January, 2001, Volume 8 Nr. 5, Issue 89

ME, MYSELF AND I TO JOIN
THEMSELVES AT THE INAUGURATION

 by Jozef Hand-Boniakowski, Ph.D.

Recently, myself received an unsolicited email regarding the valuable lessons President Clinton has taught the children of the United States.  The email and its response is heretofore followed by myself's take on themselves post.

Unsolicited Email

Subject: Thank You Mr. President - I got this today, and, well, the truth hurts.

Dear Mr. President,

I recently saw a bumper sticker that said, "Thank me, I voted for Clinton-Gore". So I sat down and reflected on that and I am sending my "Thank you" for what you have done, specifically: .

1. Thank you for introducing us to Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones, Monica Lewinsky, Dolly Kyle Browning, Kathleen Willey and of course Juanita Broaddrick, who told NBC that you raped her. Are there any others that we should know about?

2. Thank you for teaching my 8 yr. old about oral sex. I had really planned to wait until he was about 10 or so to discuss it with him, but now he knows more about it than I did as a senior in college. The cigar thing was also neat for the kids.

3. Thank you for showing us that sexual harassment in the work place (especially the White House) and on the job is OK, and all you have to know is what the meaning of "IS" is. It really is great to know that certain sexual acts are not sex and one person may have sex while the other involved does NOT have sex. Monica said frequently that while you were on the phone, she would work at one end and you at the other. What productivity!

4. Thank you for reintroducing the concept of impeachment to a new generation and demonstrating that the ridiculous plot of the movie "Wag the Dog" could be plausible after all. The people of the Sudan, Afghanistan and Serbia are all running to rent the videos, now that you made them part of the story.

5. Thanks for making Jimmy Carter look competent, Gerald Ford look graceful, Richard Nixon look honest, Lyndon Johnson look truthful and John Kennedy look moral.

6. Thank you for the 72 House and Senate witnesses who have pleaded the 5th amendment and the 17 witnesses who have fled the country to avoid testifying about Democratic fund raising.

7. Thank you for the 19 charges, 8 convictions and 4 imprisonments from the whitewater "mess" and the 55 criminal charges and 32 criminal convictions (so far) in the other "Clinton" scandals.

8. Thanks for remembering the families of the many deceased people who once were your friends, who served you and died so young and suddenly: Vince Foster, Jerry Parks, Ron Brown, Admiral Boorda, Les Aspin, Barbara Alice Wiese, Mary Mahoney, Jim McDougal et al.

9. Thanks also for reducing our military by half, "gutting" much of our foreign policy and for providing no real missile defense system for the American people. Thank you for sharing with our Chinese friends all of our nuclear weapon designs, the super computer technology to build such weapons, the ballistic missile technology so they can have more accurate missiles and the encryption technology so they can keep it all secret too.

10. You are amazing visiting all those countries! Thank you for flying all over the world on "vacations" carefully disguised as necessary trips. It's wonderful, too, how you have surpassed every other president in the size of your entourage on these trips: 75 jumbo jets, 2000 guests to China alone. Your African entourage also was remarkable and it was nice of you to bring Betty Currie. She needed a break from testifying before the grand jury.

Please give my regards to Hillary, when/if you see her. Tell her I'm working on a "Thank You" letter for her too.

Looking forward to January 2001, Average Joe Citizen.

Reply

Dear Average Joe Consumer (who calls anyone citizen these days.   What are you selling?).

Greetings Folks:  Since this note was sent to me unsolicited with CC:s to you, I am responding accordingly adding a few other good folk for good measure. 

It's an old tradition, going back at least till Thomas Jefferson who had Sally Hemmings not only as an African American slave girl as a personal sex toy (no profitable Barbies then - he didn't own stock), but a 14-year old African American slave *minor*, whom, after having up to 6 children with her out of wedlock (DNA testing confirms a few at least), the Christian founding father that he was, signed the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution only to deny non-land owning citizens, slaves, native Americans and women the right to vote.  The concern for equality was settled shortly thereafter - 1920's for women and 1963 for African Americans - we pretty much did the Native Americans in, in the same manner of "discovery" that the Christian Christopher Columbus exterminating the Arawaks (and others) is famous for. 

If TV were around back then, with the rabid Religious Reich on Tom Jefferson's tail (and Sally's), the scandal would have made Bill's peccadilloes minor and tame by comparison.  Mind you, I'm not a Bill fan, just trying to give each politician his just desserts within the context of the hypocritical society that seems to always see the "me" or "we" holier than "thou" backed up by a book, the Bible, that says slavery was OK, and, that it was just fine to stone disobedient children (Deuteronomy 21:18-21) - beats Ritalin or cattle prods (Ciba-Geigy profits: 1995-2001), and smash Persian kids against the rocks (Psalm 137 verse 9) and which condoned after a man leaves his wife that he may take another, but, if the wife takes another he can kill her.  Ah yes, it comes from the corner stone(s) of our society such as the 10 Commandments.  There are three sets of commandments (Exodus 20, Exodus 24, Exodus 34 and Deuteronomy 5).  One of them, "not coveting the neighbors wife" and cattle - gotta keep the stock bred pure - said nothing about coveting the neighbor's husband, however.  Read the entire text not just the epitomes, that is, the sound bites. 

Then there was Ulysses S, Grant and the Whiskey Ring Scandal.  Grant had quite the affinity for hitting the bottle; Garfield had an affair 4 years into his marriage, his wife Lucretia charging him with "lawless passion"; Woodrow Wilson who after his wife died started shacking up with Edith Bolling Galt which would have been honky dory except that Edith was married to a prominent businessman while the public was talking about Woodrow and Edith attempting to poison Edith's husband; there was Grover Cleveland's paternity case with Maria C. Halpen; Warren G. Harding Mr. Tea Pot Dome oil-selling scandal man married to Florence "Flossie" DeWolfe having a 15-year affair with Carrie Phillips, Flossie's confidante; Franklin Roosevelt who after wife Eleanor hired Page Mercer, age 22, had an affair for 5 years with Page, was forced to end it when Eleanor found out - she became the independent woman of great stature thereafter; Ike Eisenhower and his chauffeur Kay Summersby; Jack Kennedy with Marylin Monroe and Jayne Mansfield, Angie Dickinson, stripper Blaze Starr, Judith Campbell Exner, lover of reputed Mafia boss Sam Giancana, and Mary Meyer who was murdered; Johnson who kept his belt off cause his pants came off so swiftly - his most ambitious tryst while married to Lady Bird was a 30-year affair with Alice Glass.  Nancy Reagan who let blue eyes Frankie (from Hoboken) in the back door of the White House as Ron slept the day away; Tricky Dick who resigned in disgrace and had 40 indictments placed against him passing the buck on to his co-conspirators who served time; Ronald Reagan with the Iran Contra affair - Ollie got off on a technicality after being found guilty; and then there's President-select Dubya Bush who said, "are we willing to teach our children that many of the things we did during the 1970s are wrong and dangerous in the 1990s" after being prevented from flying his National Guard jet for being a boozer (he was arrested for DWI) or cocaine user (youthful indiscretion), with more than one report pertaining to steamy liaisons with Kathryn Harris (of Florida voter or non-voter counting fame) at national governor's conventions......blah blah blah and scooby doobie do...... 

What our children (and more and more people) are learning and grasping is that bullshit plans like National Missile Defense are more important than schools - my son falls asleep in his social studies classes as he's hearing impaired and when the teacher shows movies there is no closed-captioning cause they can't afford the equipment nor to update with newer movies nor providing him with an FM trainer which was determined necessary 3 years ago.  90 per cent of the teachers plus the principal in our town quit a few years back in the elementary school for lack of funds to buy toilet paper and pencils.  When the first grade teacher left, her classroom looked like thieves had looted it - she took her personal possessions: books, book racks, etc. with her.  43 million Americans go without health care while B2 bombers at 2 billion a pop drop depleted uranium over whatever new convenient oil route gets masqueraded for "humanitarian intervention."  200 million people are in ever-increasing for-profit prisons more than any other country per-capita on the planet - fill 'em up and make Wall Street happy.  400 million dollars is spent in national presidential campaigns by the two, sorry, the *one* major parties disenfranchising anyone but the wealthy, such as Bill Gates, who has more financial assets than Argentina, while Americans get a legal and illegal drug appetite, biggest on the planet, from boredom, insecurity and a lack of meaning to life (in spite of religion's and advertising's promises and the possession of more and more stuff) amidst the greatest wealth and poverty disparity a nation has ever had the fortune and misfortune to possess in human history. 

Multinational corporations make billions on Viagara getting zippers down for the American male while we chastise the Chief for not keeping his up without it.  Ah yes.  Family values.  It's the Reich again, touting how no matter what, husband and wife should stay together for the benefit of the children, and then, when they do, as in Bill and Hillary, blast them on the Flush Bimbo show, that bastion of orthodoxy and common decency who like Newt Gingrich had very little success with women (at least till now - Newt's on his third wife after abandoning his first two, serving one with divorce papers in the hospital as she was recovering from breast cancer surgery and marrying his former high school teacher - a role model, no?)  Study, work hard and you'll succeed just as I did says Steven Forbes, whose main claim to fame is that he hasn't squandered his inheritance.  With all due respect, your forwarded average Joe letter is tripe.  It is correct in one aspect, however, the truth hurts.

Sincerely, Jozef

Ourselves Go To Washington

Myself cannot be the subject of a sentence.  Can you just see Dubya saying to his friends, allies, financial supporters, soft money enthusiasts awaiting and comrades in corporate America, "Myself will be giving a speech at the inauguration on January 20 on account of myself winning the election" or "Come see myself give tax cuts after I am president."   Even, "Myself will give yourselves a tax cut like myself promised during the campaign" doesn't make it, unless, of course, you're on the receiving high-end tax bracket of this soon to be giveaway to the wealthy.  Most people, however, will receive the equivalent of one Coca Cola per week from this welfare  handout to the rich. 

While myself is an object of a preposition, inauguration day is a consequence of the proposition that in the USA of the 21st century, the Republic masquerading as a democracy wears the mask of a court mandated coup d'etat of not-so- insignificant proportions, i.e., the Supreme Court themselves selected the 43rd president of the United States.  There's that pronoun again.

Myself, and its cousin, oneself, is a reflexive pronoun.  It is the object of a verb used as a direct or indirect complement of the verb as in when the complement and subject are the same such as in the sentence, "I am counting all the non-cast votes myself in Florida." Myself is used for emphasis, as in, "One can't energize oneself fast enough to execute people in Texas."  What must yourselves crime rate be?

It's quite easy to avoid the misuse of the pronoun myself.   When tempted to begin a sentence with myself, don't.  Instead use the singular first person pronoun, "I".  When tempted to use myself as the object of a sentence, don't.  Instead, us the pronoun, me.  Then again, there is much comfort in knowing that me, myself and I will be joining themselves including himselves and herselves alongside theirselves in Washington D.C. next weekend.  Some reasons for ourselves to go from International Action Center (IAC) modified.

1.  Bush will become president only due to massive racist disenfranchisement and voter fraud.
2.  He is governor Death and he's moving to Washington, i.e., capital punishment executioner par excellence.
3.  He is opposed to a woman's right to choose.
4.  People need funding for universal health care, free education, affordable housing, heat, light, childcare and livable wages jobs instead of funding the Pentagon and useless missile defense system that lines the pockets of the defense contractors.  One needs to replace these products of death to continue profit.  What better way than to use them.
5.  Sanctions against Iraq which have killed half-million babies and millions of Iraqi's must end.
6.  Plan Columbia is a Vietnam-in-the-making which only covers up the fact that supply and demand works in the drug business.  Why is the demand so high?  Drug interdiction is a cover up for a broader neo-liberal colonial plan.  Looks at any Latin American country and trace U.S. intervention from the founding fathers onward.
7.  The Bush administration is opposed to equal rights for gay, lesbian and transgendered Americans.
8.  Bush will continue the 40-year embargo of Cuba and the punishment of an entire people for our dislike of one man.  Face it.  Get over it.  We blew it.  Cuba has a lot to teach us and offers the 3rd world an alternative to devastating globalist restructionism which only hurts the poor.
9.  Bush is willing to accelerate environmental destruction for the sake of corporate profit.
10. The Palestinian people deserve an independent homeland. 
11. The bombing of Viques must stop.  Puerto Rico the last remaining colony should no longer be such.
12. The for-profit prison-industrial-complex makes millions dealing  in caging people for profit.  There are 2,000,000 people in US prisons!  The highest per capita of any nation on the planet.  How many of them are the rich who have committed corporate crimes like the executives who knew the Ford Pinto exploded on rear impact or the marketers of the body disfiguring, Dalkon Shield, Agent Orange, land-mine manufacturers and now the dispensers of depleted uranium shells to name but a small few?  Our atomic veterans finally get the aid they need as a consequence of their exposure - now that most of them are dead.

Hail to the thief?  Just one of many issues.

 © 2001 Jozef Hand-Boniakowski, Ph.D.