility for any action behavior into a kind of political “Entertainment Tonight” for us who must endure ad infinitum the exquisitely shallow interrogations in prime time... We believe that part of our homage to such invention would have at its centerpiece my contribution to the future of political satire: the Hall of Blame.

This would be the only place in the known civilized world where those who are the targets of invidious comparisons would have an opportunity to talk back. In the Hall of Blame, all of the targets of the world would be gathered in waxen effigies with their sins posted for all to see. In addition, in our Hall of Blame, we would go one step further. We would permit the recipients of the blame game their own fifteen minutes in the sun to counter all of the claims, innuendos, half-truths, excuses and lies heaped on them. This will be the only place in the world, where they get to go on record. This of course, would drive the revisionists crazy and probably contribute to another bout of George falling off his chair and hitting his head and blaming the pretzels---Hmmm. A statue of a pretzel?

Kleenex, the sponsor, would hand out boxes to all those who pay tribute to our long-suffering leaders as they enter the Skotch-Gard protected interior realm consisting of the great Hallway of Suffering and Banality and the Inner Sanctum referred to as the Dodo’s Sanctuary for the Perennially Dysfunctional…. There, our illustrious leader can relive all of the threats and innuendos and half-truths and practice his lightning quick draws in front of the mirror or Cheney, if we can catch him above ground and he’s not protecting the good ole’ US of A from his underground abode. The only way I could think of improving on this is having Mrs. Cheney join him and then fill up the hole. But after an hour or two in this temple of self-indulgence, our compassionate leader can leave there inspired to go onwards and upwards ready to sacrifice any and all to his aspirations with no pangs of conscience….Even the Pope would be fair game to the White Knight seeking to lay down the gauntlet…

The Hall of Blame would be made up of everyone that Bush has blamed in the last three years. While this may sound like an impossible or perhaps extravagant venture, it would indeed help put things into some kind of perspective and we would better understand what poor George has had to contend with from the rest of the world.

Although this Palace of Tedium would be focused on the temporal, there would be an ethereal quality as well. For example, God’s word would appear everywhere etched or perhaps molded in polyethylene which again would only be appropriate since this material with other monomers and residues have filtered down through the waste stream to pollute our air and water for so many years and has been sanctioned by our president in return for the generosity of the Society of the Plastics Industry. (I don’t know why nobody has ever thought of this: Consider if coffins were made out of plastic diapers, hot dogs and Twinkies with their five hundred year half-lives, they would never go back to nature allowing us to keep Uncle Joes remains around a lot longer than if he were buried in conventional wood? )….

The excessive use of God will also be a highlight of the Temple inasmuch as such comparisons have been drawn before by the Reverend Billy Graham and his son, despite a little tongue-twisting by the Devil recently; that in combination with George’s own words in the pursuit of his Great Crusade reminiscent of that other crusade that wound up a disaster. To impart the necessary solemnity, it has been suggested that we ask God himself to intervene. However Charlton Heston was too ill and infirm to take the contract but perhaps it can be arranged to have his voice taped for posterity to lend legitimacy to the voice-over. Carl Rove is already working on thunder and lightning scenarios…

The second theme would be patriotic. There would be American flags everywhere of every size and description…. This would also spark a cottage industry allowing some of us to return work and having a beneficial effect on the economy since tax cuts contributed little outside of an immediate flurry in cruises to the South Pacific by those in the upper brackets. (For the rest of the world, the tax break was used to buy a pack of cigarettes or a round of cokes at Dairy Queen) . In all shots of George, the flag would be conspicuous just in case anyone doubted his patriotism. Not to leave anything undone, there would be a suitable tribute to George landing on the carrier Washington in his flight suit with the words “The War is over’ and showing everyone cheering…”as George rearranges his synthetic enhanced parts from the right to the left.

We would also want to feature a Saddam wing where effigies of Saddam would stand next to an appropriate rewrite of history where Saddam is shown picking up the ball from Osama. No mention of course of all the aid we gave this dictator who incidentally never changed his stripes when he was attacking his neighbors in Iran with poison gas and other toxins...Or bombing the Kurds in the north. Of course, there must be millions of Kurds asking why this government didn't think it was important to do something about the problem then? Of course, the Kurd’s message will not be translated so nobody will have a clue what they are talking about including the FBI or CIA..

Perhaps we could have one real Saddam and six imitators standing together in some waxen retro suggesting that people try to pick out the real Saddam before he blows you away with WMD. However, that might not fly since most people fifty and older might see this as a reconstruction of Ernie Kovacs and the Nairobi Trio sponsored by General Cigar.

Osama, also referred to as that ‘tall, Arab Geek”--all six feet four inches of him-- would be shown hiking over those mountains lugging his kidney dialysis machine with some kind of intellectually condescending explanation as to why the best equipped intelligence services and military in the world combined with limitless supplies of money and a $25 million award can't find a man that needs dialysis three times a week in a place where medical services are as scarce as hens teeth...If you posted this kind of reward to find Judge Crater, I wouldn’t doubt that you’d fill an auditorium.

...Naturally, there would be an entire wing devoted to both Hillary and Bill since until Osama came along, they were to blame for everything that went wrong in the world from fluctuations on the Richter scale to California's economic woes.....from the dangers of smoking cigars to a return of the Cold War.


We could even have an Axis of Evil wing where Bush could really show each of the dictators garbed in appropriate Nazi uniforms sitting on an electric chair powered by one of Enron's subsidiaries and Bush throwing the switch which, as you may remember, he became quite good at allowing him to sleep like an empowered baby at night.. There would be a balloon over his head saying something to the effect, “Better living through electricity…” or some other equally compassionate statement...
When you think about, perhaps we should have small areas for both the President of France and Germany's Premier. Who can forget that they were the ones who held up our invasion of Iraq because they didn't believe that intervention based on the available information was required until the Inspection teams had a chance to complete their work. Of course, this would lead to a very big statue of the team leader who was repeatedly and wrongly accused of so much as being a compliant tool of the enemy which, of course, he was not.

There are many other candidates for consideration at the Hall of Blame ranging from several officials in the Canadian government who referred to George as an idiot to the Mayor of London... They will all get their day in the sun if we get to go ahead with this idea...

No doubt, before the end of the day there will be many more in our Hall of Blame since the list of enemies of the US keep growing geometrically as our insults, innuendo and scathing remarks intensify arithmetically. In fact, if the current trend continues, we can expect the Hall of Blame to become one of the largest free-standing structures in the United States containing most of the leaders of the free world and certainly all of the democrats and independents and an honest author or two. This will stand as George’s contribution to the Free World. ..... The only group probably not represented will be the media since by their cowardly willingness to accept every bit of revisionist history, they wouldn’t qualify. Meanwhile, the rest of us at least will have a few laughs.

Les Aaron
The Armchair Curmudgeon