By Gary Earl Ross
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wbfo/local-wbfo-700425.mp3
Buffalo, NY – Hello. It's time again to honor the political hypocrites in our midst with this year's George Orwell Awards, inspired by Animal Farm and 1984. Even as we speak the golden piglets wallow in the mud in the ceremonial pig pen, just waiting to sully the hands of the eminently deserving.
In Animal Farm, Boxer, the noble but dim-witted horse, says repeatedly, "I will work harder." The Boxer Award is given each year to a politician who labors intensively to build a windmill that will come crashing down. In a very crowded field of nominees that included Detroit Mayor Kilpatrick, former New Jersey Governor McGreevey and Senator Larry Craig, the Boxer is awarded to former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, whose idea of safe sex with prostitutes is to wear socks-apparently he's afraid of hookworm-but nothing else to prevent more centralized infections.
The Snowball's Chance Award, named for the idealistic pig run off Animal Farm, goes to presidential candidate Senator Mike Gravel, whose switch from the Democratic to the Libertarian Party has Ralph Nader quaking in his Corvair that someone else will have a chance to show how viable a third party candidacy can be. "Third parties are fine," Nader said. "But a fourth party candidate? What is he thinking?"
In an astounding three-way tie, the Newspeak Doublethink Award from 1984 goes to Barack Obama for claiming incorrectly the Kennedys sponsored the airlift that brought his father to the U.S., Hillary Clinton for fearlessly dodging the wrong bullets, and John McCain for announcing erroneously that Iran is training al-Qaida. The Orwell committee believes a president must remember his or her roots, whether shots were fired, and the enemy's name and address.
The Thoughtcrime Award goes Vice President Dick Cheney for his response to a reporter's question about Americans' low approval of the Iraq War. "So?" Mr. Cheney said. The complete quote, unreported in the major media, was, "So? We got what we wanted. Lucrative government contracts for our friends. Four dollar a gallon gas. Record profits for Exxon Mobil. You want things to be different? Go out and steal your own election and start your own war based on Long-range Intelligence Estimate Statistics, or L-I-E-S."
The Moses the Raven Sugarcandy Mountain Award for religious inspiration goes to a group that includes Jeremiah Wright, Muqtada alSadr, Osama bin Laden, Pat Robertson, the six wealthy televangelists under investigation by Senator Grassley, and all others who claim to know what the Almighty is thinking. If you're the ones to whom God chooses to speak in so many contradictory tongues, no atheist should ever go to hell.
The Big Brother Award, presented by a guest committee from the People's Republic of China, goes to that international terrorist the Dalai Lama for his very clever denials of efforts to liberate Tibet.
The Napoleon, named for the self-important pig dictator, is a tie, going to Mwai Kibaki of Kenya and Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe for a stunning sub-Saharan duet that mimics Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney entitled, "The Job is Mine, the Doggone Job is Mine."
And the Grand Orwellian goes again to Vladimir Putin, outgoing Russian President , who, having named his successor, will become prime minister. Counting myself among those relieved the U.S. Constitution makes NO provision for a prime minister, I'm Gary Earl Ross.
Gary Earl Ross is a professor at the UB Educational Opportunity Center. His short story "Dead Reckoning" appears in the new mystery anthology Medium of Murder.
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