Thursday, September 29, 2005
InDickted: Less Comfortable than it Sounds
A grand jury indictment is not a conviction; it isn’t even evidence of actual guilt. It’s just a determination by a grand jury that sufficient evidence exists for a criminal prosecution. No defense witnesses are questioned; it may turn out in open court that perfectly reasonable explanations exist for all the incriminating, inculpatory, damning facts that looked so bad at first. Maybe it was another guy what did it. Maybe he was justified, or crazy, or crazy-justified. Maybe he was framed, as was the case with one Roger Rabbit. That’s for the jury to decide - twelve drowsy people, those of our peers who didn’t have a good enough excuse to get out of serving. Another interesting fact on this subject: the “C” in “indict” is scilent. Plus one more: Tom DeLay is now about to face prosecution for consipiracy to violate campaign finance laws. He’s been indicted in the courts of his home state of Texas. It’s a strange world.
Texas politics are all about how many corpses you get to vote for you, how many ballotboxes you can stuff or misplace, how to trick and cheat your way into office. This is not news; it’s an established historical fact. It’s how LBJ got to the U.S. House of Representatives, and how Karl the Rover got into politics. What’s surprising, though, is that DeLay got busted for it. “It’s not that I dislike the man,” said the grand jury foreman in a post-indictment interview, “but his check bounced and those tickets he gave us for the Cowboys game were way out in the endzone. I couldn’t even see the cheerleaders. So we’re just gonna have to fry his pasty bureaucrat ass.”
As House republican leaders scour the greater MD-VA region to find another self-righteous blowhard to bear their standard of wealth preservation, faith-based science and health, and moral superiority, a chill settles across America. If DeLay could be inDicted, can our other cherished national symbols and institutions be far behind? No, I tell you, they cannot. Therefore, as a public service, I am delighted to amp up the paranoia with this list of new indictments now to be unsealed in and unleased upon our nation’s fragile courts:
* Mike Brown: for misrepresentation, misprision, and mopery. Plus, I hear some of those Arabian Horses he judged were part of a terrorist cell, and may have paid him off for “special consideration.”
* Bob Novak: for being ugly. Oh yeah, and that thing about outing our spies. That’s illegal too, right?
* Valarie Plame: for being a spy and for marrying that loudmouth jerk from the State Department. You can’t dangle that kid of temptation in front of folk indefinitely.
* The Gilmore Girls: for whining at twice the speed of sound, and four complete seasons without disrobing and cavorting on screen. What a rip off.
* The Gaza Strip: for stripping. Has it no modesty? Where can we find it a geo-hejab?
* Ron Jeremy: for actually making pornography disgusting.
* Cocaine: For forcing Kate Moss to make models everywhere look bad. To the extent that any of them actually look “bad.”
* Katrina: for grave desecration. Also, for immigration violations, as she came ashore without clearance from Homeland Security, which was still working on her visa application.
* WMD: for evading arrest.
* CarrotTop: Don’t even get me started here. He knows why.
* God: for tricking us into fighting a “crusade” against “infidels” and then taking advantage of our troop depletion to buttream us with natural disasters.
I do, however, look forward to the possibility that DeLay may be found guilty and imprisoned, because that would turn “fresh meat” and “neo-con” into synonymns. “Synonym,” as you know, is what they call words about not breaking God’s law. On the other hand, “antonyms” are words about conservative supreme court justices. In the long run, no matter who’s indicted, Antonyms are likely to be the last words on the subject.
