When I wrote my last rant in this space, nearly a year ago now, The People Who Do That continued to hammer away at two ripe targets: National Public Radio, and, through the lens of our NPR parodies, King George W. Bush.  At that time I gave an at-best tepid endorsement of snoozer zombie man, John Kerry.  Since that time, everyone has forgotten who John … that one guy John, was, while our prime targets, Dubya and NPR, have astoundingly become even more ripe targets than they already were.

First, there’s Dubya.  He promised us after his election in 2004 that he had “political capital” to spend, and he intended to spend it.  Much like his $300 tax refund checks a few years ago, that capital ran out mighty quick.  Despite his best efforts, public opinion stands squarely against him on his plans for Social Security, his support for the increasingly unpopular PATRIOT Act, and worst of all for King George, his policy in Iraq.  Even Republicans in the House are starting to defect from his party line, on all three of these issues.  But reality has never been a big concern for America’s current CEO.  He is well protected from it, especially by people like Philip Cooney.  Cooney, a former American Petroleum Institute lobbyist who became chief of staff of the Bush administration’s Council on Environmental Quality (and who has since stepped down to take a job with …. Exxon Mobil) watered down the reality of the threat of global warming by mollifying the language, insuring that Dubya would be safe once more from the cruel vicissitudes of The Truth.  Now that’s what I call Homeland Security.

Dubya also believes, apparently, that free trade is an article of faith, and that lack of faith in it is, well, forbidden by the Ten Commandments.  At a meeting about CAFTA, the Central American Free Trade Agreement, on June 6, 2005, he said, “An Americas linked by trade is less likely to be divided by resentment and false ideologies.”   I don’t know about you, but I read that as saying, “If you don’t like free trade, then your God is fake!”  Clearly there is no love lost between reality and the current President of the United States.  And while I think it's obvious that our nation, and the world, is worse off because of him, I must confide that his willful buffoonery is a comedy boon to us.  Kudos to the fools who voted him in.  We owe you.

NPR is also on the decline, and it’s nowhere near the bottom of its pit of woe.  From the outside, the Republicans have gone on the offensive against it, prepared now to drastically slash funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.  This move promises to lay waste to public broadcasting for good.  Even if NPR and PBS can survive it, they’ll find themselves at the mercy of the corporate marketplace, to whom they’ll owe great tribute for the privilege of retaining the megaphone.  Either way, what’s left of public broadcasting’s usefulness will be destroyed by this cut.  But just in case for some reason that doesn’t work (like all of us getting really pissed off and yelling at Congress about it, for example) the Repubs have hedged their bets: they’ve installed their people on the inside as well.  Kenneth Tomlinson, current chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s Board of Directors and Republican stalwart, is set to install Patricia Harrison as the CPB’s  next President.  Harrison, it’s probably worth mentioning, was, just a short time ago, co-chair of the Republican National Committee.  Ms. Harrsion's other credentials include her former ownership of a lobbying firm that went to bat for companies with spotty environmental records. How could you be more qualified to oversee public broadcasting?  With Herr Bush in charge, you couldn’t be.

I daresay that Dubya’s ascendancy, and the decline and fall of public broadcasting, are bad news for the average American.  They are, however, excellent news for National Corporate Radio.  It appears our targets will remain ripe for the foreseeable future.  We invite you to join us in mocking these treacherous jackasses, for as long as they remain in the unfortunate position of lording it over us.  There is some hope, after all, in mockery.  It may take them a while to understand that we are not laughing with them, but rather, at them; but when it really settles into their psyches just how loathed they are, we may injure their pride dearly enough to send them slithering off the world stage and into some dark corner, where they belong.  Keep laughing.  Spread the joke that is the Bush administration.  It wouldn’t really be funny if it weren’t a joke.