The Speaker Flubs His Lines
27th September 2015
Richard Fernandez discovers that his Bullshit Detector has sounded.
It was as if John Boehner had a confession to make after all these years of troubled conscience. His recent resignation had the effect of suggesting the pro wrestling in Congress is fake. The Washington Republicans, dear fans are supposed to lose – after making some effort to heighten the drama — to the Capital Democrats. All those heart stopping moments toward the end lost due to some error or a sudden reversal of fortune — well that was in the script.
Republican Eric Cantor, writing in the New York Times, argues that there was no dishonor to being on the losing team so long as the game drew the crowds in. It kept the masses entertained, filled the stadium, paid the bills and prevented the Capital Democrats from winning too easily. There was an art to arranging things so that the Capital Democrats could imperceptibly gain a hundred points and let the Washingtons win back ten of them without becoming too obvious.
The reference here is of course to the Washington Generals, professional patsies to the Harlem Globetrotters.
Now all stability is at risk from people, hicks who not knowing the noble history of the game, actually want to wrassle for real.
The nerve of some people.
The fans, once enraptured by the wrestling, have noticed large fires starting outside the stadium. They hear shouting a few blocks over in Chinese. In the far distance there’s appears to be a rumble of Russian. And right next door, where the smoke (is it smoke?) seems to be coming from thickest, are loud yells in Arabic, French and German.
They notice that the price of tickets gets higher and higher; and the food service quality lower and lower. The space under the seats looks like they haven’t been swept in weeks. And there are disturbing movements of cash boxes from the ticket gate they’ve never noticed before. They sense, even if they can’t articulate it, that something is different.
Yet to their astonishment no one in the wrestling ring, not even the announcer, appears to take the slightest notice of events and carry on making the same choreographed moves, the same scripted sounds. At that point, they crowd may start to boo.