Sweaty Pigs Love Being Showered

presidential political parable
by Mike Seely

Recently we saw Alan Keyes taking Michael Moore (of "The Big One," fame) up on his promise to endorse the resident right-wing wildman by jumping into an ad-lib mosh pit at a Young Republicans' rally in Iowa.

The problem with Keyes' jump was that fellow hard-right zealot Gary Bauer attempted to make it a moral issue at a debate one night later.

According to The New York Times, Bauer attacked Keyes for being irresponsible because the music being played at the time of his jump (Rage Against the Machine) was, in the words of Bauer, "the kind that corrupted the youths like the ones who shot fellow students in Littleton, Colorado."

"Admittedly, I was willing to fall into a mosh pit," replied Keyes in a dead-serious tone, adding that the gravity-defying act showed his "trust in people."

Same week, New York City: I step out of the shower to a radio report that the Apple's work-to-welfare minions are weening people off the government cheese by training and paying them to be psychics.

In other words, training people with hardly any money to screw people out of money. So when those people squander all their coin on palm-reading powers, NYC can train them to be psychics, too. Pretty soon, a city of psychics, thus allowing Giuliani to achieve another shrinkage of municipal government by shutting down, er, the NYC Department of Predictions.

Back in Iowa, Gore pandered to farmers about this-and-that publicly-mandated boost in wholesale prices that'll help them drag their asses out of amber waves of debt (in New York City, he'll pander to bodega owners about this-and-that government-mandated reduction in wholesale prices that'll help drag their asses out of dark alleys of debt).

But time zones away, in Copenhagen, Denmark (Reuters), the real farm policy was being hashed out. No this-and-that, pie-in-the-sky bullshit here, as legislators squabbled over whether to require farmers to set up showers for sweaty pigs-and just how heavy the pig should be to earn his scrub. One party wanted the minium showering weight to be raised from 44 to 66 pounds, thus easing the number of animals to be bathed by farmers.

"The bill is designed as an animal welfare measure. Sweaty pigs love being showered in the sticky summer heat," National Pig Production Committee Director Orla Groen Pedersen said, adding that big pigs needed the showers most.

Sweaty pigs love being showered in the sticky summer heat.

That is to say, don't dress down and don denim just to please a younger crowd, and don't make the mosh pit a plank in your seriously deranged platform. Such techniques will backfire with us pigs.

Y'all straddle fences on "don't ask, don't tell," Confederate flags, tax cuts, "law-abiding citizens" and their Second Amendment rights, smaller class sizes, compassionate cocaine use. How your stance on abortion has moved far away from the Christian right even though you still ask yourself what Jesus would do before making key policy decisions. Contradictions, yeah. But then, isn't that what our "polls before principles" brand of 21st Century polics has wrought?

Come summertime, though, long after the last flake of New Hampshire snow has melted away, the pigs will be sweaty. Many of these pigs whom you've treated like shit up to present date will sweat more profusely than others. I'm talking about homeless pigs, gay pigs, and pigs who've lost their youngest swine to gun violence, to name a few.

If I'm homeless, and have a career as a psychic to look forward to, I crawl right back into my box-home with a bottle of T-Bird and catch Z's until someone makes mention of some real job skills to be had.

If I'm gay, how do I feel when Gary "Bigot" Bauer is taken seriously when he says that my "lifestyle" is a chosen poison, and then gets lampooned for harping on the cultural influence of Rage Against the Machine? Which Bauer-ism is a bigger joke, after all? (Hint: the former.)

And if my kid was six feet under via gunshot, how do I feel when Al Gore gets up in his all-important 501's and pushes for moderate firearm measures that won't infringe upon the rights of law-abiding citizens (obvious footnote that fails to get noted often enough: most gun owners are law-abiding citizens-until they shoot someone). If they won't go further, who will?

Orla had one thing wrong, it ain't the big pigs who need the showers most. Just give the swine some damn water, fellas, and stop throwing more shit in their sties.