Mr. Magua Goes to Washington

Politics is one of my favorite topics, just ahead of Hannah Montana and facial gangrene. So when I came across a certain quote by a certain senator, I felt compelled to add my voice to the thousands of other hack bloggers who believe that the world needs to know how they feel about everything.

I present to you Senator Arlen Specter, who is currently leading a bloodthirsty, merciless vengeance quest against the New England Patriotsm, the likes of which hasn’t been seen since Magua tried to kill every white man in sight in Last of the Mohicans.


Apparently the good senator, who seems to be bored with trivial issues like the cacophony of carnage in Iraq and the George “W” economy (the W stands for “whoa,” as in “Whoa, never thought I’d have to take a second job as a stripper to pay for gas,”) feels that the Patriots broke NFL rules by taping opponents during games and using that footage to make changes to their game plan at halftime.

I’ll be honest. I hate the New England Patriots. I hate them as I hate all Montagues, Hell, and thee. I hate them more than John McCain hates bamboo, more than Amy Winehouse hates an empty crackpipe, more than Jordan Sparks hates not eating donuts and quarter-pounders, and I even hate them more than Dick Cheney hates babies and puppy dogs.

They’re the National Footballs League’s version of Biff Henderson (Back to the Future reference, stay with me people). You root against them every week because they are smug, condescending, and drenched in an arrogance that makes Simon Cowell look humble. I root against them every week. Not just when my team, Heaven’s own Indianapolis Colts, plays them. And I don’t just want them to lose, I want them to get destroyed. There isn’t a number in mathematical theory that could be higher than the number of points I’d like to see them lose by.

And when the Pennsylvanian senator first started making noise about what has been termed “Spygate” (can we please stop naming every controversy by taking the subject and adding “gate?” IT’S NOT A SUFFIX. -LESS, -LY, -FUL, ARE SUFFIXES. NIXON IS DEAD. LET IT GO) I was actually a little giddy. This was my chance to discredit every win they’ve had over the last decade. I didn’t even mind that Arlen was doing all this because the Patriots had beaten his two state teams, the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Philadelphia Eagles, in the playoffs.

Hell, what did I care why they were being smeared? The great thing was that they were being smeared. Kind of like if Osama Bin Laden was killed by his brother for sleeping with his sister in law, even though poor Osama was innocent. Is it justice? Probably not. Is it good for humanity? Yes. Yes. Yes.

I'm telling you bro, that wasn't your woman!

Then old Arlen went and said this:

“If you can cheat in the NFL, you can cheat in college, you can cheat in high school, you can cheat on your grade-school math test. There's no limit as to what you can do.”

Ah, the logic that only a career politician can dream up. If the Patriots cheated (and make no mistake, they did) then little Johnny will cheat on his finger-painting assignment in first grade.

Much like Tipper Gore claimed rock music made children terrible scamps or Joe Lieberman wanted to blame violent video games for everything but the Iraq War he so staunchly loves, Arlen now wants to blame yet another preposterous source for children’s poor behavior.

Of course he doesn’t mention that one of his major contributors, Philadelphia-based Comcast, is currently in a battle with the NFL after Comcast made the NFL network a premium channel and cost the football league millions of viewers. Is it all possible that he’s putting the NFL to the coals on behalf of his campaign cash cow?

“They have been a campaign contributor,” says Specter, “along with 50,000 other people ... I've been at this line of work for a long time, and no one has ever questioned my integrity.”

Right. And Africans were brought to America so that they could be free from the terror of lions and rhinos, not enslaved for free labor.

As much as I loathe the Patriots, the idea that they’re cheating will make my kid steal the answer key to his American History final makes is laughable at best, and political pandering at worst. Particularly when the esteemed senator has several other mighty fine reasons for gunning after Satan’s Patriots, including but not limited to “Government-raise-your-kidsgate” or “Comcastgate” (dammit, now I’m doing it!).

So, I invite all my readers, all two of you, to call up Arlen Specter and ask him to investigate other things instead, like why the government allowed the oil industry to buy up all the alternative technologies developed over the last thirty years, or why Halliburton was given an unprecedented cost plus twenty percent contract for its services in Iraq.

Do it for kindergarteners everywhere.