1175 Send Out the Clowns

1175 Send Out the Clowns

How many canaries can fit in a cage?  Five hundred if you squeeze hard.

How many clowns can fit in a Honda Fit?  Seventeen if you squeeze hard.

How many clowns can fit in the capitol building?  Five hundred - 75 elected clowns and nearly 55-thousand congressional employees and you don’t have to squeeze at all.

We can’t find a statistic for maintenance workers, cleanup workers, window washers, personal trainers, life coaches, office grunts, makeup artists, audio/video technicians, fire wardens, elevator repair people, non-sworn security guards, mail clerks, moving and storage workers or the press.

But suffice it to say it’s a mighty big staff for a bunch of yokels who do nothing and don’t even do it with style.

But overspending and overstaffing even in a depression isn’t the real issue.  The real issue is coulrophobia, the fear of clowns.

According to the psycho babble bible, the DSM, it mostly affects kids.  But more and more adults are becoming infected, too.  And while most phobias are irrational, this one is not.  At least not when it comes to the house and senate.

If you fear them, it’s with good reason.  But in the language of the peasantry, us, “phobia” has come to mean more than simple irrational fear.  When someone is “homophobic,” it doesn’t mean he’s afraid of gays, it’s now interpreted as hates gays or opposes gays.

And Coulrophobia should get the same kind of diluted meaning.  

These guys have stopped legislating -- not all bad -- and started making noise and doing somersaults and leading little pigs on leashes around the outer rings, while leaving the center ring empty.

Yeah, if you look hard, you’ll find an occasional dedicated and worthy legislator.  But you really have to look.

The IRS “scandal.”  The Benghazi “scandal.”  The first is just fine, the second was a terrible and mishandled event... but, really!

It’s time to consider two things:  a unicameral congress and term limits.  The former would require a change in the constitution which always is iffy and rarely happens overnight.  Opponents will argue that the latter will diminish your choice of clowns.  But with members of congress for the most part like tenured professors with modern-artist-on-drugs shapes. And with the parties in full control of the political process, there rarely is any real choice.

So while the clowns cavort -- and promote coulrophobia, the ringmaster, Obama, stands in the empty center ring announcing that the elephants, tigers and acrobats, high wire walkers, sword swallowers and trapeze artists will be out soon, you know he’s lost control of the show.

Shrapnel:

--Various sources combine to say all four judges are through judging on American Idol.  Randy Jackson confirms it, Nicki Minaj hints at it; others say Mariah Carey and Keith Urban don’t want to return, either -- and who can blame them for fearing they’ll be both deafened by the competitors and bore us and themselves and each other to death?  By the way, another nobody who’ll go nowhere, soul screecher Candice Glover won this year’s competition.

I’m Wes Richards.  My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2013