Current Comedy, 12/16/08: This Year’s Holiday Hits

Every year some lame pundit whips up some sorry ass Christmas song parodies as if that counted for clever commentary. It’s one of the oldest tropes in the business, and who am I not to respect tradition? ‘Tis the season to make folly, as they say.
While there has been quite a bit of speculation as to which holiday hits fist dap the top of the charts with the First Family-elect, there is building evidence that current White House occupants intend to bah-humbug the whole season. After all, Bush isn’t expecting much from Santa this year (there’s that whole “naughty or nice” thing), but at least a member of the Iraqi press made him a present of a nice pair of shoes.
Meanwhile the rest of the regrouping Republicans are gathering around the yule log of American Democracy as their Teutonic forebears once did, trying to reignite it with these festive lines:
Auto Industry, Au-to Industry
How fast we see you fading
You wanna pass for wasting all that gas
What made you keep on waiting?
Global war-ming’s
Way past proof
Gore inconven-i-enced us with that truth
Ignore rich whores
Who run the show
Fox News’ll still
Blame the workers though
Auto Industry, Auto Industry
We used to say buy USA
Till you pissed all that goodwill away
Auto Industry, Auto Industry
Ya make hybrid Hondas looks better everyday

As for Obama, however, the consensus seems to be that his choice for holiday hit is a tie between the holiday chestnut “It’s Beginning to Look A Lot like Clinton” or that old evergreen “Chicago Pols Are Coming to Town.”
While the Dem mainstream seems to prefer the old-time rhymes of the former--
It’s beginning to look a lot like Clinton
In every cabinet post
Got Richardson back again
And that Summers that won’t end
And Geithner to keep the economy burnt as toast

--as for that song and dance, I just have to sing right back:
On the twenty- seventh day of the Transition Obama sent to me
A woman I’d rejected in the name of Hil-lar-y

The case for or against “Chicago Pols Are Coming To Town” is a bit more complicated, like trying to explain anyway Obama’s not-very-lifelike denial of a connection with the Illinois governor’s attempt to market Obama’s vacant senate on EBay as if it were used tinsel. Appointing the head of Chicago public schools, Arne Duncan, Secretary of the Dept. of Education is like appointing Mrs. O’Leary’s cow chief fire safety inspector. Bush did the same thing with Rod Paige, from the soon-to-be discredited Houston school district and look what that brought us: 7 years of “No Child Left with Mind.” Oh come on, with fellow Chicago pol, Rohm Emmanuel already ransomed and captive to Israel, one wonders whose silver bells Obama will be answering to?
Chicago politicians have long held a reputation for jingling all the way to the bank. It is no coincidence that Chicago’s city hall was once the inspiration for the perennial season favorite “God Arrest You, City Councilmen.” As David Moberg writes in his article “State of Disgrace” for The New Republic “Since 1971, according to University of Chicago political scientist Dick Simpson, at least 1,000 state and local politicians or businessmen have been convicted of political corruption charges, including 30 Chicago aldermen, as have two of the last four governors (with Blagojevich poised to make it three out of five).”
Speaking of which, one thing’s for sure, despite his Windy City roots, Obama won’t be caught dead humming along to any tune involving a certain governor currently roasting over an open fire. Right now he is a lot more likely to be favoring “All I want for Xmas is to knock out Blagojevich’s two front teeth” over the more traditional “Gov. Blagojevich Song.”
Blagojevich arrives just in time as an almost too perfect spoiler, plopping into this auspicious news cycle to remind Americans of the long established Democratic reputation as cheats and scammers. It is a tradition that goes back to the party’s roots in Andrew Jackson. Blagojevich may be dreaming of a black and white prison jumpsuit colored Christmas, meanwhile Obama must grit his teeth at the strains of his very first and sure to be least favorite gift this season: a brand new scandal:
Gov. Blagojevich looked down
On a prized seat in the Senate
While Chicago pols bumbled all about
Like cops choreographed by Mack Sennett.
Asking for a cool one mil
and a cushy job for his honey
who knows how far this mess might spread
if Fitzgerald chases the money?

-mikel weisser writes from the left coast of Arizona.