HURRICANE GEORGE!

"Fascism is simply the collusion of busines and government."
--Benito Mussolini

I have many names...
-- Zorba the Greek

It's been reported that before his tearful plea for forgivness from the family and friends whose trust he admits betraying, congressman and former flying ace Randall "Duke" Cunningham rather unceremoniously wore a wire around congress and spent some time talking with some of those very friends he later sold out. But that's not what I started out to write about.

For this issue, I set out to write about how one of the greatest blows to American freedom, American justice, and American values is being struck almost silently, right under our noses at the U.S. Military installation at Guantanamo Base, Cuba, commonly known as Camp X-Ray.

I intended to write about how a handful of the five-hundred and fifty prisoners at Camp X-Ray, after three years of detention without charge or trial, have decided to risk starving themselves to death so they might have a taste of the rights you and I take for granted every day: to be accused of an actual crime in a court of law and allowed the right meet with lawyers, access the evidence and witnesses against you, and to defend yourself.

Then I got confused.

There came so many revelations in the news: revelations of secret Iraqi prisions, of massive abuse in regular Iraqi prisons, of secret American interrogation centers abroad, secret prisons in Eastern Europe, of illegal abductions and renditions conducted against European citizens, and the list just grew and grew.

Indeed, the news has been full of abductions that never took place, of torture that never happened and secret detention facilities that don't exist (at least, don't exist once they are shut down and the prisoners moved outside Europe), that it's easy to forget the five-hundred and fifty prisoners at Guantanamo Base, easy to forget that only nine have been charged with any kind of crime, easy to forget the X-number who were released and even easier to forget that not a single detainee who was released has been charged with a crime by their country of origin, though many have reportedly been interrogated and tortured.

And then came the reports and denials of secret C.I.A. prisons, the reports and denials of the secret Iraqi prisons, the reports and denials of the illegal kidnapping and "rendition" of European citizens,

Perhaps it's no surprise that this tsunami of secrecy and "torture" and denial fueled my confusion, I ended up writing about nicknames. Yes, nicknames.

I set out to write about how the plight of the prisoners, taken together with that of Jose Padilla, represents an assault against the very core of the American values of liberty and justice by the very people who swore to prtect and preserve those values...indeed, in the name of protecting those values.

"The Dirty Bomber" who wasn't, Jose Padilla has had his Fourth Amendment right to a speedy trial forfeitted solely on the word of the President of the United States, subject to no clear or speedy resolution, or even of a reasonably speedy charging of criminal wrongdoing in the matter.

Then it suddenly occured to me that everybody who's anybody in the news has a nickname.

I ended up writing about nicknames, and the practice of giving them as a means of demeaning or disempowering individuals. Nicknames like: "Scooter", and "Turd-Blossom" and "Hammer". Names like L. Paul "Jerry" Bremmer, "Kenny-Boy" Lay and "The Dirty Bomber" (Jose Padilla).

It's also occured to me that most serious or dignified folks like our candidates for the Supreme Court don't have nicknames. The chairman of the Fed doesn't have a nickname. Hillary Clinton and John McCain don't have nickname Tony Blair is just Tony Blair, but so many of the performers on our public stage seem to use what amount to stage names. Donald Rumsfeld is "Rummy" (how original), George Tenent is "Slam-Dunk," DeLay is "The Hammer," Condoleeza is "Condi," Even Dick Cheney has recently been tagged with "Dr. Torture." Of course, few people will soon forget the eminently forgettable Michael "Heckuva Job" "Brownie" Brown, who now has two nicknames.

Potential monikers for "Dubya" include:

George "Junior" Bush
George "Mission Accomplished" Bush
George "Heckuva Job" Bush
George "The Vacation-King" Bush
George "The War President" Bush
George "Cheerleader-in-Chief" Bush

Clearly, he's so many things, no one name seemed to say it all. Then it hit me. It hit me like a...like a...like a HURRICANE. That's it, I exclaimed!

HURRICANE George!

A hurricane can be loosely defined as:
A storm that draws power from areas of weakness and
low-pressure and wrecks total destruction on nearly
everything it comes into contact with.

"Hurricane" also conjures the pulpy, pugilistic image of the scrappy prize-fighter, which itself is an urban face of the cowboy, something like the underdog who scraps for the little guy, as Bush might like to imagine himself.

So remember, folks, kidnapping and torture and secret prisons and hunger strikes are a real drag to write about, and they don't necessarily make good theater.

It's much more fun to sit around and make up new nicknames to belittle and degrade people, or, in our case, try to amuse ourselves by nailing down the essence of our "Fearless Leader." Let's hear three big 9-11 cheers for the "Cheerleader in Chief":

HURRICANE George!
HURRICANE George!
HURRICANE George!