"You little scumbag!!" screams Sargent Hartman, the epitomic drill instructor from Full Metal Jacket. You can't escape the sheer elegance of his vulgarity in the first half of that movie. I can't tell you how many time I have yelled, "I will unscrew your head and shit down your neck!" at someone. But today I want to take a look at that most fervent of insults, scumbag.
Bill Clinton once called Vanity Fair's Todd Purdum "...a scumbag..", among other choice words, for suggesting the ex-president was trying to derail Hillary's presidential bid. A stinging rebuke coming from a guy who was getting a blow job in the Oval Office from an intern while discussing matters of national security on the phone. If that's not the pot calling the kettle black, then black doesn't exist. But lets break the word down. "Scum" brings to mind images of filthy sewers, stagnant ponds, and port-a-potty's. Webster defines it thusly: extraneous matter or impurities risen to or formed on the surface of a liquid often as a foul filmy covering. And "bag" is, well, it's just a bag. So put scum in a bag and you have what quantifies your average politician running for/holding an office in Illinois. And all of this from just today's newspaper.
Let's take State Rep Monique Davis. Chicago State University recently discovered a $25,000 statue missing, and it turned up in the office of Ms. Davis. No one knows how it got there, but the fact that funding CSU was one of her projects makes you wonder if she felt she was entitled to it. And she refuses to give it up, or even say how it came to be there. Something tells me had it turned up in a pawn shop instead it would be a criminal matter. Scumbag? Maybe. How about Chicago Plan Commission member Leon Finney? Member of a board that oversees housing, and he is a slumlord, with one tenant describing her apartment run by Finney as "...rats, roaches and mold; falling plaster; leaky roofs, broken doors stairs and porches, and a shortage of light and heat." And this guy is on a housing committee? Scumbag for sure. And let's not ignore gubernatorial candidate Dan Hynes, the poster boy for negative campaigning. His latest swipe is an ad that quotes the late Harold Washington from his grave in denouncing Pat Quinn. Anyone remember Hynes dad when he quit the democratic party to run as an independent against Washington because he couldn't stand the fact that Harold was getting the nomination from his party for mayor? Scumbag runs in that family.
But today's "Scumbag of the Week", (hey there's an idea for a weekly column!) goes to one time presidential hopeful John Edwards. Not only was he screwing around (literally) with a campaign staffer while on the campaign trail all while his wife was dealing with cancer, but revelations came in the form of a book by a former top aide that really fills the bag to the top. You see, a daughter was born of the fling. In succession, Edwards a) denied the child was his, b) conned said aide into claiming the child as his, c) asked said aide to arrange a fake paternity test, all while d) asking the aide to steal a diaper from the baby to do his own DNA test in private to get the actual results. Scumbag? With a capital S!!
This is the tip of the iceberg. It seems that once the average politician, and especially those in our now punch-line state of Illinois, get into power, they just can't avoid the "scumbag moment." It's that instance when they realize that they can have their hand in the kitty, be it money, power, sex, or even art, and get away with it. Almost. Wow, an article on scumbags, and I did it without even mentioning Rod Blagojevich once.
No comments:
Post a Comment