MacBush: News as Muse?

Not that he’s some overly indulgent Big Daddy proffering fat federal grants to support budding DaVincis, but Bush-Wah, the USA’s putative president, has been great for the arts.

Like the proverbial grain of sand irritating an oyster into secreting a pearl, DUH-Be-Ya’s a mega-vexation to multitudes of filmmakers and fictioneers, poets and painters, rapsters and minstrels, which means he’s been a major catalyst for creativity.

“Some painters transform the sun to a yellow spot,” Picasso once noted, “while others, with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun.”

Ah, yes. Lest I forget, Out, durned spot! Out, I say!

Meanwhile, what a truly terrifying pre-election week this was. I’m not just speaking about skewed samplings of deliberately bogus polls designed to sway non-thinkers among us, either. What I mean is how America’s been inundated by a barrage of patent fakery to frighten and manipulate voters into, once again, “not electing” the Bushling:

• A horrifyingly bizarre piece of video hack-work featuring a laughably described “U.S.-born al-Qaida member with an American accent” promising USA streets will soon run red with blood, unless and until, yadda-yadda-yadda.

• A rapidly circulating “news report” America’s so-called enemies are hot to “nuke New York” imminently if not sooner.

• Looking like a piece of computer-generated animation left over from “Finding Nemo,” Osama bin Laden’s sudden, convenient pre-election “return” to public prominence from his secret hiding place in the White House Lincoln bedroom has him mysteriously materializing in a supposed “new video” featuring the almost unrecognizable lost, missing, or dead so-called “terror leader,” his frayed beard grayer than ever, confessing to everything the Bushies need him to confess to as a validation of the fictitious al-Qaida’s existence, deflecting culpability away from the NeoCon junta which actually hijacked our nation, and warning of – guess what – future attacks if we don’t wise up and mend our Muslim-dissing ways. In this watered-down video version of an “October Surprise,” the supposed text of the “translation” reads like the heavy-handed, over-explanatory script of a bad movie: Osama helpfully tidies up all those messy unexplained loose ends and unanswered questions of 9-11, specifically confessing, for the first time, why “his” martyr-boys actually attacked the USA on 9-11. (“Actually, I saw the accurate translation of bin Laden’s speech,” says one Internet wag. “It was a Hummus recipe.”)

• Almost instantaneously, Walter Cronkite, formerly known as “the most trusted man in America,” declares he discerns the fine hand of Karl Rove behind this latest most likely fraudulent Osama confessional-warning.

How dumb do “they” think we are?

To escape this escalating insanity, Friday night I attend a pair of potent political plays presented by Azuka Theatre Collective. Sitting in the semi-darkness, I watch the audience file in. A balding, goateed fellow with a really deep voice sits in the front row. He’s carrying a big Kerry-Edwards placard, and brandishes it at the beginning and end of the show. Far as I can tell, he’s not part of the performance, just a spontaneous outpouring of campaign enthusiasm.

Pseudonymous playwright Jane Martin’s over-the top satire about Laura Bush is preceded by my favorite of the evening, “Grand Dames” – two cloche-and-high heel-wearing, lipsticked society matrons, er, men … with the best legs I have ever seen on stage, sipping their “cups of oil” served by a surly former Saudi sheikh. Boasting about the hostess’ taxidermy collection of stuffed political enemies, they plot poisoning a young niece whose chief sin’s dating a Democrat. Wittily skewering murderous neocon petro-hypocrisy, the play’s characters include the aptly named Mrs. Baliburton, Mrs. Chaliburton, and Claudia Galiburton.

Hey, this News-as-Muse goes way beyond mere inspiration:

Enroute to a weekend sidewalk sale, I nearly get clipped by an approaching car as I anxiously crane my neck, the better to reconnoiter what looks like a live, cross-bearing Jesus riding a bicycle in the thick of traffic at 16th and Spruce Streets on a Sunday afternoon in downtown Philadelphia. Bearded and barefoot, this pedal-pushing apparition is clad only in a powder-blue terrycloth bathrobe. Pale and determined, he’s carrying a large white cross made out of Foamcore and marked, upon closer inspection, “Nov. 2” on both sides.

“Halloween costume or political statement?” I inquire of this streetscape Messiah. Both, he replies, averring Jesus says, “Vote for John Kerry.”

Which reminds me of one local alternative weekly newspaper’s finest hour, the Philadelphia Weekly’s cover headline, “VOTE FOR KERRY OR BURN IN HELL.”

Here, for those of you who didn’t, some baby oil. It won’t help, I promise.