The Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy To: The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy
Re Bipartisanship By Michael Kelly
Wednesday, January 10, 2001; Page A19
Dear Sirs and Token Non-Sirs,
Honestly, what slays us here -- that is, here at the new AOL-Bertelsmann-DreamWorks Democratic National Committee (McAuliffe's new name for the committee; catchy, works branding-wise and easy money in the bank too) -- is how sweet you guys are. I mean, this whole thing with giving us 50 percent of the seats in the Senate committees -- geez, that was sweet. It was, really. It was nice. It was gentlemanly. It was the right thing to do. It showed comity and amity and bipartisan goodwill and the proper spirit and a New Era in Government and bygones-be-bygones and, gosh, a lot more of terrific stuff. Sweet. Thanks.
And we are grateful. You're out of your small, community-college-educated minds if you think we would have ever done the same for you (and you are out of your minds, bless you; that's why we love you -- not just sweet but sweet and dumb). But, really, we appreciate it. We were talking here, among ourselves -- just the usual crowd: Tom Daschle and Pat Leahy and Joe "The Statesman" Lieberman and Norman Lear and Jesse Jackson and Sean Wilentz's Committee of 500 Sacred and Independent Historians and the once and future Clintons and a whole bunch of media guys and gals who would prefer if we don't use their names because they are, you know, objective; oh, and Al, of course, got to remember to remember him -- anyway, we were talking here about how to express our appreciation. And we came up with something suitable, a sort of gift that keeps on giving.
What we thought we'd do, in the spirit of bipartisanship, is this: Whack you and whack you and whack you and whack you and whack you and when we're tired of that, whack you some more.
We'll never, no never, no never, quit hollering from the rooftops that the president-select, as we like to call him, was and forever will be entirely and utterly illegitimate, a pinheaded, eye-knocking third-generation-silver-spooner of a joke who snuck into Our House through patrimony, blind thievery and a corrupt court, and who has a mandate for diddley-squat -- and anyway Dick Cheney is the real boss. Also, we will continue to heave gasoline on the fire by maintaining at the top of our shrill voices the confection that black voters were systematically deprived of their votes in order to put Bush in. The race card has been very, very good to us. During the campaign we suggested that your candidate was morally complicit in a race-murder, and the media, as usual, let us get away with it; so we'll race-bait harder than ever, harsher than ever, for every second of what we pray and trust will be a short, unhappy stay in power for y'all. "Uniter, not a divider." We'll see about that.
Recognizing that your boy is fully entitled to shape a government reflecting his own heartfelt beliefs as to the right philosophy of governance (he did after all, win office on the promise to do this), we will nevertheless pick great, walloping fights every time he attempts to appoint anyone or do anything that represents a philosophy more than 2.5 centimeters to the right of the editorial board of the New York Times. Ashcroft and Chavez and Norton are just the beginning. We will Bork those three into the Stone Age, and we'll do the same every time you poke a conservative head, or thought, above the White House fence. You might have noticed that our Bill has spent the last couple of weeks issuing a whole bunch of liberal-minded executive orders that he could have done any old time in the past eight years. You guys will have no choice but to try to undo all that, and every time you try will be another chance for us to holler that you're right-wing extremists in the grip of the oil companies and the Christian Coalition, etc., etc.
That's the story line, guys. And there's not a thing you can do to change it. It's about definitions. Ninety percent of the national press corps, God bless those scribes of the first rough draft of history, agree with our view as to what constitutes good government. So when you get in our way (and taking the White House is definitely getting in our way), you're getting in the way of good government. You're an obstructionist. But when we get in your way, we're fighting for good government. We're statesmen. See the difference? It's a beautiful thing. See you in 2002, and in the meantime, don't ever change. You're perfect just the way you are. You're sweet.
washingtonpost.com
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