A Burning Limousine, Packed With Cannibals, Launched Off a Cliff
Betsy DeVos, the plucked-egret-in-a-realtor-wig recently installed as Secretary of Education in the narrowest vote in the history of the post, delivered an address to the first friendly crowd she’s encountered since reporting for work — CPAC.
CPAC, which I’m guessing is short for Convening Paranoid Assholes-comma-Cringeworthy, or Crazy Peeved Assholes Convention, or Crotchety Persecuted Asshole Cuck-Baiters, or something, is the annual Dispensary of Reactionary Kool-Aid and Dogwhistle Reset attended by a wide spectrum of representatives from around the conservative world, from thwarted white virgin college sophomores to thwarted white bloggers who are hanging by a thread as a shift manager at one of the last remaining Radio Shacks. If you’re a chalky pissed-off Humpty Dumpty-looking fucker, chances are you’re at CPAC. If you went to a Christian college and your dad owns a boat, or if you’re a mannequin-haired gent who tucks in polo shirts and logs lots of time in golf carts, you are without doubt at CPAC.
CPAC is where you can blame the downtrodden without fear of being called a shitty person, where you can use phrases like “the gays,” or “these people” without anybody correcting you. You can swing by to take a swipe at the Kenyan Muslim Smash Packet (formerly called an “Obama piñata”, which organizers felt sounded “a little ethnic, if you know what I’m saying. Also, we’ve done away with the blindfold. Made it too hard”) or throw a few at the Dunk a Mexican tank (bonus points if he drowns!) or check out awesome videos like Cop Shot!™ a SWEET compilation of Fleeing Dirtbags Cut Down By Justice®. At CPAC, you can take seminars like Build the Wall — The Gated Community of Our Nation, and you can drop your kids at the Pavilion of Religious Freedom™, where they can pretend-refuse to Easy-Bake® a wedding cake for a couple of Disgusting Homos®. Or they can play Cold Dead Hands™, a Whack-a-Mole-style game that lets the kids snag as many handguns as they can carry from the the hands of Fallen Patriots® that pop up out of their graves.
Attendees need not worry about their safety, as every trace of gender ambiguity has been scrubbed from the hall. All restrooms at CPAC are patrolled constantly by the Genital Integrity Task Force™ (Like Gitmo in Your Slacks!®), who will conduct Pants-Down Pat-Downs® of all attendees — whose junk must match up (bring your birth certificate!) with a gender icon on the bathroom door — and yes, some light moaning is to be expected on the part of GITF agents, along with some lingering contact that sort of exceeds “pat down,” if we’re being honest, and SOME photography.
But so children. Being, as has been posited, our future. How best, then, to teach them well and let them, at some future date, lead the way? Edu-fucking-cation, that’s how. Edu-motherfucking-cation. And who better to pilot the ship of the nation’s book-learnin’ than a shaved flightless stork in a Bruce Vilanch wig? Nobody. Ain’t nobody better. Because that Unprepared Dimwit Wearing Perpetually Startled Expression In Response to Even Softball Gimme Questions she has pioneered is a face every American student has worn a some point, so they really, really identify with this bespectacled and featherless Big Bird.
As a service to folks not able to attend CPAC— due to side-hustle work obligations made necessary by persistently low wages, or lack of affordable/qualified childcare, or because of some medical issue slowly and avoidably killing you, say, or being — through no fault of your own — nonwhite, and therefore could not be there to hear Ms. DeVos stirring address, here are some highlights. Please note that attendees at the conference are given, along with a brand-spanking new AR-15 and a Reagan body pillow, a Super Cool Decoder Ring That Is Super Cool, And Is In No Way Some Attempt to Undo Having Been Spurned From All Directions In High School™. The Super Cool Decoder Ring That Is Super Cool contains a chip that simultaneously translates Dog Whistle Coded Speech into standard English.
When Ms. DeVos speaks of the “miserable failure” of the Obama administration’s educational policy, this is translated as “I am scapegoating the black guy for the preceding decades of neglect.” When she refers to a “top-down approach” vs. “local control,” this means “inept and illegitimate tax-and-spend stormtroopers wresting authority from the wise and folksy burghers who know their god-fearing children best.” And when she talks of offering “parents, students, and teachers flexibility,” she’s saying “it is right and fitting that the we need not be compelled to send our children into schools with filthy mudbloods and sickening poors.”
She closed her remarks with a long peal of laughter that, to an outsider, might sound maniacal. But the folks on the floor of this convention center could tell you: her laughter was that of the victor standing over the vanquished. And as it echoed in the rafters of CPAC, the faithful joined in. Till it became a mirthless roar.
You can find longer essays, satire, fiction, and info on the workshops I teach in Chicago on my site: ianbelknap.com — also, check out the WRITE CLUB podcast
