by Noah
Several decades ago, I was in a journalism class full of fellow students who were all asked, strictly as an exercise, of course, to write up a report based on the doings of Congress. There were no other stipulations other than any topic related to Congress was permissible. No one said the events in my report had to be real. Naturally, the first thing that popped into my mind was to make up a sex scandal but I eschewed that idea on the grounds that the idea risked being a cliche no matter where I went with it. I figured that whatever I came up with had probably actually been done more than once, even my idea of a congressman drowning an underage stripper in the reflecting pool as the statue of Lincoln looked on.
Anyway, we didn't have much time to type out our reports and hand them in to our guest lecturer of the day who just happened to be a senior editor at the Washington Post. I had to think fast. And then it hit me: I made up a little news item about the passage of a brand new piece of congressional legislation that decreed that, henceforward, all members of Congress would now be required to dress up in the logos of the corporations that bribed them. They could and would now do it openly, proudly and even boastfully! Transparency at last! There were even provisions in my bill that encouraged competition and penalties for wearing any corporate logo "flair" that was not legitimately earned by accepting a bribe. Whoever had the most logos got to run for Speaker of Majority Leader. Lesser numbers got to be typical committee chaircretins. In short, my mythical legislation reflected the true reality of Washington politics both then and now. In my report, the bill was so popular that the president came directly to the Capitol Building in a logo-covered motorcade to sign the bill and congratulate his fellow political scum immediately upon its passage. He had also achieved so many logos that he had to wear an 18-inch high stovepipe hat, sorta right out of Dr. Seuss.
As it turns out, as time has gone by, more and more Americans have had the same idea. In fact, I probably wasn't even the first person to think of it. How could I be? Surely others have looked at their $enators and seen them dressed in suits and dresses that were patchwork quilts of corporate logos. I'm not the kind of jackass who feels the need to pretend I was the first to point out something.
So, here we are, roughly 50 years later and it has become obvious to millions of oppressed and depressed Americans that the once respected Supreme Court is now no better than the folks on Capitol Hill who go through their days dialing for K Street dollars and being magnets for perks like hookers and envelopes of cash that get stuffed into their pockets and offshore bank accounts. It makes sense, I suppose. At least it makes sense inside the DC beltway. Imagine if our guest lecturer had included the "Supreme" Court as fair game along with Congress. Might I have written up a report about an anti-choice, anti-contraception, seriously homophobic porn-collecting "justice" whose wife was a traitor who helped plot the overthrow of the government and still had the support of most of his comrades on the court? I guess we will never know.