Death Watch

I've heard it said that celebrity deaths, like plane crashes, always come in threes. So, with Terri Sciavo dead, and John Paul II still dead, despite the round-the-clock vigilance of the media's PopeCorpseCam, who's the third celebrity set to shuffle off this mortal coil?

Could it be Tom DeLay?

I'm not suggesting the poster child for Tammany Hall rehab will actually die in the near future, but for a man like DeLay, political death is a kind of death.

If you haven't been following the story, after racking up three rebukes from the House Ethics committee before its fangs were pulled by DeLay and his cronies in the U. S. House of Representatives, the scandals have just been piling on the House Majority Leader like dogs on top of Bugs Bunny. For a while, I assumed that DeLay was so entwined in eldritch evil that he would even survive the scorn of an entire nation and the defection of numerous allies to miraculously appear on top of the dog pile, triumphant and smirking, ready to obliterate his persecutors with rabid legislation aimed at each one individually, under Congress's new policy of not allowing the fall of single sparrow to go unnoticed.

Now, I'm not so sure.

Dark Lord of Sith Dick Cheney last week distanced himself from the Bugkiller's remarks against the judiciary, and the drumbeat calling for DeLay's head just gets louder and louder, with a quick one-two punch from the NY Times and the Washington Post today.

Tom DeLay is a criminal. Available evidence suggests he's violated campaign laws in Texas, numerous ethics rules of the House, and chances are he's managed to defy a few Commandments into the bargain. Satan has a trick or two to learn from this sleazebag on how to consolidate his rule on Earth, for which DeLay has helped lay the foundations.

However, even fellow Republican politicians, steeped in evil and knowledgable of its ways, are backing away from the stench and corrosive effects of their suddenly very publicly vulnerable leader. When DeLay finally detonates, everyone wants to be out of the blast zone and well clear of the fallout, and they're all hoping the explosion happens soon, so that the echo will fade well before November 2006.

It's no accident that DeLay had become the public face of the Republican Party, incarnating as he does the party's avarice, contempt for the law, preening venality, and hypocritical mouthing of virtues he does not share.

I've seen some in the blogosphere fret that DeLay's untimely demise might limit his blast zone, leaving other rich targets unscathed. To them I say, Rejoice, brothers and sisters, in the unraveling of evil, in whatever form it takes.

To Tom DeLay, I say, Live. Live to once more crawl into the stinking underbellies of our houses, seeking to exterminate the outward manifestation of your blackened soul. Let DeLay be returned to his proper station.