John Cory | Clowns and Harlots

t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Thursday 07 September 2006
 We now live under a government and media run by clowns and harlots who peddle their wares from the corner of K Street and Pennsylvania Avenue all the way to Main Street, USA. They spray the night air with the rancid perfume of fear while selling cheap lipstick-lies that kill, as they offer the flesh of our Constitution to the highest corporate bidder.

Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity, chief clowns in a circus of hate and vitriolic stupidity, are allowed to spew their obscenities on FOX and friends. Why? Because avarice, and the gluttony of power, trumps moral values in this crowd.

ABC will join the club of harlots when it airs "The Path to 9/11," a supposed docudrama that smears the Clinton administration while glorifying the boy-king Bush. It's a Disney version of "War and Peace," from Fantasyland. Never mind the truth. The American media has become nothing more than a midway of mendacity in a carnival of greed, broadcasting deceit and sleight of hand distractions from the harsh reality of the Bush politics of pain and death.

There are clowns and harlots, right and left, in the GOP, willing to use America as their personal ATM machine no matter the price to our future. There are clowns and harlots like Joe Lieberman, who dress as Democrats, ready to sell out their country and party for their own self-centered egos. And yet, every harlot has a price below which they will not go.

And what is it that the Republicans have sold to America? A president who ignored the warnings of 9/11, and sat frozen while death and mayhem burned a city. A president whose lies have killed 2600 soldiers. A president on continuous vacation while a city drowned in a flood of ineptitude and corporate cronyism. A president who would rather see the wealthy enriched and the middle-class erased. A president who ignores the rule of law, because he believes that he is above the law. A president who dwells in secrecy while spying on America like a tawdry little schoolboy in short pants.

Republicanism has given us a president whose quotation of Bin Laden's words boomerang back on him: "History teaches that underestimating the words of evil and ambitious men is a terrible mistake.The question is: Will we listen? Will we pay attention to what these evil men say?"

Indeed.

Now is the time to listen to heroic voices. Voices that dare speak up; that dare to be heard. Voices that remind us of who we once were, and can be again.

It is time to shed the falsehood of fear. Time to embrace the dissent that is liberty. Time to stand in the sunlight of democracy rather than cower in the shadows of tyranny. Time to demand Democrats represent "We, the people."

On September 10th and 11th, do not turn on the television. Instead, light one candle for the war widow, the newly orphaned child, the empty chair at holiday gatherings that now populate American families whose loved ones have been lost to this war of lies.

Light one candle for the loss of truth and justice.

Light one candle for the Towers that held our brothers and sisters, and another for those who perished in flight. Light one candle to chase away the darkness that has engulfed America.

Yes, light one candle, then sit on the front porch and face your neighbors in the flickering evening of hope and unity, and remembrance.

Pay no attention to the harlots who lurk beneath streetlights, as they work the cruising limos of deception, while the clowns flop and flail under a Big Top filled with the wind of their own hollow voices.

Light one candle, one small spark, for America.