Preparing for the American Political Priesthood

Across the street they've nailed the curtains

They're getting ready for the feast

The Phantom of the Opera

A perfect image of a priest


-- Bob Dylan


The Weiner Self-Fornication Festival currently climaxing throughout the nation instructs us yet again in what our media (online and offline) expects of candidates and holders of office: pseudo-moral celibacy in thought, word, and deed stretching from the cradle to the grave.

Our sermon for today is "What doth it profit a man to gain the office of dogcatcher or above, if he must bid adieu to his sexuality in late childhood?"

In this realm 'profit' seems to be spread around unevenly. At times the profligate survive and thrive, but mostly it is the cream of the celibate or asexual that rises. Asexual celibacy has profited Barack Obama since he has no clearly discernible, or deeply closeted, sexuality whatsoever.

Wrath would seem to be Obama's sin, but wrath well hidden. With no photos of his frothing Fuehreresque rages or tapes of his highly pungent obscenity streams this otherwise colorful sin gets a pass by the media. Thus another of Obama's flaws are submerged beneath the vast beige pond scum of his coverage. If the medium once was the message, today the color is the camouflage.

In general, to be elected and remain in office today a man (or a woman) must prepare at an early age to either leave no trace of a human existence, or determine never to have one in the first place. Hence, the strange paucity of former "girlfriends" of the current president. No People Magazine profiles. No "I remember the prom with Barack" books. Nothing. It is as if the man was with his wife twice, begot two daughters, and then dropped the whole subject.

This is purity perfected. Where there is no sex there can be no sex scandels. Like the pagan religions of antiquity or the cloistered Catholic orders that persist into our era, today's politicians must be -- according to our media -- the last surviving virgins over 18 in the United States of America.

Of course, they must also be married and have children, although these can, on occasion, be rented.

It would seem that for high office a married, virgin priest (of any one of the six genders) is the only sort acceptable to the mainstream media or the internet sources right and left and their co-conspirators; but only if they can be shown to have something that resembles a family in storage that can be attached for photo ops.

In addition to retrofitted virginity, such a person must be 'politically qualified.'
To innocent Americans weaned on the standard social studies classes served up in high school, these qualifications may seem to begin and end in the state of actually being a citizen. This is, of course, wrong. The actual path to power is to the side of citizenship and is marked "Rulership."

'Political qualification' begins in high school when the aspiring virgin moves towards the priesthood by running for class office in place of puberty. It continues throughout the ensuing decades as getting elected takes the place of getting laid. With luck, the qualified virgin climbs the fund raising rungs and learns how to pass the hat -- and take the soft funds within or without the unmarked "giving envelopes."

Along the way, the virgin priest learns to respect the deacons and bishops and cardinals of the Church of Our Lady of Perpetual Patronage. In due course, he is rewarded with nifty clothes, drivers, security, free lunches, unctuous smiles, false friendship, and lessons in how to pawn any principle he may have for a mess of pottage.

Finally, sexless, graceless, bereft of conviction, with a hand full of gimme and a mouth full of much obliged, he has accrued enough markers to be boosted into office.

Much palaver ensues en route to his balsa throne. Much is made of his family, his upbringing, and little of his views and opinions since by then his views and opinions are what he is told to have. Indeed, they are what he has had since any vision or values or morals he once possessed were removed, along with his genitals, about the time he received the required advanced degrees in either accounting, social work, or law. (Pick one or all three.)

During the ritual of his ascension, he eats the ritual meals of rubber chicken and an endless spectrum of ethnic foods, for there are as many food groups as there are victim groups. At these ritual meals he pronounces the approved prayers over the congregation. He assumes ritual poses with the leaders of the congregation. He blesses infants with a kiss.

Various scribes examine his views via a ritual series of questions eliciting rote-learned responses surprising to no one. It is the call and response of the catechism. Should some small transgression (or even large ones) be discovered, mea culpas are extracted at lens point until all are assured the sexual organs have been sanded down to a nub.

Then he is placed on the sacrificial altar of the election and, if found, at last pure of any visceral or earthly taint he is elevated. Music is played. Balloons tumble. Hossanahs are raised. Oaths are administered. Some media acolytes even call him "a kind of god."

And then his reign begins. He finally ascends into the capitol to sit upon the right hand of the State, hence to judge the special and the not-so-special interests. A man so pure, so bereft of any soul, so pure and so semi-white, so in aspect like Mister Rogers, so empty of any sexuality, that it is all he can do not to begin screwing everyone in the state in the first 24 hours of his reign.

A priest to the downtrodden in the palace of the people. A man for all seasons. A man, in short, much like Barack Obama.

Posted by Vanderleun at June 7, 2011 9:59 AM