Politics and Such - The Tragedy of Olympia Snowe

I meant to post this a bit earlier in the week when it was more politically relevent, but hopefully everybody heard by now about Republican Senator Olympia Snowe's support of the Senate Finance Committee-devised healthcare bill (ie, the modified and oft-maligned Baucus Bill). Conservative backlash against Snowe is astounding; her party refused to support her on an unrelated committee and she's attracting mention as a condemned RINO (Republican in Name Only).

Now, this is hilariously out of proportion. But nothing characterized this as well as a status update I glanced at last Tuesday from a conservative friend, despairing thus: "Snowe, No!" In an equally disproportionate burst of shaedenfreude, I dug up William Shakespeare's perhaps lesser-known work, The Tragedy of Olympia Snowe, and will release more as time goes on and the healthcare debate becomes steadily more ridiculous/close to passage/continues to go nowhere.

Thus I present, Act One, Scene One of the tragedy, featuring the jesters Beck and Limbaugh mourning the sudden breakthrough in progress.

Beck: The vote is in. Sweet Liberty will weep

On hearing of her children, leaving home

And hearth and heaving bosom. Freedom calls,

But Ignorance holds sway in minds of men.

Limbaugh: Hear, hear. The fools are blind. But even sheep

Need shepherding, or wolves in shepherd’s clothes

To spare them Thought, some demon mastermind

In ken of stateliness with treacherous

Intent. I fear a cancer in our ranks.

Something is rotten in the state of Maine.

Beck: Are we betrayed?

Limbaugh: Indeed. Snowe has fallen,

And we must bear the blizzard of her faults.

A bitter chill stings Freedom. Fetch doctors,

While still we can, and hope she lasts the month.

Beck: The volk must be alert. Fetch cameras,

For still we can, and help her last the month.

Let Fact be broadcast, nations reckoning

Returning to the breasts of Liberty.

Great round and welcome orbs, barely restrained

By vestments Lawful, pouring out beneath

The damp t-shirt of Ingenuity.

Limbaugh: You’ve problems of a certain Freudian sort.

But time we’ve not, if word we’re to report

Of villainous deceit, plant buds of Truth

And watch them blossom in the voting booth.

[Exit both.]

Tune in next week when Snowe is confronted by the familiar ghost of another Senator who abandoned his party for his conscience - the Specter of Specter, if you will...

Also, tomorrow's post will feature the first Immanuel Kant Imperative of the Week, as well as some general commentary on House (one of the few shows I will confess to following religiously).

--kd