Sue works up a lather

Welcome to a new edition of Ask Boomer With Attitude, brought to you from Charlotte, N.C., the only city where the phrase “the Trumps want to build a tower here” isn’t regarded as a threat. This edition features only one fake question; see if you can guess which one it is.

Dear BWA: I know you’re a liberal fool who doesn’t care whether or not America is destroyed, but please tell me you at least support Sue Myrick’s attempts to monitor terrorists on the Internet. — America First

Dear America First: Thanks for the kind words. One of the problems with U.S. Rep. Myrick is that she seems to run on fear, the way others run on caffeine. If she’s not accusing illegal immigrants of being Satan’s interns, she’s flogging terrorism for all it’s worth. Her latest jag is founding the “Congressional Anti-Terrorism/Jihad Caucus and Prayer Group” (OK, the prayer group part isn’t true). Myrick has worked herself into a lather about terrorists who may be using the Internet without U.S. government access to their sites. She wants to change U.S. laws to make it easier for American intelligence services to monitor foreign users hosting Web sites on U.S. servers, and would like for the CIA and FBI to hire more agents who are fluent in Arabic.

Hiring more Arabic-speaking agents is a long-overdue idea and I hope it’s done quickly. You have to wonder, though, if Sue will support hiring them if they’re gay, unlike the U.S. Army, which decided it would rather be unable to communicate with Iraqis than depend on Arabic-speaking soldiers who happened to be homosexual.

As for changing laws to open the Internet to more nosing around by the government, how much more snooping can there be? You can’t tell me that a government that routinely spies on its own people without warrants isn’t already plugged in to every foreign-owned U.S. Web site.

Myrick has always reacted to problems by proposing restrictions on someone’s rights. This dates all the way back to her days on City Council when she proposed setting up a local government body to “screen” upcoming area concerts in order to ban acts she deemed harmful to teenagers, or, as she called them, “lemmings.” Paranoia and repression are simply not acceptable public policy.

I do agree, however, with her recent statement that “We all need to educate ourselves on the threats we face so that we can protect ourselves against them.” Unfortunately, she and other right-wing autocrats are among the people we need to protect ourselves from.

Dear BWA: Where does Jimmy Carter get the nerve to say Bush is the “worst president in history”? I’d say Carter is probably the worst. — Old McDonald

Dear Old McDonald: OK, I guess that qualifies as a question, so here goes. Carter probably ranks somewhere in the lower third of American presidents, in terms of political successes and an ability to shape the times — more of a non-entity than a destructive force. He says his remarks were misinterpreted and that he was comparing Bush to Nixon. That’s too bad, because I’m convinced Bush is by far the worst president in U.S. history. What a record: Bush has left a trail of blunders and devastation in his wake; handed sensitive government positions to cheap hustlers with no experience relevant to their jobs; reversed progress on the environment; allowed oil industry buddies to write energy policy; stoked up the largest gap between rich and poor in over a hundred years; attempted to privatize Social Security, the most popular government-run program in history; left a devastated American city to the mercy of profiteers and incompetents; sat around doing nothing while the nation’s health care system neared a meltdown; utterly mishandled the nation’s response to the 9/11 attacks, after first ignoring intelligence warnings that a major terrorist strike was coming; invaded a country that had nothing to do with the attacks and then completely screwed up the occupation to the point that nearly 4,000 U.S. soldiers have died, terrorism has blossomed in the Middle East, and America’s reputation in the world is at an all-time low; and topped it all by ignoring the advice of the Baker Commission while escalating his ill-fated war. Bush’s record makes former contenders for Worst President like Harding, Buchanan and Grant look like George Washington.

Dear BWA: I don’t think it’s right that Paris Hilton has to go to jail. Do you? — I Love Paris

Dear I Love Paris: Paris Hilton should definitely go to jail, although not necessarily for driving without a license. Any person with her kind of money who regularly disses the poor, public school grads and blacks — and routinely exposes her bald cooch to paparazzi to boot — needs to be put to work busting rocks and fed a diet of beans and bread for a few months. Would it make her a better person? Probably not, but it sure would make the rest of us feel better.

Send “Ask BWA” questions, comments and love offerings to john.grooms@creativeloafing.com. Please let us know if you wish to use a pen name.

This article appears in May 30-30, 2007.