Cluck, CLUCK!

 By Bryan Zepp Jamieson

1/28/01

Imagine the horror. According to reports, Clinton staffers in the White House, on their last day prior to the inauguration charade, removed the "W" button from computer keyboards and pasted them above doors which bore signs reading "Office of Subliminable Cyberspace", "Bureau of Grecian Affairs" and so on. They reportedly did things that were a lot more dastardly, but there’s two things to consider about those reports; first, the source. The more dastardly it was, the more likely it is that the story is just right wing bullshit. And second, to the majority of people who are dubious about George and/or how he got to be President, such stories engender large guffaws and from staffers, a "Gee, I wish -I- had thought of that". According to one report, the copy machines had, interspersed in the stacks of blank copy paper, copies of an "obscene document" that was making the rounds on the Internet. After a little inquiry, I was able to determine that the "obscene document" in question was a faked-up Time magazine cover, with a picture of Dubious George wearing his deer-in-the-headlights expression on a black background, with the words, in red, emblazoned above and below: "We Are Fucked". I had about 20 of them turn up in my email in the days following the election. Other claims of darker mischief, such as cut phone lines and trashed terminals and the like, sound like right wing crap to me.

I liked the Time magazine "cover" in the copy machines. That struck me as a pretty good joke. But the missing "W" was inspired.

Of course, Republicans, always the victims, are crying loudly about that. In some cases, they had to get step ladders and retrieve the keys, which were taped over doors twelve feet up. Imagine the horror. In other cases, there were a couple of older keyboards that didn’t have keys that were meant to be removable, and they had to buy new keyboards! IMAGINE THE HORROR!!

I did a little figuring. You can get a decent keyboard for $15, and a good keyboard for $45, with hotkeys, touchpad, USB ports and volume/player controls. For what Republicans spent on the Starr investigation, they could have gotten over a million good keyboards. Hell, they could have gotten 20,000 top-of-the-line computer systems!

They say old Dick Cheney (Acting President, R, one of those rectangular states) is a genius, and by Republican standards, he must be. Without someone to tell them different, Bush staffers would have had to stop referring to their leader as "George W. Bush", and come up with something that served to differentiate between Bush pers and Bush fils, since there’s nothing else in the Bush administration that does. Perhaps they could have changed both their names, with junior becoming "George Bush", and senior becoming "George Ex-Bush".

Now, if it was up to me, I would have taken those keyboards and just turned the "W" upside down. Republicans aren’t much on intuitive thought, and eventually, even the American media would have gotten around to wondering why some documents from the White House referred to "George M. Bush". I can hear James Carville groaning in envy because he didn’t think of that.

But the best part was watching the Republican spin machine cluck over the whole thing. Here was Rush, jowls quivering in chihuahua indignation. Trent Lott, looking like he should be dressed in puritan garb and carrying a firebrand, huffed that Democrats were slime, but that he, personally, was going to restore civility to Washington. Rush is a failed entertainer frantic for material, any material. But can’t the Senate Minjority* Leader find something better to do with his time? Oh, they were just so mad they could SPIT! And some of them did, and tried not to look bewildered at the guffaws that even some of their own supporters responded with.

Of course, the Republican spin machine, when they have a big, juicy non-story about those awful libruls, always tack on a little vignette, usually totally bogus, that suggests that the other side has ADMITTED their guilt. In this case, the story went that Tipper Gore, so appalled at the horrible and vicious actions of the White House staff, called up Lynn Cheney to apologize.

Now, anyone with an ounce of sense is going to realize that the wife of a former vice president isn’t going to call up the wife of the current vice president to apologize for activities that the first had nothing at all to do with and the second was totally unaffected by. Gore might as well call up Cheney to apologize for the way the Lakers have been playing! The call never happened.

But the right wing doesn’t have an ounce of sense. They wouldn’t be howling right wingers if they did. So they embraced this ludicrous story, and even after both the principals denied it ever occurred, continue to embrace it.

Incidently, the tradition of outgoing staffers playing practical jokes on incoming ones, particularly from the other party, is an old one that dates back to at least 1952, when Truman staffers left minor surprises and irritants for incoming Eisenhower staffers.

Rather than whining about what victims they are at the hands of those eeeevil Democrats, Bush staffers should be thinking about the pranks they could pull four years from now, on the next incoming Democratic administration.

*The Senate is split 50-50. He isn’t the Minority Leader, but you can’t really say he’s the Majority Leader, either. Had to call him something besides "That Old Poophead".