Fishwrapper - Buy, you unpatriotic scum

“Repression, recession, it’s all the same thing.”
? — Cheech & Chong, “Santa Claus and His Old Lady”

Yo, Bubba and Sally Sue, y’all sweating and shaking as that 2002 hangover squeezes your brains? Things a little blurry? Hey, it’s only Christmas Eve ... no, wait, it’s already Christmas. Or was that yesterday? Whatever, you have visions of credit card slips dancing through your holiday-addled brain. On Visa. On MasterCard. On Wal-Mart and Macy’s.

I’d like to remind you of a few things that happened in 2002, but I can see you’re very busy. Still, if you’ve got a sec, let’s talk about you. After all, the only news worth remembering is news about thou.

I really like that shiny new land barge parked in the driveway. Heck, its price equals more than you make in a year, maybe two, but you got such a deal, you say. Zero percent interest. Wow.

You know something, dammit. You’re a patriot. True blue and bled white from shopping.

You trust the media, don’t you? Sure you do. And the press has been pounding you with the message that it’s your Holy Duty to shop, shop, shop until you’ve exhausted every one of those 50 new credit cards that have hit your mailbox in recent months. The Really Big News over at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution isn’t war and public corruption — it’s that Rich’s and Macy’s have wider aisles (no kidding), and that Rich’s Christmas tree is lighted and that there were six fewer shopping days this holiday season than in some other years (must be plot by People Who Hate America).

So do your part. Stand up for your country — and SPEND. Run up that debt. You say you only owe $5,000? Don’t you know that’s exactly what Saddam Hussein wants? You’ll cripple America by not spending enough. Start flashing those credit cards. Get that debt up to ten big, twenty grand or more.

You’re not quite sure how you’re going to squeeze those payments for the new road monster into your budget. And God only knows what to do about the soon-to-arrive Christmas credit card bills. But it’s treasonous to worry about such twaddle. Are you a traitor? I should hope not.

What you shouldn’t do is pay attention to the news that home foreclosures in Fulton County were up 22 percent this month compared to November . Don’t sweat those dunning notices from the mortgage company. Bet your paycheck on the Georgia lottery, and ignore the cynics who chide that the games are just a tax on the stupid.

And, puh-leeze, don’t pause in your shopping to wonder why the banks — the same ones that sent you those credit cards — lavished their friends in Congress with cash in order to change the bankruptcy laws so that, while gangrenous outfits like WorldCom and Enron can dodge their debts, you’ll have to keep paying and paying and paying.

Here are some other things you don’t want to ponder if you’re a stand-up patriot. Don’t you dare fret over the fact that while the median income of all American families increased only a little more than $3,000 over the last two decades, the wealthiest 1 percent saw their earnings soar more than $400,000 — and as the Bush $1.3 trillion tax break for the rich kicks in, that separation is going to accelerate. Zoom. The rich really will be different — in ways not imagined since the Middle Ages.

While Christmas will be merry for the neocons, 500,000 Americans will be shivering during the holidays after Bush 43 whacked $300 million from an emergency program to provide heating assistance. Many of those who will be out in the cold — literally — will be the 2 million Americans who have lost their jobs since Bush took office.

Until last week, President Scrooge apparently hadn’t noticed that 820,000 out-of-work Americans will be stranded after the GOP- controlled House refused to extend unemployment benefits. That “present” will be delivered three days after Christmas. Ho, ho, ho.

Oh, yes, the jobless rate spiked this month at 6 percent — about as bad as it has been since the last time a Bush was in the White House.

Lost your job (along with about 80,000 metro area neighbors)? Too bad. Your spouse got cancer and your health insurance won’t pay? Tough. Your retirement plan evaporated (along with $7.5 trillion in Americans’ stock market savings)? Ah, well. Don’t wimp out on America — pack up your troubles in your on-sale Calvin Klein kit bag and go spend. Then spend some more.

Let’s face it, Bubba, looking back at 2002, and the big news is that you’re screwed. Sorry. Take comfort in the fact that George Bush, Halliburton, the oil companies, the Carlyle Group and all the Enron-clones appreciate your sacrifice.

br>?So, do I have you in a festive mood yet? Good. Let’s look briefly at a few other joyful events during 2002. For a start, the two most important dates were Nov. 5 and Dec. 5. One month, and the political world spun twice.
The first date is easy. The Democratic Party was exposed as a soulless, value-less anachronism. And it got trounced.

Dec. 5 may be a little harder to identify. I’ll give you the answer: It was Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday party. The high point of the gala was when Senate Republican leader Trent Lott’s true colors (white, as in white sheet and hood) were exposed as he effused over how America would be so much better off if, in 1948, the segregationist Dixiecrats had put Thurmond in the White (of course) House.

(Quick aside: Although about 100 reporters were at the party, only ABC News initially picked up on Lott’s verbal excrement. Our beloved AJC went almost a week before one of its slumbering reporters awoke to the news.)

The real story, which started to leak out before the Mississippi senator fell on his sword last Friday, was that Bush’s “Mayberry Machiavelli,” Karl Rove, had put the dagger in Lott’s back.

The fear among the Bushies was that Lott was honest — he was up front about his history of virulent racism. That might have drawn attention to the fact that there was not a mint julep’s worth of difference between Lott’s antebellum thinking and the political “Southern Strategy” of the GOP.

To wit: Last week, Republican Party spokesman and sometimes AJC columnist Jim Wooten penned this clever line: “Sen. Trent Lott, in an attempt to save his skin, has flipped. Now he’s a liberal Democrat. Bye.” Interpreted: Being a racist, a segregationist, a bigot, was just dandy with Republicans such as Wooten. To renounce such ideology — as Lott pathetically tried to do on his infamous BET network interview — makes one a “liberal.”

Let’s not forget that Daddy Bush distorted and lied in every material respect about convict William Horton — including black-izing his name to Willie — in order to race bait Democrats in the 1988 presidential race. When it appeared that John McCain might thrash son Bush 12 years later, Dubya ran to the racist Bob Jones University to milk every vote possible out of Southern white guys. The Council of Conservative Citizens (which should be written with three capital K’s instead of C’s) was not only embraced by Lott, but seems to have been much loved by many other Republicans.

In 2000, brother Jeb (as has been documented by acclaimed journalist Greg Palast, but studiously ignored as an important story by mainstream media such as the AJC) disenfranchised 94,000 mostly black Florida voters on the contention they were felons. The company that did the dirty work has admitted that only 3,000 of the purged voters deserved the heave-ho. The other 91,000 undoubtedly would have awarded the presidency to Al Gore.

Now, Bill of Rights Defiler and Attorney General John Ashcroft has launched a “Voting Integrity Initiative” — code for let’s return to the 1920s when poll taxes, tests and raw intimidation kept blacks from casting ballots.

And, of course, without the Confederate flag issue, Sonny Perdue would now be just an also-ran.

Doo-dah, doo-dah.

br>?Quick hits for 2002:
Bush couldn’t prove Saddam had the nasties, the U.N. stood firm against bluster, and the War Party’s plans were stalled. Noteworthy: Virtually every major church except the Southern Baptists has denounced “pre-emptive war” as morally repugnant and sinful — which pretty much leaves the devil as Bush’s theological underpinning for the planned holocaust. Most of the world isn’t fooled. And most of the world understands that if possessing weapons of mass destruction, boasting a willingness to use those hell toys, embracing an expansionist ideology, and displaying a willingness to kill innocents are the criteria, Bush is arguably the most dangerous man on the planet. It’s been almost 500 days since Bush promised to bring Osama in “dead or alive” and he needs a war in Iraq to hide the failure of the war against terrorism. Not to mention that Dubya and his fellow let-the-other-guy-die chickenhawks employ faux patriotism to conceal the fact that the lusted-for Iraq assault is a brazen colonial land and resources grab that has nothing to do with protecting America or furthering democracy.

Prediction for 2003: Americans will wake up to their cataclysmic loss of freedoms under the Bush regime. Will it be too late?

Locally, the big news — other than Perdue’s seismic shock to Georgia politics — is the emergence of Shirley Franklin as a great leader of incredible competence (have I laid it on thick enough?). When the Rebel flag waving yahoos in the Assembly begin the Second Siege of Atlanta, Franklin’s skills may save the city.

Senior Editor John Sugg — who says every political party should have a song, and the GOP’s should be “There’s a Klavern in Our Town” — can be reached at 404-614-1241 or at john.sugg@creativeloafing.com.??