They Lie, Oh They Lie

(1937 KoolAid ad)

They Lie, Oh They Lie

When fire sweeps through an abandoned building that's been used as a crack house and a meth lab, it's a given that the vermin infesting its interior walls will go up in flames, unable to escape.

But if they know the end is coming -- if, say, they have around 20 days to pack their bags, delete their emails, and trade in their roachy exoskeletons for Men's Wearhouse suits -- what might they be doing instead of the jobs they never really performed anyhow?

Well, let's begin by reviewing the ground rules of the current generation of lying liars and the lies which limn their libidos and line their lucre-filled lairs:

(1) Ends justify means.
(2) Make yourself believe the lies you're telling.
(3) Grandiose, for lack of a better term, is good.
(4) Demonstrate integrity by admitting the things you cannot deny anyhow, but claim other apparent realities are "not as bad as it looks".
(5) Stick together, even when you hate each other.

Thus, in the past week, we have the Condi and Laura show, where Dubya's wifemeets are trotting around declaiming that "history" will prove he was not the soulless destroyer of America who shredded the Constitution with his Crawford chainsaw and used the remnants to fuse gasoline-filled bottle bombs lobbed into the Middle East. They are stamping their Prada-shod feet in unison and declaring the press to be bullies.

It's almost entertaining, like the opening segment of a 50's sitcom:

Where Condi adores a minuet
To watch ballet with Soviets
Laura wants to hide inside
With ciggies and her Pearl Drop Vibe
What a wild duet
Still they're Dubya's
They're shackled to Dubya, with no doubt
Choosing to back a loser
Keeps them from coming out

The second act in the Save Junior's Legacy (oh, and our careers, of course) campaign appears to have been unveiled yesterday, with strategic "candid" admissions by former Bush fecal ingestion appurtenances Matthew Dowd and Dan Bartlett that Bush "broke his bond with the public" in his handling of Katrina and was never trusted after that.

Gee, ya think?

These two, and others, were interviewed by Vanity Fair for an oral history of the White House in its February issue, which hits newsstands tomorrow. An AP article on the forthcoming "revelations" also quotes Lawrence Wilkerson as comparing Bush's foreign affairs expertise to that of Sarah Palin, implying he was manipulated from the outset by Cheney. And, in another shocker, David Kuo says leaders of the Religious Right were held in contempt by cynical high-level Bushies, who viewed them as "pains in the butt" which had to be accommodated but did not share their beliefs.

In other news, there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Folks, this is not the story we are going to settle for, is it? We want the goods, the whole nine yards. We want hearings and handcuffs and moist towelettes afterward to clean their slime from the doorknobs. They're giving us sops, and the next thing coming out of their mouths will be -- guess what?

I'm reminded of the song "Beware, Young Ladies", whose lyrics were taken from an 1847 poem by Longfellow and set to music with sly humor by Blind Alfred Reed in the 1930s. In the 1970s, lesbian-feminist singer/songwriter Alix Dobkin resurrected the song, again with humor, and it became something we political dykes sang with each other about the dishonesty of not only "bold and free" young men but the patriarchal system as a whole:

"They put their hands up to their hearts
They sigh, Oh they sigh,
They say they love no one but you
They lie, Oh they lie"

I say we should caulk every escape hatch, give a whole new generation of young prosecutors some hands-on training, restore America's reputation with live international broadcast of the Bush War Crimes Tribunal, and make use of our poker skills by watching for the tell which means someone in this administration is lying: Their lips are moving.