Recent periods of studying history and politics have shown me that the key to appreciating both is a keen eye for the absurd.
The quantity of ridiculous information that comes your way in both can leave you wondering where reality ends and fiction begins.
Take Thanksgiving for example. Now don't get me wrong' I firmly believe in giving thanks for food, drink and family. But the historical pretenses for this celebration are ridiculous.
This holiday is supposed to be a time to remember how in 1621, Pilgrims and Indians first cooperated to share the original Coke and a smile around a horn o' plenty.
So what are we actually celebrating? A factually ambiguous harvest festival heavily embellished in the 19th century for the sake of patriotism. We celebrate this and forget the greater \cooperation"" between Europeans and Indians, which actually went more like this:
OK, I guess we have a little room to spare. We'll give you some corn, a lot of our land and a healthy measure of our dignity.
Thanks! Here, hold my smallpox and influenza while I kill everyone you love. And I think we're going to need all the land. Manifest Destiny, you understand, chap. Take care!
Gee, American history sure is depressing, but at least you can take comfort in knowing the past is behind us and we can learn from it. So what have we learned?
U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms, unrepentant racist-NC will retire in 2003.
This man has referred to The University of North Carolina as the ""University of Negroes and Communists."" He's bragged that he would make Carol Mosely-Braun, the first black woman senator, cry by whistling ""Dixie."" He's constantly flapped his fat, pendulous jowls against the evil forces of desegregation and homosexuality.
That Helms' bigotry didn't cause a second secession (this time North from South) is actually reason to be happy.
It's not so absurd that Jesse Helms exists'idiots are everywhere. But it is positively surreal that the people of North Carolina have kept him in office since 1972.
OK, maybe I shouldn't be so hard on contemporary politics. Jesse will be gone next year, and maybe he was the last blip of unfathomable absurdity on the political radar.
Oops, perhaps I jumped the gun.
The New York Times reported Thursday on a speech by Karl Rove, President Bush's chief political strategist. Beyond the fact that Bush refers to this man privately as ""Turdblossom,"" (seriously, look it up) he seems to need to prove that he shouldn't be taken seriously.
When asked by a speech attendee if the Bush administration is concerned about ""the possibility that 200,000 innocent Iraqis might die in an American led invasion,"" Rove responded unflinchingly that he is ""more concerned about the 3,000 who died on 9/11.""
Sept. 11 was tragic and did warrant action by the United States. However, I think Turdblossom should've stopped shy of using the attacks to justify the possible killing of 197,000 more people than died on that day, especially when their continued existence seems to prove that they didn't hijack those planes.
Then again, his name's Turdblossom. How much damage could he do (nervous laugh)?
Boy, I started off angry at history for its questionable factuality, but I think I'm starting to understand.
Hopefully, in the next few hundred years, someone will have invented a happy holiday story good enough to cover for Turdblossom and the voters of North Carolina.
