Unless Jeb Bush runs for Senate in Florida, wins, and mounts a stunning Bush Family-styled comeback for the White House in 2012, it's fairly likely that the Billionaires For Bush will be no more. We counter-protested a 10,000-person strong peace movement rally and march on the RNC last year under the name "Lobbyists For McCain," with slogans like "Loyal to Big Oil," "Proud Bush-McCain Republican," and, of course, "Four More Years."
Well, it worked failed. The unwashed masses voted for Obama, even though our revered corporations and special interests didn't endorse him. And so we begin a new era-- one without Hummers, without tax cuts directed toward the top 1%-- even without gigantic corporate fountains urinating pure Stolichnaya vodka.
With this in mind, the New York Times interviewed the Lobbyists For McCain, i.e. Billionaires For Bush, in Tuesday's paper...
They were getting along just fine, these Billionaires were, when a terrible thing happened.
George W. Bush left office.
It’s
hard to be a Billionaire for Bush when there is no Bush. The group
might have recast itself as Billionaires for Obama. But that would have
required “irony we can believe in,” said Andrew Boyd, who sometimes
goes by his Billionaire name, Phil T. Rich.
“Here’s the
conundrum,” Mr. Boyd said. “Can you point out that the emperor has no
clothes when you like the emperor — and his clothes?”
Not really, although the Daily Show has had plenty of ammunition lately without specifically attacking President Changey Pants.
“I think we were serious about having our brand lose its brand identity,” said Elissa Jiji
or, if you prefer, Meg A. Bucks. Mr. Bartlett observed that “it’s not
the time for ostentatious wealth.” Even though there are still plenty
of potential targets — Bernard L. Madoff and bonus-hungry Wall Street executives, for example — there seems little point going after them when others are, too.
“They’re no longer held in such esteem that they need to be knocked down,” Mr. Boyd said.
For now, the Billionaires have chosen to put away their gowns, toss aside their top hats and leave their badminton rackets in the closet. Soon after the Obama inauguration,
a few dozen of them met at a Greenwich Village bar for what Ms. Jiji
described as “a last huzzah.” She had “thought we’d be sad,” she said,
“but it was very festive.” Mr. Boyd called it a “farewell to arms
contracts.”
But bear in mind that “Billionaires never die,” he said. “We just refinance.”
Have no fear about the end of satire in America, though: Plutocrats For Palin does have a certain ring to it for 2012...
Tax Day with an actual pimp, April 2005.
Jolly Robber Barons: the Billionaire Yacht Club during the Coney Island Mermaid Parade, circa June 2005...
Via the New York Times.
Video of Darin Barry, Andrew Boyd (background), and the author from Minnesota Independent Media.
Related:
