Clowns

The circus would come to town every year when I was a young boy.  One day every Spring or Summer I'd get out of bed, bound out the door and start running three directions at once.  Then I'd suddenly stop in front of a telephone pole.  The poster fairy had come sometime during the night and tacked up the Ringling Bros. sign.  The circus was coming in two weeks!   We did not have a TV in those days, and our Internet connection was really slow - it took another half century for the first page to load - so the circus was a big deal.

Three rings of excitement - that's what the circus brought to town - and each ring was filled with different acts.  Elephants on the right, Clowns in the center ring, and Donkeys on the left.   The best entertainment money could buy back then, and boy could they put on a show.  My brother and I would marvel at all the tricks they could do.  They'd pull money out of thin air or out from behind someones ear.  Some were ventriloquists, capable of speaking out of both sides of their mouths. 

There were acrobats who could bounce from one side to another, still others could balance on a wire.  You could tell the old timers from the newbies.  The old guys were more confident of their abilities and surer of themselves. These older, bolder guys were the ones who occasionally would trip up and fall; waiting for the disaster kept you riveted to the action. 

I'm all grown up now, and things have changed.  A lot.  Today I woke up and instead of bounding from my bed, I gingerly placed one foot on the floor and tested to make sure it would still bear my current excessive weight.  Instead of running in all directions, I hobbled to the TV remote and tuned to the news channel. 

The poster fairy had come during the night!  Congressman Weiner's circus was coming to my TV in only an hour.

Some things have not changed.  Elephants and Donkeys entertain us these days like they did in my youth.  But, these days they have become the clowns who used to be in a ring of their own.  They still bounce from one side of an issue to another, pull money out of thin air, and take both sides of an argument, depending on the audience they face.

Humans used to control the circus beasts, but now they run amok, trampling and kicking our lives and the Constitution of our country.  The best of the clowns who now provide our entertainment are brainless innocents, filled with lofty airheaded purpose; the worst are amoral, cunning thieves, interested only in fattening their wallets and being re-elected at our expense.  Ol' Weiner is just the latest in a long line of overconfident wire-walkers who has lost his balance. 

Even now he supposes the laws of gravity do not apply to him.  He refuses to resign, still sure the voters want a lying sack of crap to be the "Honorable Representative from New York".  It's the height of arrogance - someone should tell him he's falling. 

He's too stupid to notice.