Condoleezza’s Snarling Poodle

What if Condoleezza, Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld personally had to torture the prisoners they ordered waterboarded? The following prophetic spoof was written before ABC’s stunning April 9 revelation that Grand Inquisitor Rice chaired the secret star chamber that micromanaged the torture regimen for each U.S. prisoner.

(http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19708.htm)

"According to a top official, [then Attorney General John] Ashcroft asked aloud after one meeting: "Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly."

Nor will political satirists!

This selection comes from The Einstein Sisters Bag the Flying Monkeys: A Political Satire About Christian Zionism in Bush’s America. Reverend John Hagee’s endorsement of John McCain should warn us that millions of Christian Zionist voters gave Bush and Cheney their margins of victory in 2000 and 2004.

In just three decades, American millionaire televangelists like John Hagee have turned Christianity upside down and morphed Jesus of Nazareth from the prince of peace into a mass murderer, from the advocate for the poor into an apologist for the wealthy.

The Einstein Sisters exposes this Scriptural perversion through the bizarre student-produced videogames in ex-wrestler Reverend Moriah Godley’s authoritarian Shepherd’s Vale charter school. Here Albert Einstein’s brilliant three great-great-granddaughters find themselves trapped in October 2000 with hundreds of too-perfect students in a mythical hardscrabble town not featured on Florida’s tourist maps.

Angela Jordan, the Einstein sisters’ African-American Baptist bus driver is substituting for the school librarian. To kill time in the empty room, Angela booted up the first in a bank of student computers.

Block letters jumped from the flickering monitor. Angela watched the screen explode with a colored comic strip title:

Angry Jesus Pops Saddam Hussein!

An animated head filled the screen. A grinning caricature of then Iraqi president Saddam Hussein gave a silent, sinister wink.

“Hate Israel!” popped up in a word bubble.

“Ping!” flashed on the screen.

A bullet slug tore soundlessly through the Iraqi’s olive-toned forehead, producing a gusher of blood.

Hussein’s head disappeared, and up popped the head of Yasser Arafat, the Palestin­ian leader in 2000.

Jesus Smokes Yasser Arafat!

The Palestinian flashed a loathsome smirk. His word bubble read, “Israel Sucks!”

“Splat!”

Shrapnel split Arafat’s skull into bone fragments, raw chunks of flesh and flying yel­low teeth. Blood oozed from a stubble-bearded neck stump before the screen drowned in blood.

A stunning white stallion, with legs as thick as birch trunks, appeared over a rain­bow. The rider was a blue-eyed, long-haired, bearded Jesus in a shining white robe. The galloping Jesus caricature snapped in a fresh M-16 clip, slipped his smoking assault rifle into a saddle holster and drew a gigantic sword from its scabbard.

Steel glittered in the sun as the furious horseman chopped off brown-skinned heads like a celestial threshing machine. The skulls with Arab headdresses scattered and bounced along the ground like basketballs released from an overhead gym net. A muscular Jesus caught a Qur’an in midair and, with swift strokes, shredded the book into neat rolls of toilet tissue.

After the rider and steed disappeared over the horizon, a troop of cleverly animated Shepherd’s Vale seniors marched into view. Football players, Hunk, Meat and Moose, in their full-dress ROTC uniforms, followed Dr. Godley and video-creator Juanito Gonzales, who held aloft golden crosses like conquering crusader priests. Fanning out among the corpses, the boys shot the weeping and pleading survivors. Candy, Honey, Taffy and nine other spunky cheer­leaders tossed Qur’ans on a school bonfire. They performed air splits in the cherry glow, shaking their bright crimson pompoms and chanting.

Go Jesus, Go!

In the blink of an eye, an American flag snapped in a stiff wind behind the next caption.

Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods Before Me!

Angela threw up her arms and tried to click off the power switch. No luck. Her fingers froze at the edges of the keyboard.

The next animation featured presidential candidate George W. Bush, with endearing jug ears and a cute chimpanzee face, working beside the popular Israeli politician Ariel Sharon, an obese white-haired gentleman in a baggy business suit. Behind prison bars, the pair had stripped a poor handcuffed Arab fellow down to his birthday suit and tied him face down to one end of a teeter-totter. Bush and the fat man took turns trying to drown him in a washtub of dirty water.

Angela thought, This school is crazy! Are the Einstein sisters safe here?

She watched bubbles pop from the surface of the nasty water. The poor man’s body writhed and strained as he desperately tried to break free to save his life. When his muscles relaxed like a dead man’s, the two tormentors lifted the board and laughed as they watched their terrified prisoner spew water and gasp for air.

Suddenly Shepherd’s Vale’s wet dream of a vengeful Jesus, newly outfitted in camouflage fatigues and an Army helmet, entered the prison cell and high-fived Bush and Ariel Sharon, his fellow torturer.

The relevant commandment filled the monitor.

Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness!

Desperately Angela punched the enter, escape and space keys to try to bypass the next commandment, but she was as much a prisoner of Juanito’s warped imagination as the poor fellow lashed to the water board.

Still in a camouflage uniform, Jesus walked into a second filthy prison cell where another hysterical naked Arab was cowering in the corner and protecting his exposed genitals with trembling hands. Angela watched him scream and plead for mercy in a language she could not understand.

Then she recognized Condoleezza Rice in a chic army uniform. It was a custom tailored snow white, with black and gold chevrons. Her fashion statement included a bright American flag lapel pin and a necklace with a gold cross. She was grinning so the gap in her upper teeth showed. In her care­fully manicured fingers she held the leash of a snarling white poodle with a Union Jack scarf.

When Jesus approached the shuddering Arab, Angela expected him to offer comfort and compassion. She hoped he would chastise Condoleezza Rice like the disciple in the Garden of Gethsemane who cut off the guard’s ear. Jesus asked something in the prisoner’s language. The fellow shook his head desperately and raised his hands to signal his ignorance about the topic of Jesus’ inquiry—leaving his privates exposed. In that instant, Jesus signaled Condoleezza Rice to release the vicious poodle.

The Birth Pangs of the New Middle East!

As the Arab rolled on the floor with blood gushing from his gaping groin, Clinton’s former Secretary of State Madelyn Albright’s image shared a split screen with Condo­leezza Rice. Mexican Juanito had cleverly programmed an interactive element for the viewer.

“Which Secretary of State has the biggest cojones?”

Angela had to push a choice button to clear the screen of the two hateful faces. She closed her eyes until she heard a familiar religious tune. Condoleezza had joined hands with Jesus to croon a sweet a cappella duet of a familiar gospel song.

“This little light of mine

I’m gonna let it shine—”

As the sweet melody trailed off, another commandment filled the frame.

Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery!

With a satisfied smile, Jesus departed for a third cell while Condoleezza Rice sum­moned her staff to clean a bloody poodle paw print that had soiled her immaculate white pants leg.

As General Jesus entered the new cell, vice presidential candidate Dick Cheney had forced another figure to stand precariously on an empty black oil barrel. Angela assumed it was a man from the hair on his ankles and the shape of his bare feet and hands. That’s all that showed.

The fellow’s head had been covered with a dark hood that reminded the Floridian African-American of the Ku Klux Klan. A black sheet covered the rest of his body, and he had been ordered to hold his arms at an awkward angle from his torso.

When Jesus approached, Cheney cracked his familiar crooked grin and held aloft two electrical wires with ends stripped to bare copper. Jesus winced comically at the sparks as a chuckling Cheney stuck the two wires under the sheet and between the man’s bare legs. The prisoner shrieked in pain and shook so violently that Jesus had to steady the oil barrel to keep it from tumbling over.

Thou Shalt Not Steal!

The next scene opened to a joyous Muslim wedding party. But Angela shielded her eyes before airman Donald Rumsfeld with angry Jesus as his co-pilot released the rockets overhead. The shells were clearly identified with skulls and bones and the words:

De­pleted Uranium.

She heard but did not see the shards of flesh flying, the bowl of dates falling into a pool of blood, or the bride and groom’s severed heads plopping side-by-side on top of the fancy wedding cake. Nor did Angela note which of the Ten Commandments fol­lowed the carnage.

She finally opened her eyes to a recording of Shepherd’s Vale’s orchestra and choir rendering the “Star Spangled Banner” and “Nearer My God to Thee.” A happy Jesus waved good­bye from the control room window of a C-130 spy plane circling the globe.

The word bubble read, “America is in good hands with the Lord!”

The monitor filled with Shepherd’s Vale’s silver banner depicting Glory, its snorting red heifer mascot. Icon folders dotted this desktop wallpaper with smiling photos of the school’s teachers. Inside each folder were the week’s assignments and corresponding web addresses.

From The Einstein Sisters Bag the Flying Monkeys: A Political Satire. Copyright Irving Wesley Hall. Available on line and in bookstores April 25. For the first two chapters and excerpts visit www.notinkansas.us