Wait a Minute-- I Know These Guys...

Back in the early nineties, my mother came across a trove of old school pictures of my two brothers and I. A handful of pictures I thought to be long-gone suddenly popped back into my life to spur memories. One of these was my Kindergarten picture.

For you curious bastards, I'm in the middle row, third from the right. I'm looking over to my right at Rebecca, up to that point the love of my life, at the lower left corner of the picture. I blogged about this a few months ago.

But this isn't about Rebecca. This is about Timmy and Kenny.



Remember that book that was published in the eighties, "Everything I Ever Really Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten?" I loved that book, because it was true!

I learned about romance, friendship, loyalty, betrayal-- all of it-- in Kindergarten. I learned that I could be friends with someone who spoke not a word of English-- Sumo, the Korean kid to the left of me in the class picture-- and that Roger, to the right of the class picture (and who did speak English), was the most loyal best friend a guy could have.

And I learned that there is stupid evil, and evil evil. And to stay away from Timmy and Kenny.

Timmy and Kenny were inseparable. I remember them from the day I walked into Kindergarten. They stood out. They were, I realized later in life, stone white trash. If there'd been trailers in Lincoln Park, they'd have lived in them. If they could have drunk Schlitz, beat their wives, gotten tattoos and sat in a bar telling racist jokes, talking about burning a cross on someone's lawn, but lacking the energy and ambition to, they would have. But they had to content themselves to be the little sociopath thugs of Mrs. Stocking's 1966-67 Kindergarten.

Kenny, to the right, was as sharp as a bowling ball. Timmy was intelligent, but an evil little prick. You can see the meanness in his eyes, even in his Kindergarten picture.

Any teacher will tell you that "water seeks its own level" in a classroom-- the two ubernerds will find one another within two days; the two divas will find one another; the two little punk-rockers will find one another; and the two sociopaths will find one another. Timmy and Kenny found one another immediately.

Timmy was the brains of the outfit. He was the Himmler to Kenny's Hess-- an evil genius who got an evil moron to do his bidding.

I remember, it must have been like the third day of Kindergarten-- Timmy wanted a toy I was playing with. He got Kenny to come up and take it from me. I told Mrs. Stocking, and Kenny got in trouble.

Though it had been Kenny who actually took the toy, and had, consequently, gotten in trouble, I had seen the whole thing, the dynamic of it all, and realized I should avoid the two of them.

Through the whole year, Kenny got in trouble time and time again, doing Timmy's bidding. Often, that involved hurting someone and/or taking something from someone. And Kenny never mustered the candlepower to figure out what was happening.

The funny thing was that Timmy really wasn't really nearly as smart as he thought he was. I realized later that Mrs. Stocking, though she was only in her second year of teaching, had also figured out the dynamic of it all almost immediately. She had seen that the real problem was Timmy and kept an eagle eye on him (and, of course, Kenny) through the whole year. In the end, Timmy and Kenny got away with very little because she was on top of it.

Timmy and Kenny have been in the news lately.

Time and time again, W. has done Karl Rove's bidding. And time and time again, it's gotten him in trouble. He doesn't seem to have figured it out. He managed to get Karl to lay low for a while, but Rove still seems to be pulling the strings.

These people have been bullies. They've been manipulative. They've been sociopaths.

The dictionary defines a sociopath as such:

a person, as a psychopathic personality, whose behavior is antisocial and who lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience.

In my estimation, Kenny has been President, and Timmy has been his chief advisor.

Unfortunately, Mrs. Stocking retired a few years ago, and has not been available to handle the situation.

But all is not lost. Senator Patrick Leahy, who's shown his willingness to take an asswhipping here and there for the cause, is now the head of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He's issued subpoenas to Rove and five others. There's U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, who so clean and decent and competent and focused on his job, actually meting out justice, whatever the politics of the situation, he's been considered a threat by this pack of sociopaths. And there's decent, long-suffering people like you and me, who've felt powerless. Until now.

This is going to be fun, kids. The White House is going to try to avoid the subpoenas. This will be straight out of Nixon and Watergate. What will he invoke? Executive Privilege? National Security? The War on Terror? Maybe I should have a contest here, and give some award-- perhaps a copy of the movie "All the President's Men" to the one who guesses right. Or maybe Hunter S. Thompson's book Generation of Swine.

When I was a kid, there was always a bully around. And eventually, some quiet kid would turn out to be the one not to be trifled with. The bully would mess with him, and in the end, get the living shit kicked out of him by this quiet guy, as his little little flunkeys walked away and the rest of the school stood around and cheered on the quiet guy.

Who'll be that quiet guy this time?

You've sat there through the last seven years watching these bastards-- stealing elections, lying their asses off, taking from the poor to give to the rich, and generally running this country into the ground. And now, the bullies are going to get theirs.

So, my friends, do not sit and piss and moan. To quote that noted philospher, "Bluto" Blutarski:

This could be the greatest night of our lives, but you're gonna let it be the worst! "Ooh, we're afraid to go with you Bluto, we might get in trouble...Well, just kiss my ass from now on!"

Yes, it's been shitty for the last seven years, watching these guys get away with it all. But we are on the verge of seeing it all come down.

Tonight, my old friend Dan and I caught up with one another, making plans to meet at the Iggy and the Stooges show in a few weeks. We were talking about this whole sorry, and, to us, gleeful spectacle, and how we wish that two people were around to see it all: our late friend and roommate Mark, and the late, great Dr. Hunter S. Thompson.

We were talking about a conversation he and I had back in November of 2000, when W got elected. Dan was in despair. I told him that history has shown that people this sociopathic, people who believed that they had a right to abuse power, eventually fell prey to their own weaknesses-- that they surrounded themselves with people who told them what they want to hear, and that was their eventual downfall-- they played kill the messenger enough times that messages they needed to hear never got there. He recounted that conversation, and told me he realized that I had been right that day.

The same pack of assholes keep turning up time and time again-- Rumsfeld, Cheney-- some of these guys go back to the Nixon White House.

They keep repackaging crap and selling it as snake oil. A good portion of middle America keeps buying. But this time they seem to be spitting it out.

These bastards depend on people like us to keep rolling over and playing dead-- on us thinking that politics will do nothing. And if we keep that attitude, yes, politics will do nothing. We can stand outside the fray, not getting our hands dirty-- we're too busy wringing them-- and letting it all happen again.

Mrs. Stocking's not around to take care of Timmy and Kenny. It's up to us, and maybe the Leahys and Fitzgeralds of our great nation. The schoolyard bullies are down. Let's gather round and cheer.

Nobody would blame us if we we enjoyed it.