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GNN Arts & Entertainment - After a few days of smoke-filled rooming, a consensus emerged here at GNN about the death of Robert Byrd. We decided to wait for the liberal media to disgorge their face-saving encomia for this villain; to wait for their post-coital satisfaction with themselves to fade before their next lib-lick of another political canker like Byrd. Maybe Pete Stark next time. We wondered what our editorial position should be, because the position of "slobbering press bootlickers" was already chock-a-block full.
We found ourselves sidling into the "turd in the punch bowl" maxim, and mused that the Democrats were stuck with this Cicero-bleating, thieving, racist Goober, whether they liked it or not. DC then reminded us that it isn't a turd in the political punchbowl that the Democrats hate, but punch in their political turd bowl!. Good point. Byrd fit right in. How do you make something out of that?
Nick raised the point that the Byrd affair belonged in the GNN "Religion" category because of its moral complexities, until we all said that Hell was the world with a living Robert Byrd and Heaven was the world with a dead Robert Byrd, which was morally simple. Okay, "we all" didn't say that. Only me. But I have enough clout around here to prohibit a sermon from one of Paul's letters on the subject of Robert Byrd.
Next we thought that just some neutral, slightly melancholy, Thanatopsis boilerplate on "mortality" could put Byrd in perspective. But some wag in the conference room whispered out loud that our mortality might have prevented us from experiencing the current Robert Byrd, and mortality might prevent us from experiencing a future Robert Byrd! Mortality, in this view, is to be appreciated. This stuff is hard.
Then we thought that some tasteful but freighted-with-meaning photo of a weeping willow or pool of water behind, or near, some sign dedicating a public project to the pork efforts of Robert Byrd was the answer. We could publish it. That was easy. Now we have to photo-shop a couple of Port-o-Potties beside the Byrd sign, but we're going out for coffee and Bear Claws first.