Distinguished Gentlemen

It's become obvious this last weekend why there is such apathy towards the political system in America. We are boring. People were upset that no one watched the Alito hearings, but I think those people would have understood why no one watched them if they themselves had actually tried to watch them. My theory? They were eating pie while they forced an unpaid intern to watch the hearing for them. I'm looking at you, Wolf Blitzer. That beard is fooling no one. I tried watching some of the hearings (during that stretch of the day in between MacGyver and West Wing reruns) but then I saw a squirrel running on the phone wires, which was much more interesting. God, that squirrel was really cute.

And it wouldn't be that unbearable if it wasn't so obvious that politics around the world were ten times as fun as they are here. Look at Italy's prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi. The man's going on 70, but doesn't look a day past 64 thanks to his face lift and hair transplants. And these aren't little skeletons in the closet, little "John Kerry's trips to the Botox clinic" embarrassments. He's public about the work he's had done, because he's a man's man. He boasts that he was able to negotiate a EU contract away from Finland's female president Tarja Halonen by using his 'playboy tactics'. Does it matter that this is the woman who is getting a bump in the polls due to the fact that she looks like Conan O'Brien? No, because as all real men know, we boast about anything that we can get. Anything.

And now, at a recent party rally where he was thanked by a bishop for his opposition to gay marriage and his support of family values, the prime minister thanked him by promising to be abstinent until the general elections on April 9th. This tactic alone probably wouldn't help make our anti-pro-gay-family-values whatever rallies any more interesting though. In fact it would make it worse, because if President Bush promised to be abstinent until the midterm elections, all that would mean to me is that he and the First Lady have been...intimate. Currently. Or for that fact, ever. I know logically that they have, but, it's like my teachers, or my parents. I, personally refuse to believe that my parents have ever had intercourse. I know that that flies in the face of my very existence, but you know what? I'm okay with that.

And you know what would have made the Alito hearings a little more exciting? More use of the word "whore". That's what the fine people over at the Saddam Hussein trial figured out this weekend. Hussein's co-defendant Barzan Ibrahim was dragged out of court after standing and shouting that the court was a "daughter of a whore". So not only is the court's mom a slut, but he also called it a girl. Double whammy. Saddam had his back though, shouting "down with traitors" and "down with the Americans". It's too bad things turned out the way they did, because Saddam would have been a great guy to have in your entourage. Having your back at the club, screaming "You best check yourself before you wreck yourself" to that guy who just looked at your girl wrong. And then hopefully there would be a dance off, because little known fact, Saddam is world champion pop and locker.
Or if that didn't work out he'd just pull out his patent "shoot my shot gun into the air" move. Because that never fails.

Things just went down hill from there though, with the defense team leaving the court in protest, and then Saddam leaving the court in protest of his new defense team. All of this happened on judge Raouf Abdel-Rahman's first day, taking over after the previous judge quit. I sure hope he had time to hang up his 'Hang in There' poster with the little kitty on a clothes wire before the trial got under way, because he's sure going to need it.

So what did the Alito hearings have? It was nothing but a bland white guy dodging questions from other bland white people for forty hours. The highlights included Ted Kennedy making Mrs. Alito cry by talking about some secret society at Princeton, and Joseph Biden talking about himself for half an hour and then wearing a silly hat (perhaps he's learned a lesson from Hamas?). We put so much stock in propriety and respect, when it's obvious that all politicians are a vulgar lot brimming with contempt for each other. Now, I understand more than anyone that there is nothing more healthy or American than a good dose of repression. But perhaps we should take a page from the greatest of American traditions, wrestling, and throw a little smack down in the senate every now and then, before all of this simmering agression erupts in some sort of unjustified use of preemptive force.

* Apparently wrestling isn't an American tradition, it is, in fact, Greek. But to be fair we're the ones who made it cool.