SUNDAY MORNING BLUES

Sunday morning and the Tube is all magic weight loss programs, slick Bible thumpers, and presidential aspirants. I don’t know which is more sickening.

The weight loss programs all promise miracles without a drop of sweat.

The new breed of TV preachers are multimedia-savvy and boast frosted hair, tanning bed tans, and startling white teeth. They’ve got the words of the Bible on their lips and naked greed in their hearts, and when they look out on their congregations, they don’t see a flock in need of spiritual ministering, they see customers for books and DVD’s, they see donors, and they see fools.

And maybe it’s the same with the ho-hum crop of women and men with the arrogance to think that they have the answers to America’s many woes. Clinton, Obama, McCain, Huckabee, et al. They argue among themselves, split hairs and mince words, hold moistened fingers to the political breeze, boast of their intimate relationship with the Almighty, their steely nerve, their willingness to drop heavy ordnance in remote places. They talk about “change,” as if the word alone means anything at all. Change from what, change to what? From bad to worse, from terrible to tolerable, from water-boarding to pulling out fingernails with needle-nose pliers?

They dash from the snow and ice of Iowa to the snow and ice of New Hampshire, knock on doors, walk sidewalks, make speeches. It’s all scripted and rehearsed and devoid of soul, designed only for fifteen seconds on CNN; it’s the status quo on parade, a circus freak show, fodder for the great corporate media machine, that ravenous, salivating 24-hour beast. Obama inspires hope the talking heads say, but hope in what? In an America that never was? Huckabee plays his bass guitar and says he alone stands for Change, but even a dead ling cod wrapped in newspaper and deposited on the steps of the White House would represent a change from the twisted Bush years.

We set the bar so low that any fool can leap over it. Hillary tries to convince us that she’s not a controlling, ball-busting shrew, but all her furious fund-raising and corporate pandering can’t win her Iowa. Huckabee’s got the Big Mo, Obama might be unstoppable, but what has that got to do with the price of gasoline in San Francisco? Or the price of bread in Mobile? Or whether or not a grandmother in Grand Rapids will be able to afford her heart medication?

Sunday morning with fat-busting miracles, the word of God from sugary lips, and the brain-dead patter of would be rulers. It’s enough to make a man hang his head over the toilet and puke.