KEEP IT SCARY, STUPID


Animal fetishist Steve Irwin ("Crikey!") finally managed to get himself killed yesterday, may God rest his uniquely perverted soul. His end didn't come the way you would've thought. He was not run down by an enraged black mamba while stealing eggs from its nest. He did not expire from sticking his arm into a basket of confused cobras, from putting on a baby seal costume and swimming amongst killer whales, or from taking 20 mikes of LSD, strapping chicken breasts across his torso, smearing himself with barbeque sauce and splashing through the Everglades while singing "Waltzing Matilda." At night. Steve Irwin transcended the limits of his own imagination and died as perhaps no human being, sane or otherwise, had ever done before: he was stabbed in the heart by the barb of a sting ray he had managed to harrass into freaking out.

And this got me to thinking. I've got some issues of my own, and for some reason reflecting on Steve's manner of death, his garish approach to animals and life, made me wonder, "What is Karl Rove going to do about the Fall Elections?" Political machinations don't interest me enough to have studied them in any detail, in fact I've tried to remain ignorant of our national political processes much like I've tried to ignore or avoid women with aggressively fake boobs; to me, they're tiresome, deceitful, and aesthetically grotesque. When confronted with them, I maintain an uptight veneer of good manners, avert my gaze, and hope they go away. Which they never do. But obscured by fake boobs or not, I know genius when I see it.

Karl Rove is a genius, and for over thirty years he has ranged across the American political landscape like a porn star with gigundus gravity-defying 52 KKK's. The proportions of his ambition are enormous, and make those of the Bush and Kennedy families seem comically flat. Karl Rove's knowledge of history is awesome, and he sees the world through the high-powered telescope of a towering natural intellect of which there have been few equals. No kidding. The Bush family dynasty has become Karl Rove's clay, while Cheney, Rumsfeld and the neo-cons present ham-handed, unstable annoyances to him whose influences must be accounted for, nudged and negated with the same care and planning accorded to plutonium. Machiavelli was a blooming dilettante by comparison of skill levels. Karl Rove is relentlessly pragmatic and able, absolutely ruthless, and is to modern politics what RCA-Victor's David Sarnoff was to broadcasting.

Yet Karl must still somehow get his idiotic, panicked minions elected. It's increasingly predicted the House will be lost to the Dims (my term for democrats), possibly even the Senate. My mind is not equal to understanding the full workings, so I'm not sure exactly how The Majestic Turdblossom will direct his Pugs in the run-up to November, but Karl will make sure the campaigns will follow the winning "Keep It Scary, Stupid" playbook. So here are a few guesses of things to look for:

• Stopping a Second 9/11 In Its Tracks (massive but successfully thwarted nuclear or chemical attack on US soil)
  
• Voodoo Sacrifices In The Attic (massive advertising claims of value-based threats posed by individual opponents)
• Armageddon Is Near (massive end-of-world theme commonly harped on by leaders of failing empires)
  
• Look, Pa, A Free X-Box! (massive financing for turnout-the-vote drives in threatened states and districts)

The Dims, if they had any brains at all, would not engage in Hillary Indulgence or dangle-a-baby-over-the-croc exchanges. There is a common wish running through the people of this country now. The Democratic Party should gently, carefully draw its head out of its weary ass and run on one phrase: Get Real.

Hey, that's kinda catchy. ;-)