"There Are More Horses' Asses Than There Are Horses"
Without question, Dorothy Parker and Will Rogers were two of the most notable, quotable wits of the past century or so. Parker, a poet and world-class epigrammatist, screenwriter and saucy satirist, the teeny-tiny “mouth that roared” was best known for such pity maxims as “Men don’t make passes at girls who wear glasses,” The best way to avoid a hangover is to stay drunk,” and a marvelous epigram about the equally quotable Oscar Wilde which appeared in a 1927 issue of the original Life:
If, with the literate, I am
Impelled to try an epigram,
I never seek to take the credit;
We all assume that Oscar said it.
Then there was Will Rogers: vaudevillian with a lariat, beloved motion picture actor, political commentator and honorary mayor of Beverly Hills, He was perhaps best known for the statement: “I belong to no organized party; I am a Democrat.” One of Mayor Rogers’ very best political quotes (although wrongly attributed to Watergate figure G. Gordon Liddy) is as satirically insightful today as when he first uttered it nearly a century ago: “There are more horses’ asses than there are horses.” Rogers’ bon mot is, perhaps, best understood by Parker, who once noted: “There’s a hell of a distance between wise-cracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wise-cracking is simply calisthenics with words.”
And indeed, when considering all the utter cruelty and cerebral rigor mortis occurring in partisan politics these days, Rogers’ quip about horse’s asses is absolutely spot on. Need some examples? Just the other day, while a clear majority of America was proudly celebrating Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation to become the first Black woman to sit on the United States Supreme Court, there was a concurrent walkout of every Republican senator (save one, Utah’s Mitt Romney) the moment Vice President Harris announced the final vote. Despite possessing virtually every quality and experience one might wish for a Justice - including humility and brilliance - 47 Republicans voted against her, claiming either that she was soft on crime, supported pedophilia or possessed an “activist” judicial philosophy. Did they really believe it? Of course not; they simply did not want to give the Republican base a reason to challenge them in the next election.
Then there’s the case of another Black judge, the late Joseph W. Hackett (1932-2021) who was the first Black man to serve on the Florida Supreme Court and the first Black judge on a federal appeals court in the Deep South. Upon his passing, it seemed both natural and fair for Congress to pass a bill naming a federal courthouse after him. When the time came to organize such a proposal, virtually every member of the Florida congressional delegation - Republican Senators Rick Scott and Marco Rubio, along with all 16 Republican members of the House and all 11 Democrats, signed on as co-sponsors. It appeared that Judge Hackett was going to be enshrined. History was on the side of a man who attended segregated public schools and graduated from two historically black universities, and then rose to the judicial heights. For generations, the naming of federal courthouses after distinguished jurists has been the one area where congressional bipartisanship is both expected and de rigueur. But such was not to be the case with Judge Hackett. As journalist Annie Karni wrote in a February 22, 2022 (2/22/22) piece in the New York Times: “ . . . in a last-minute flurry, Republicans abruptly pulled their backing with no explanation and ultimately killed the measure, leaving its fate unclear, many of its champions livid and some of its newfound opponents professing ignorance about what had happened.
Rep. Andrew Clyde (R.-GA)
What had happened? The late Judge Joseph W. Hackett’s nomination had appeared in Georgia Republican Andrew Clyde’s crosshairs . . . that’s what happened. Clyde, shown in the photo on the right, is a dead-ringer for the australopithecus robustus, a late Pliocene-Early Pleistocene (4 to 2 million years ago) epoch humanoid. How and why did Rep. Clyde singlehandedly turn a routine vote to name a federal building after a trailblazing judge into a Republican purity test?
First the how: Rep. Clyde circulated a 1999 Associated Press article about one of Hackett’s decisions relating to prayer in schools. Never mind that Hackett was following Supreme Court precedent when he ruled against student-approved prayers at graduation ceremonies. This single decision made him toxic among House Republicans, with 89% eventually voting against naming the courthouse after him. Since the bill’s passage was seen as certain, it had come for a vote under a fast-tracked process that required a two-thirds majority, which meant that with Republicans suddenly opposed, it failed. When Republican members of the Florida Congressional delegation were asked why they wound up voting against a nominee they had originally supported, most answered “I don’t know.” Well, at least they were being honest . . .
Next the why: Rep. Andrew Clyde, like fellow Georgian Marjorie Taylor Greene, is a first-term member of the House. In his short Congressional career, he has become known for such things as voting against a resolution to give the Congressional Gold Medal to the police officers who responded to the January 6th insurrection; opposing the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act that made lynching a federal hate crime; and voting against recognizing Juneteenth as a federal holiday. He’s the guy who called January 6 “just a normal tourist visit,” and has been repeatedly fined for not wearing a mask on the House floor. In other words, despite resembling a prehistoric ape, he’s one of congress’s leading horse’s asses. And let us not forget California’s Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leader in the House, who said not a word about Clyde’s - or his party’s lunacy. And this is the man who desperately wants to become the next Speaker of the House! We can always pray that the stable suffers a bout of equine encephalitis.
This is not meant to imply that horse’s asses are housed in just one political stable. Goodness knows, one can find equine tuchases within the ranks of Democrats and progressives as well as Libertarians, Socialists and QAnon quacks. But still and all, the largest and most egregious number reside in the Republican paddock.
Here in Florida, we are subject to the constant whinnying of Governor Ron DeSantis who, while ignoring such major statewide issues as skyrocketing insurance premiums, unaffordable rental costs and a chief medical officer who does not believe in the conclusions of science, instead has created his own militia whose sole purpose is to ride herd on electoral fraud (?), made abortion all but illegal for women and definitely felonious for physicians, and puts the rights of parents to keep their children from having to read any book which might “make them feel bad” well ahead of the purpose of education - teaching children how to think. Just the other day, the head of the State Department of Education announced that the state was rejecting more than 50 math textbooks from next school year’s curriculum, citing references to critical race theory among reasons for the rejections. When questioned, Gov. DeSantis said there were different reasons for the books being rejected and officials aimed to “focus the education on the actual strong academic performance of the students.” “We don’t want things like math to have, you know, some of these other concepts introduced. It’s not been proven to be effective, and quite frankly, it takes our eye off the ball.” If anyone can explain what the hell he meant by that, please text me ASAP.
So what’s the cure for this extreme number of horse’s asses? As I believe I suggested a couple of weeks ago, stockpiling tens of thousands of feet of film showing them at their worst . . . and then airing the evidence of their idiocy on ad after ad after ad. And make sure that the media asks them truth-seeking questions . . . make them justify why they are doing everything in their power to excise ethics, fairness and the truth from democracy.
When all is said and done, horses belong in stables, paddocks and racetracks; not in the hallowed halls of Congress, state legislatures, the various governors’ mansions and above all, the White House.
Copyright©2022, Kurt F. Stone