Following the cockfight in Greenville, South Carolina (home of the pickled watermelon rind), I am dying to know how much is left in the Bush Family Trust for the ascension of Jeb to his God-given rightful place in the National Registry of Presidents. Last count, they had dropped some $182 million in the flaccid effort to get things going in the current favorite son's campaign. I'm guessing there's another $40 million or more, give or take, in the war chest unless Poppy has the good taste to pop off later this week.
This last staged debate brings to mind Peter Sellers' magnificent turn as the measured Eisenhower-like head of state in Dr. Strangelove when things get really hairy over at Burpelson AFB and Gen. Jack Ripper sets off on Plan R: the end of the world as we know it. George C. Scott as Gen. Buck Turgidson and Sellers in a turn as Hillary's good buddy, Henry Kissinger, are at each others' throats when the President declares, "Gentlemen! No fighting in the War Room!"
Point being, during that debate with Dr. Strangetrump's interruptions at the podium, he charged that the fine, upstanding Republicans of Greenville who were booing him were nothing but paid stooges of the Bush family special interest lobby. All of a sudden, I'm in heaven. I say to myself, "Here's a whole new avenue for underwriting a listless freelance career through November!" I'll simply tap into this paid "boo thing," as GHW Bush would put it, and hire out as toady booist from town hall to town rally, town to town.
As you know, during the Oscars and other such superstellar Hollywood occasions, street people are paid to dress up and serve as seat warmers when the stars and other VIPs have to relieve themselves with whatever their preferred relaxative. Why should I not be paid to boo on cue? It's like Dr. Pangloss's best of all possible worlds. I'm a natch. I was born to boo! (What the Bush family consortium won't know is that I will boo Jeb too.) This is just how subversive us southern dirty tricksters have become in this ruder, cruder, rudderless America.
The top dog of the GOP dirty trick was a fellow who hailed from Aiken, S.C. and Columbia, too. A guy by the name of Lee Atwater, who none of you historyless Millennials will have ever heard of. He cut his teeth campaigning for Strom Thurmond (look him up) who had been a senator from S.C. since Reconstruction. Atwater weaseled his way into the l980 Reagan campaign, where he studied at the foot of the master fabulist, Ed Rollins, in the l984 re-election. By '88, he was managing the GHW Bush campaign, where he refined the technique he called "stripping the bark off the little bastard and make Willie Horton his running mate." Speaking of Bush One's then opponent, Michael Dukakis. This would prove to be Atwater's finest hour. He was ultimately elevated to national chairman of the Republican Party.
Here's how he did it: Atwater and his henchmen crafted an ad which featured a very dark black man, imprisoned for rape and murder, who was "furloughed" by Dukakis when governor of Massachusetts--and you'd be surprised how beautifully such as that selected slur went over in South Carolina and then! The whole country was on alert! Lee Atwater had gone on to his reward by the 2000 election when John McCain (war hero?), was headed down south after his handy primary win in New Hampshire. Bush Two, who was, of course, pretty much of a no-show during the Viet Nam conflict and not expected to do zip in the South Carolina primary that year, ended up sweeping into first when... how could such a thing have happened? Flyers showed up all over the state alleging that McCain had fathered an illegitimate black child! The zombie claw of Atwater's reach had spawned black hole undercover outfits that truck only in dirty tricks.
But let's get back to the boo thing, in Bushspeak, from Saturday's debate. A word to the wise at CBS-TV (proud anchor desk to Eric Sevareid, Walter Cronkite, and Granny Clampett) regarding John Dickinson, that little gal from the Wall Street Journal, however pretty in pink, and even Major Garrett who are, I hate to say it -- wussies. They let that whole damn thing go to hell in a handbasket. Their job description was as moderators. I wish we had a word we could yell out in the midst of things that would reflect other gender specific body parts when our menfolk aren't performing on the up and up.
But back to The Big D that fateful Saturday night at the Peace Center. Maybe I'd mixed one too many gin rickeys, but for the first time, I felt that the Great Bloviator and I might be singin' out of the same hymnbook. I mean, you know. When he charged that little George had lied about those weapons of mass destruction and other 9/11 related events. A huge wave of dizziness came over me. "What are you saying?" I asked myself. So this is how it begins! You agree with one little nitpickin' thing and the next thing you know...
Next thing you know, DJT is invading the airspace belonging to Br'er Jeb again, charging it was his good broheim George Two who brought 9/11 down on us, thanks to his and Cheney's and Rummy's and Wolfowitz's and George Tenet's and let's face it, their front man, Colin Powell's boldface lies. "They lied!" Citizen Trump declared outright on national television with no rescinding. I'm pretty sure this was the point at which I flat passed out cold, and can't recollect one thing afterwards... except possible hearing my own voice or someone else's as if from a great distance, slurring, "loose change, loose change, loose change."