The only thing more smutty, slutty, corrupt, unrealistic and disgusting than a Hollywood-produced sex scene is the incessant, corporate lobby-pandering members of the United States Congress. If Congress were a celebrity, it would probably be Britney Spears it began innocently enough, but has become more distasteful by the session. In this respect, the establishment is more than deserving of the dogmatic, despicable and detrimental portrayal it receives in cinema.
In all fairness, though, Congress has been disproportionately cited in the negative only in the singular, Republican sense. As the American consumer recently discovered, those under the "capitol chapel" had a proclivity to bilk their constituencies in what was an exceptionally rare demonstration of bipartisanship. While some members retrospectively blame one another for the blatant and catastrophic failure of oversight and financial review during the execution of the Temporary Asset Relief Program (TARP), it must be noted that the ranking Senator on this matter was Connecticut Democrat Christopher Dodd. An investigation of Dodd's Senate record and the associated lobbyist record illustrates the intersection of corporate influence and personal avarice.
Much like a fictional Hollywood portrayal, Congress has become an interesting and routinely seedy back alley for special treatment s in exchange for Congressional favors and the inclusion of pork barrel funds for "pet projects." Dodd, the esteemed Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee who was the presiding officer of the "non-hearings" that Congress feigned prior to the initial bailout trillions being released, just so happens to be the biggest recipient of contributions from the credit card and financial services lobby. How coincidental it was when it was revealed that the nation's merger-happy banks: JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, and Citi Group were hardly burdened with stringent questions or inconvenienced with namby-pamby "conditions," despite the most blatant step toward the nationalization of a financial institution since the Soviet era.
Of course, a good plot is never truly realistic until the other party screws up, too. Need I say more than eight years of Bush? Sure, some who read this blog might actually attack me for the lacking of specifics with regard to a "failed" Republican policy, but citing any of these is redundant for two reasons. Underscoring a potential conservative, right wing political blunder is unnecessary because revisionist historians and pundits have already reversed said errors. It is difficult to rail against non-existent history, right. Moreover, most of said egregious offenses against holistic humanity have been perpetrated within the realm of common, American and international knowledge-save for that network Fox News who apparently failed to receive the memorandum with the multitudinous mistakes.
When one of the most powerful branches of government in the world fails to inhibit the premeditated murder of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians in Iraq, protect the American consumer from the predations of legalized loan sharks, and and pretends to care that automakers are flying in private, corporate jets when they (members of Congress) often imbibe in superfluous "representative visitations" to exotic locations, they might be deserving of the collective "best actor of the year" award in the newly invented category "useless films."
Of course, insidious rants against a largely inanimate object are exceedingly pointless. Personally, I have detailed a rather comprehensive and consumer-oriented approach to the current “cluster fuck to the poor house,” as John Stewart so aptly described it. My post here cannot include such a plan though as it is currently in development for submission and would inflate the blog, much like Congress has with the national debt, to unhealthy levels.
At the risk of being labeled a "citizen's political soap box," the only way to curb this disastrous Congressional performance is to voluminously speak out against what is unacceptable behavior-by any industry standard. It is easier to resign to the inevitability of further dilapidation, but this script like those in Hollywood that decry the aforementioned body, is editable.
Corey Scott-Vincent-William Dutra
