As a general rule, Gentiles who profess a religious faith tend to claim that they are Christians of one sort or another. While Christianity requests that it adherents subscribe to various rules, a good many rules are ignored or are deliberately violated. A case in point is the Catholic teaching that use of birth control is a major sin. If that is so, why do so many Catholic couples call it quits after having two or three children? Are these couples leading celibate lives for the bulk of their marriages? Probably not.
There is also a Christian rule found in the third commandment of the Ten Commandments barring the use of God’s name in vain. As in the case of birth control, this dictum is often ignored or violated. This immutable fact underlies the use of the expression, “Oh, Good Jesus.” This is simply an expression. It is not a cry for Jesus to scoop them up and comfort them. This expression occurs when a statement is made that violates all the accepted principles of credulity. For example, when someone tells you that poor people who do not have enough to eat are ecstatic with their circumstances, the common reaction is generally, “Oh Good Jesus.” The same expression applies when the grand dragon of the Republican Party tells us that the war in Iraq is being fought to make American homes and citizens more secure. Precisely the opposite is the case.
This essay is largely about the abuses of the Bushies in the New Orleans disaster which makes it eminently appropriate for Jews, Buddists, Pagans, Seventh Day Adventists, Hindus and Zoroastrians to join in the chorus of “Oh, good Jesus.”
The actions of the Bush people about the calamity that was visited upon New Orleans are instructive. Barbara Bush must have enjoyed a terrible fit of anger when she conceived her oldest son, George W. The virgin birth that followed was sanctified 55 years later by the law firm of Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas when they anointed him the President of these United States. When Barbara Bush visited the evacuees from New Orleans in their current home in Houston, she said the following:
“This is working out very well for them. Almost everyone I’ve talked to says they’re going to move to Houston. What I’m hearing is they all want to stay in Texas. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this – this (she cackles slightly) is working out very well for them.”
Marie Antoinette is alive and well in Barbara Bush.
She was speaking about people who had lost everything back home in New Orleans. Barbara says they were underprivileged anyway, so obviously, things are working out well. They are broke, with no job prospects, often separated from their families and 350 miles away. So for Barbara Bush, who more or less said “Let them eat cake,” it must be said:
Oh good Jesus! Barbara, are you nuts?
Her prosperous son, George W. announced in a photo op cabinet meeting that HE, PERSONALLY, was going to find out “what went right and what went wrong.” This, of course, is nothing more than a whitewash. The New York Times says, “We can’t imagine a worse idea.” To that eminent investigative sleuth, we say:
George, good Jesus. Shades of John Ashcroft in the Valerie Plame outing. The MAN himself is going to investigate his own Administration and his own mistakes? Give me a break!
In April or May, when George W. paid a condolence call on Cindy Sheehan and others who had lost their sons in Iraq, he stepped in the room and said, according to Ms. Sheehan, “And who are we honoring today?”
The President of the United States with a support staff numbering in the thousands, cared so little that he ignored, out of laziness, the work done for him prior to his meeting with the bereaved parents. Simply put, he cared not at all. “So who are we honoring here today?”
George, Oh good Jesus is insufficient in this case.
While we are on the deplorable subject of Bush, he is quoted everywhere as saying, “Who knew that waves would top the levees?” The reason those waves topped the levees is that the Bush Administration stopped the work of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineer and used the money for tax cuts and for Iraq. Any more questions?
This brings to mind Bush’s girlfriend, Condoleezza who said that prior to September 11, 2001, “NO ONE ever thought of planes flying into buildings.” Madame Secretary was absent from school on the day when Kamikazi crashes in WWII were discussed. That happened in 1943, 1944 and 1945. The World Trade Center happened in 2001. Madame Rice was uninformed for 55 years.
To Bush and his paramour, we say, Oh good Jesus in spades!
More on George W. Nancy Pelosi, the leader of the Democrats in the House of Representatives met with Bush in the presence of others. She asked him, in view of everything that went wrong in New Orleans by FEMA, why didn’t Bush fire Michael Brown, head of FEMA. She said that Bush replied, “Why would I do that?” According to Minority Leader Pelosi, Bush said he was unaware of things going wrong in New Orleans. Figure that one out. It must be supposed that the debacle in New Orleans was only a Democratic plot.
On Thursday, the 8th, the Bush Administration starting with Scott McClelland, tried to peddle the line that there had been no colloquy between Pelosi and Bush. Plainly and flatly, the White House was calling Pelosi a liar even though there were several other witnesses.
For this we say, “Oh, sweet smelling good Jesus.” Does anyone see the hand of Karl Rove in this mess?
Dennis Hastert, the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, said, “It makes no sense to spend the money to rebuild New Orleans.” Perhaps in Hastert’s view, Bourbon and Canal Streets and all the surrounding New Orleans territory would become a parking lot. This came after he promoted the pork heavy highway bill that donated $200 million to Hastert’s district in Illinois, for his “Prairie Parkway.” That same bill appropriated something on the order of $1 billion to build a bridge in Alaska to connect an outlying island to the mainland. The bridge exceeds the cost of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco and connects the 50 residents of the island with the rest of Alaska so that cars do not have to take the ferry. But to rebuild New Orleans? No way. That is good money chasing bad dreams. For you, Dennis Hastert, we say:
Oh good Jesus! Hastert has no shame at all.
When the inept Michael Chertoff who supposedly runs the Department of Homeland Security and his completely incompetent helper, Michael Brown of FEMA said, after two of three days of national television pictures of the squalor in the New Orleans Superdome, “We just found out today about people in the Superdome.” They must watch no television news programs. To them, we say:
Michael and Michael, Oh good Jesus to both of you lying fools.
The Associated Press had a dispatch picked up all over the world. It said that Brown of FEMA had waited – in spite of warnings – until after Katrina had struck the coast. Hours after the disaster, Brown asked Chertoff to dispatch FEMA employees to the region and said that they should arrive “In the next two days.” He wrote that “they should convey a positive image” about the government response. Two days to get there with the thoughts that they were no more than shills for the government’s image. To you, Chertoff and to you Brown –
Oh double good Jesus.
At the photo op cabinet meeting, our Commander in Chief is quoted in the New York Times as “sneering” when he said, “One of the things that some people want us to do here is to play a blame game.” This is the fellow who blamed the lowly enlisted personnel at Abu Ghraib for the nightmare there – and no court-martials or anything else for officers or for Rumsfeld. Only Brigadier General Janet Karpinski, a woman, was censured. This is the fellow, along with Karl Rove, who is contriving blame for Mrs. Blanco, the female Governor of Louisiana – who is a Democrat – to accept responsibility for the Federal government’s failure. For the criminal actions of George Bush, we can only say –
Oh good Jesus! This Administration makes no mistakes.
Even in the early days of the Katrina disaster, there are dozens of other examples where the Bush people failed to take action. George himself took two days to cut off his five week vacation. Then he donned his Air Force #1 jacket to fly over the misery. From 20,000 feet, there is not much that anyone can do.
Tom Friedman, who writes op-ed pieces for the New York Times berated the Administration in scathing terms on September 7, 2005. His two closing thought was:
“If Mr. Bush goes back to his politics as usual, he’ll be thwarted at every turn…Katrina will have destroyed a city and a president.”
If Katrina delivers us from the inept George Bush by destroying his presidency, even this old non-believer will say, “Thank you, Jesus” in place of “Oh good Jesus.”
Final thoughts at this time some ten days after Katrina hit. A poll among Republicans disclosed that 74% of the Republicans polled approve of Bush’s handling of the emergency. This must mean that 74% of the Republican base has no understanding of the poverty that was the lot of New Orleans residents. It must mean that compassion for black people
is something we talk about occasionally – but we do nothing about it. It must mean that the New Orleans disaster makes interesting commentary
during our Republican polo games played at our country club. In a nutshell, it means that Barbara Bush’s attitude of “Let them eat cake” prevails from the boy-king down to the precinct leader in Louisiana. To all of them, every American should say:
Oh, good Jesus! And the Republicans claim to love God and Jesus and the Holy Ghost!
E. E. CARR
September 8, 2005
~~~
Waiting until after a massive hurricane makes landfall to dispatch aid is inexcusable. Sure, if the hurricane is a week away, don’t dispatch FEMA. But if it’s a day away, or twelve hours away, you can be faily certain that it will land, and fully certain that people will need help. The idea that 74% of Republicans thought that that as “good enough” is horrifying.