John Ervin: Bring Me the Head of Alberto Gonzales

The Bush Administration is once again knee-deep in blood, and not just the actual kind spilled by the latest victim of Dick Cheney’s ineptitude. After a week of hat raising from anti-abortion, anti-civil-liberties and anti-civil-rights townies following the successful seating of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, “The Cowboy President” and his Desperados are once again being shot with criticisms and revelations that leave them as gored as the average cast member of one of the Westerns of legendary director Sam Peckinpah. The first to get hit this past week was Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who feebly defended the Administration’s eavesdropping policy before a bipartisan Senate investigation committee that, even on the Republican side, was as unfriendly as the Confederate prisoners-of-war forced to fight alongside their Union captors in Peckinpah’s 1965 film, “Major Dundee.” Gonzales, who was initially looked upon as being as tough as the title character that NRA God Charlton Heston played in the above film, looked as wimpy as Don Knotts in “The Shakiest Gun in the West” (not a Peckinpah film) as he answered the harsh questioning from Senators Feingold, Biden, Specter and others with more hesitations, malapropisms and lapses in logic - including a reference to George Washington having authorized electronic wiretapping even before Ben Franklin flew his kite - than even the head rancher could muster during one of his rare meets with the press.

The second to get a bullet was vice ranch head, and NRA embarrassment, Dick Cheney’s own former second-in-command, Irving Lewis (Scooter to the world) Libby, who testified before a federal grand jury that Cowboy Dick and other Deputies of the Beltway had given Scoot a tin star for disclosing classified information to journalists so as to beef up their otherwise feeble case for having gone to war in Iraq. Though, technically, Cheney was the one hit with this bullet, considering that Libby is not only as good as dead in the eyes of the Administration but that his ex-boss has proven to be quite capable of nearly killing people with actual gunfire and then blaming them for his having pulled the trigger, Scooter is as vulnerable as the victims of Dustin Hoffman’s killing spree in Bloody Sam’s most controversial film, “Straw Dogs.”

And, finally, there was disgraced ex-FEMA director Michael (Brownie to the world) Brown. This lonesome cowboy, of course, received most of his bullets from the Republican side of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee as he whiningly defended his greater concern for proper wardrobe for TV appearances than for the bodies he knew full well were floating about flood-ravaged New Orleans. One of bit of whining Brownie was entitled to, though, was when he correctly portrayed himself as a scapegoat for the disengagement of the entire Administrative Cattle Company to the hurricane. In fact, the revelation by FEMA official Marty Bahamonde that he had alerted Brown of the levee break a full twenty-four hours before the time Crawford Cowboy George and Homeland Security Sheriff Michael Chertoff (“Shirt Off” to the world ... well, to me, at least) said they first knew of it pretty much makes the whole team look as inept as the title characters of “The Wild Bunch” did, when they realized the bloody bank heist they committed resulted in their stealing nothing more than sacks full of washers.

Though Gonzales survived his shootout with the Senate with his standing still good in El Rancho Bush, Brown and Libby, of course, have long been put out to pasture. As a result, not only have they been free to provide testimonies that scar Press-Hatin’ Bush, Quail-Lovin’ Dick and their rangers in the eyes of the American public, it is a safe bet that they will take advantage of the book deals that much surely be dangling before them and really let their superiors have it via scathing memoirs. Brown’s disparaging remark about the very sobriquet the Top Hat branded him with - “Unfortunately, he called me ‘Brownie’ at the wrong time. Thanks a lot, sir.” - is reason enough to assume he will follow suit with a tell-all. And, despite the recent embarrassment to the memoir trade by that idiot Oprah righteously ate alive on national television, these books have a good chance of being devoured by Bush haters and lovers alike eager for tasty gossip and kinky quirks about this most secretive of all Presidential Administrations.

The tomes and revelations don’t have to stop there, of course. Jack Abramoff, who is as addicted to deal making as James Frey is to drugs, money and attention, will find it hard to resist revealing all to an approaching publisher about his many lobbying connections in politics, gambling and, seediest of all, organized religion. Even if he is not allowed to profit from such a testimonial, he will surely get his jones satisfied from arranging a memoir deal. And should he get his fix on, whatever volume results should be chock full of those pictures of him standing father away from Little George than most members of the press that the Prez and his administration were so terrified of being made public. Likewise, a full textual recounting of the exploits of the Harvey Weinstein of lobbyists will cause more members of the Bush Administration to suffer wounds to their careers and reputations than Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid did at the end of the Peckinpah feature devoted to them. And Bob Dylan won’t be around to sing “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” or mumble unintelligible dialogue as they ride into the sunset.

As if scandals in the arenas of politics, finance and Ralph Reed weren’t enough, science is proving to be a thorn in the side to the cowboy’s spurs. According to recent revelations by public affairs directors at NASA science centers, they were repeatedly admonished by White House appointees at their various outposts to focus all their studies on Little George’s dream of a remake of Neil Armstrong’s leaden stroll across the moon and a trip to red planet Mars like the ones he saw as a boy in comics, or in the private movie theater that was probably installed at his crying behest in the mansion George, Sr. and Babs raised him in. This focus was not just a matter of following the whims of the little kid still roiling inside the guts of the big one, but an attempt to take as much attention away from changes to climate and the Ozone layer that might hurt the feelings of the little astronaut’s space cowboys in those businesses which have come under attack by environmental and other groups, and which have made their operatives unable to enjoy weekends like the Osterman one of Sam’s last - and surprisingly blood-free - movie.

Meanwhile, back at the Senate and House campaign ranches, election robber baron Karl Rove, of course, will ride into town in time to save those loyal to the Bush Administration from at least some of the blows to their electability, and has reportedly given warnings to any Republicans looking to seek another term in office that they had better make nice to the object of his thirty-year-long affection, or get outta town. Much to the baron’s dismay, some members of the party in this situation, like Representative Heather Wilson, are bravely making their anger known about the Chief’s peeking into their bedrooms, revealing identities of CIA agents and playing golf while flood waters ravaged New Orleans.

Most of the right wing pilgrims, however, will probably cower and do as Cavalry Karl says, even if he himself finally suffers the long awaited indictment for his own rustling. Still, the blood and gore that Bush, the Cable Hogue of Presidents, and his Republican whores with hearts of tin, will be enough to cause some key senators and representatives to lose elections this coming fall, and maybe - just maybe - even give one or both houses back to the Democrats. Short of that, it will make it all that much harder for which Black Hat runs against Calamity Hillary in 2008 to scare voters with phony connections between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, dubious pronouncements of foiled terrorist plots against landmarks in the United States, and, of course, threats to “core values” by legalized marriages for Brokeback Cowboys across the range - cowboys like Randolph Scott, the leading man of Peckinpah’s first film of note, “Ride the High Country” and a midnight rider who enjoyed a long and not-so-secret stagecoach trip with Cary Grant that practically made these two stalwart Republicans America’s first married gay couple.

The convoy of misfortunes that hit the Bush truck line this past week may veer off the political freeway for a while, but surely it will appear in the public rear view mirror again, and be longer than the line of striking rigs featured in Old Sam’s cinematic ode to C. W. McCall’s CB radio tune, “Convoy.” More casino and lobbying scandals are bound to crop up, in addition to continuing revelations by the cowhands cited above and others of unwarranted spying on innocent American citizens, torture in secret enclaves of innocent “enemy insurgents”, and disinterested reactions to the flooding of homes of innocent, and mostly African-American, residents of the Gulf Coast. As a result, heads will roll - even if they are not directly cut off by a President whose distaste for firing people runs so counter to his notoriously volatile personality - and those heads will have more flies covering them than the titular one of Sam Peckinpah’s best-titled film. So, it is remotely possible that even the current Attorney General, despite his continuing coziness with the boss, greater steadiness of mind than his Holy Roller predecessor, and Peckinpah-esque love of torture, blood and invasion of privacy, may continue to so embarrass himself and the White House in defending their various offences to civil liberties that he could find himself the object of an edict by the Bloody Sam of Presidents - or, more likely, the Shakiest Gun of Vice Presidents - that goes something like: “Bring me the head of Alberto Gonzales!”