Send in the Clowns

Send in the Clowns

Don't you love farce?
My fault, I fear.
I thought that you'd want what I want...
Sorry, my dear!
And where are the clowns
Send in the clowns
Don't bother, they're here.

Many of you will recognize the title of my blog as coming from the hit song by Stephen Sondheim. He wrote the beautiful lyrical masterpiece in 1973 for the musical A Little Night Music. The song has by sung by the likes of Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, Judy Collins, and a host of other stars. Send in the clowns refers to an old circus tactic. When something went drastically wrong during a performance, the call would go out to, “send in the clowns.” The clowns were a diversionary means of distracting the audience’s attention, while the accident victim was scraped off the sawdust floor of the big top.  

The above verse is about 2/3’s of the way through the song. The song came to me this week as I watched and read about our leaders in Washington as they “saved us all”. It would be comical, were it not the fact that we have serious problems. With amusement, I watched as they all left the floor of the Senate and the House as if they had actually done something. Their chests were all pumped out, like roosters lording over the hen house.

I listened as they all talked about “compromising” to come up with this nonsensical kicking of the can down the road until January…as if, what they did actually meant something. It sort of reminds me of the old joke about the couple who are both getting married for the second time. The wife, sitting on the edge of the honeymoon bed, tells her husband to be gentle since she is still a virgin. Incredulous, the husband exclaims, “Didn’t you say you were married before???” His new wife explains, “Yes, but my first husband was a politician. He never actually did anything; he just always told me how good it was going to be.”

If you looked closely at the bill they put together, it put a band-aid on the problem…but they also earmarked billions of dollars in pork to pay off favors for agreeing to this bill about nothing.

At the time this is all going on with this sad excuse for leadership in Congress, we watched a President, who never misses an opportunity to rub it in, once again gloat about getting his way. Instead of looking at this as an opportunity to repair bridges, he spoke of his next quest to “fundamentally transform” our country. What the President has yet to understand is that we hold him just as accountable as Congress. His finger pointing at Capitol Hill act has grown tired and old. What did our parents used to say? When you point a finger at someone, there are four fingers pointing back at you. He single-handily has doubled our country’s debt while he has been in office, and has no intention of stopping his spending.

My fault, I fear.
I thought that you'd want what I want...

What we are sadly finding out about the scoundrels in Washington is that they do not want what we, the American people, want. If they did, they would have the same health care plan  they have imposed on us. If our pensions must be reduced, then doesn’t it stand to reason that theirs be trimmed too? They have asked us to sacrifice and yet they never do. It’s time we ask them to ride in the same airplane they built for us. Let’s see how comfortable they are upon takeoff when they are sitting in the seat next to us.

Collectively, we the American people need to suspend our political affiliation for a decade. For the next 10 years we need to stop being a Republican, or Democrat; and we need to clean house. Get rid of the good ole boys who corrupt the newbie’s we send to Washington. Vote everyone of them out…every last one of them!!!

And where are the clowns
Send in the clowns
Don't bother, they're here.

Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny. Thomas Jefferson