The Three Witches

For a very long time now, I have lamented, railed against, screamed about and been oftentimes completely incensed by the (almost impossible to ignore) fact that the United States of America has been and is being run by gray-haired, old men, in expensive suits (Barack Obama excepted, although I hear the gray hair thing is already started.). Bill Clinton and George W, Bush, our two most recent top dogs, didn’t start out their tenures with gray hair, but would you look at them now! Wow!

A note, here: I have seen countless portraits and portrayals of the founding fathers; Franklin, Jefferson, Washington, Adams; (old guys?), almost always wearing one of those silly gray or white powdered wigs they carried over from England. It could have been that there was some intent to set a standard for future hair styles of the members of the legislative branch, but somehow I don’t think so. Of course, the first group to give their King George the boot also tried to make it clear that ours was NOT to be a Christian nation, but we have screwed that up, as well. So who the hell knows?

As for the “old” part of the description, I give you the likes of Strom Thousand-Year-Old-Egg Thurmond, Jumpin’ Joe Biden, Give ‘em Hell Harry Reid and Ted The-Bridge-to-Nowhere Stevens. These guys are but just a few of the current standard bearers of the coiffes which are salt-and-pepper hair to gray to barely there. But I know the Capitol building has a whole raft of “guys”, not many years on the junior side, just waiting to take up their places as the aging keepers of the public trust. (I also believe that there are more walkers and wheelchairs parked outside the doors of the Senate chambers than any of us imagine).

The expensive suit observation is partially speculative, but during the vice-presidential debates (with all due respect to Sarah Palin and Nieman-Marcus) and Democratic nomination acceptance speech celebrations (somebody finally bought Barack a new tie), Joe Biden’s threads hardly looked like they came off the rack at the J.C.Penney store in Dover, DE or Scranton. And I don’ think you will find Ted Kennedy or Barney Frank picking up their wardrobes at the thrift shops in their local home environs. (I don’t recall seeing any thrift stores on Martha’s Vineyard…although I vacation there often, as I am certain you do…but I’m sure Martha must have some old grape-stained dresses lying around somewhere).

However…

(You’ve been wondering where the three witches come in, haven’t you?)

Now come the three women of the epoxy-snit. I say this because they seem to be glued together in a permanent state of whining and hormonal minstrel misery. Who are these women, you ask? Why, I give you the Pugilist and Pecuniary Barbara Boxer, the Indignant Feisty Feinstein and the Nasal Nancy Pelosi. As a trio of malcontents, they have trumped my contempt, disdain and disavowal of the gray-haired old men, as they stand together and stir the cauldron of Washington politics, like characters from a modern day MacBeth. They appear, all too often, as a boil on the complexion of the political landscape, and seem intent on stirring up toil and trouble. They are a triad of dis-chord in the nearly atonal harmony of the rakes regress across the business of Capitol Hill. They just piss me off.

I think it all began

Sometime during the latter part of the recent election cycle. For some seemingly inexplicable reason, I began to perceive all women as relentless, nasal, gold-digging, petulant opportunists, and I knew I couldn’t blame it all on the Governor of Alaska. As I recall, there was not a lot of Fein-steining going on, but Boxer and Pelosi had set several repugnant practices into motion. I have no proof that the three of them actually sat and plotted out this attack on the general populace, but they may well have. It did (and does) seem like a concerted effort, a sort of gender-based maliciousness.

Please bear in mind that two important and indomitable movements were afoot at that time: the first was of course the all-out campaign by the Democrats, liberals and the progressives to sweep all manner of Republicans (especially that Shrub fellow) from office. Doing that would require heroic amounts of effort and mountains of cash. Nearer the end of the cycle, we were beset by the Paulson-Bernanke-October-Wall Street surprise: we had all been robbed and would starve to death any moment, only Congress and the Treasury could save us, the sky was falling while hell was freezing over and we were all going to freaking die in the next 11 minutes. Other than that, everything was fine. Except…

Almost as nicely formatted as a country-western female duo from Nashville, Boxer and Pelosi both attempted to take and steal the national stage. The only elements missing were tin cups and twangy guitars. While on the one hand, I was receiving emails, almost daily, from Boxer, asking for cash (in our national time of dire straits) for some of her projects that were absolute musts if she were to save the world, poor people and medical aid programs in CA (hell, I don’t even live in CA), Pelosi was front and center before the press cameras, warbling about what “she” would and would not let Congress do or not do to save the financial futures of America. Boxer (thankfully) remained largely invisible, save her picture and plaintive messages in the emails, but these belied her expensive suits and carefully coiffed hair (remember the old guys?). Meanwhile, Pelosi was highly visible (and shrill), standing up next to ( and trying, it seemed, to be on top of) Harry Reid, making pronouncements about how powerful she was while acting like this was all monopoly money, playing both politics and her side of the sad song record on the jukebox she shared with Boxer. She always looked gaunt, but she always had a nice suit and her hair looked fabulous (remember the old guys?) Later on, Boxer stopped asking for cash (because the Dems had won) and Pelosi settled in to a more complacent demeanor after she and the Congress let Paulson slip $85B to AIG. Talk about hiding the salami.

I was beginning to get over this (these two women had almost turned me against women) until Obama’s team leaked out the news that Leon Panetta had been selected to run the CIA. Feinstein went as indignantly ballistic as a Sec. of Defense, and threw a linguistic plate of matzo balls against the walls of the intelligence committee hearing room:

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2009/01/05/1732447.aspx

Then we got this:
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/01/06/panetta-feinstein-rockefeller/

Some time later, the Obama camp apologized for the leak, saying they had fully intended to consult Feinstein before hand, but, as Rumsfeld might say, “Stuff happens”. (I am quite certain that Feinstein would have said “s$#@ happens, but it would not go well with her suit. Besides, it is hard to say “s@#^” and sound whiny and California at the same time).

I had a grandmother like Feinstein once. Even now I can hear, “Well, I declare!”, and “Well, nobody asked me before they did that!”, and, “That was very inconsiderate and I don’t appreciate it one bit”. I always wanted to say to my grandmother (as we would say today), “Get over it”. I should like to say the same to Ms. Feinstein. And I saw her picture today. She was not hiding her displeasure, but she had on really nice clothes and her hair looked great, too. (Old guys, again)

And so it seems that I must back down somewhat, from my disdain and disappointment when it comes to my views about “gray-haired old men in expensive suits” running the country. I must, it seems, temper that ire with the added knowledge of the activities of the female contingent (at least as regards this trio) whom equal gender opportunities hath wrought. Perhaps you can cage a chauvinistic leopard but you can’t change his (my) spots.

I was reminded today of the movie, “The Witches of Eastwick”. Those ladies were fun until they decided to join forces and go after Jack Nicholson with a vengeance. I don’t know what “aspirational horizons” Boxer, Feinstein and Pelosi have their eyes on for the next four years, but they are all living together in the same cottage on Capitol Hill, and if I were Michelle, I’d watch my Barack.

Life Goes On In Texas.