The Magical Mystery Tour

They think we’re morons. They think we’re asleep at the switch. They think we’re not watching them or if we are that we could care less.

I’m talking about George W. Bush’s handlers – his brain trust – the men and women who plot his political strategy and gauge public opinion and plant stories in the media, on Fox and Rush Limbaugh’s EIB radio network.

George and Dick are on the road, sixty cities in sixty days; it’s your basic magical mystery tour during which they will make their pitch to dismantle Social Security.

But unlike a rock band or troupe of Chinese jugglers from Peking who perform before whoever wants and can afford a ticket, George and Dick only do their thing before carefully selected audiences. Heaven forbid that some puckish student or inquisitive truck driver ask the Prez or the VP an unscripted question that might prove embarrassing. No, no, Bush’s handlers have taken that possibility out of the equation.

In Bush World – to borrow a phrase from New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd – the folks who ask the Prez questions are chosen in advance and carefully prepped by his handlers. In other words, the questioners are saps, fakes, mouthpieces, who do nothing more than read from a script so as not to upset the Prez’s delicate mental equilibrium.

Sweet Jesus! Has our democracy come to this sad pass? What amazes me about this sham is that the Prez’s people don’t even bother to hide the fact that the whole damn tour is a farce, an exercise in the cheapest PR. George and his people have the balls to call these gigs “town meetings.”

You have to love the GOP for calling a bird a monkey and a dunce a genius. Town meeting? When only a select few are invited?

The Prez is so slow on his feet and his mind so scrambled that the only way he can appear half-way Presidential is to know in advance the questions that are coming down the chute.

Bush, the blind Messiah, is leading our country’s mad dash to the bottom. I have this image of Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt, standing over one of those long piss troughs you find in the Men’s room at Dodger Stadium, puking their guts out. They can’t believe what they see from their digs on high, the basic hypocrisy and perfidy of Bush and his gang, the criminal stupidity and hubris.

Fuck it, bring on the clowns, the jugglers and the lady with three heads.