10 Hours Of Political Theater On Your Dime
Holy mother of tap-dancing, four-on-the-floor, zippy-doo-da Christ!
What went on in the people’s capital yesterday for 11 fucking hours—11 FUCKING HOURS—is unequivocally the stupidest thing I have ever covered in the 18 long years of penning this column. That is no minor statement. In fact, it may be the craziest thing I have ever written anywhere, and under the influence of all measure of substance, mind you, and that in itself is so off-the-charts bizarre it cannot seriously be dissected by anyone not considered a blithering idiot. Yet, it is the truth.
I am seriously considering having my attorney look into a possible damages claim against the United States Congress for this brutal assault on my central nervous system and setting the sun on the last vestige of faith that I’ve barely nurtured in what I can only guess is a democratic legal system.
Former Secretary of State and current Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was used by both frothing Republicans and speechifying Democrats as a political football from 10:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. on the 22nd day of October 2015. Clinton merely appeared to be a bystander, occasionally smirking and always having a snappy answer to long-winded and barely coherent points that seemed to be conjured by a team of chimps on mead. I only watched about half of it and I still have no idea what the point of it was, beyond a fairly decent parody of the “Who Stole The Tarts” court scene from Alice In Wonderland in which sentence is rendered before a verdict as matter of protocol. I once was so drunk in high school I fell asleep in the street under an automobile and I think that was less an affront to my brain cells than this half-assed con-artistry.
I think anyone who watched all of it should never be allowed near children.
If this is how we attempt to drill and convict alleged political criminals now, then I think the ninth, and if there is anything resembling justice to the vocation of journalism it will be the last Benghazi Investigative Committee, will take the next few months to return my tax dollars ($4.8 million and counting—in fact Benghazi investigations have cost in excess of $15 million) for this boondoggle and get onto investigating real stuff, like the U.S. military’s murder of innocent children in Iraq, the continued rampant corruption throughout our entire banking system, and what the hell is going on in this infinite drone-attack policy by the current administration.
Because whatever the hell this thing was, it was a bust. If its goal was to take down Madam Shoo-in, and the cat was left to run wild out of the bag for the last couple of weeks by several committee insiders, all of them Republicans so embarrassed by this steaming pile of bullshit they just came right out and said it was a political wing of the Republican National Committee, then it failed. It not only failed, it turned what at best has been a questionable last few months of stumbling about by Clinton as a candidate, and left her the most sympathetic figure in the last half century of American politics.
Clinton’s testimony ended up to be longer than any Benghazi witness (all of three) in the past year. It was twice as long as her previous two appearances in front of such a committee and even according to statements made afterwards by its chairman, South Carolina Congressman Trey Gowdy, it revealed nothing new. Hell, this whole ridiculous “investigation” has gone on longer than any in the history of the nation, including investigations on the murder of two presidents, the Pearl Harbor attack, the Iran/Contra affair, the 9/11 commission, and the one that kicked major ass for a change, the Watergate hearings. At one point, somewhere around 8:42 p.m., the woman completely lost her voice.
Now, I am not saying sometime two years ago when this was something of a story, we could swallow this nonsense, but now, in an election cycle with what looks like an unstoppable candidate, it is pure political theater. When you consider what horrible shit this government has perpetuated on the American people over the past half-century of my life, this was not only excessive, it was tantamount to a beheading for scratching someone’s bumper.
Take for example the committee to investigate a far larger fuck-up; the October 1983 Beirut barracks bombing (33 years ago on the day I send this to press, in fact) that left 241 American service personnel dead, after, mind you, the U.S. Embassy there had been bombed five months earlier in which 61 people (17 Americans) lost their lives. Can you imagine if Clinton had been Secretary of State then and these assholes ran that investigation? She would have likely had to do this for 60 hours in a sleep-deprivation tank after chewing six tabs of high grade acid.
But even if Clinton were guilty as sin, which from what evidence I have seen, she is not, or maybe she is, no one seems to know, least of all this committee of the damned, then this is beyond crazy, it is criminal.
And I am sure some lunatic is going to say somewhere on some right wing outpost of logic that this was not a mere political ploy that backfired and turned a victim into an even more powerful force of nature, and so I ask them why did the committee, which did not ask a single question about the infamous e-mails (the entire point of dragging this craziness in front of us again) until after 7:00 p.m. and mostly during the 8:00 hour—or in the parlance of our times, prime-time? And even when the rubber hit the road it was a swerving mish-mosh of gobbledygook and a ton of fast and loose from Clinton.
But none of it, absolutely none of it amounts to a hill of beans. No one got to the bottom of anything for any dead Americans. It failed. Miserably.
Unless, of course, you work for the Clinton campaign; it was an excellent display of endurance for a candidate who surely should be asked about her age and the stamina of the office. I doubt highly LeBron James would have taken that much shit for that long.
Do yourself no favors and “like” this idiot at www.facebook.com/jc.author
James Campion is the Managing Editor of The Reality Check News & Information Desk and the author of “Deep Tank Jersey”, “Fear No Art”, “Trailing Jesus”, “Midnight For Cinderella” and “Y”. His new book, “Shout It Out Loud—The Story of KISS’s Destroyer and the Making of an American Icon” is due out this October.
