It should be illegal, punishable by up to 20 years in Barney Frank’s apartment, for any politician, their constituents or the media to refer to what said politician does for a living as “public service.”
Political “public service,” specifically that which is performed from Washington, D.C., is ruining the country, and even though simply banning a label doesn’t solve a problem, it’s certainly a start.
The idea of outlawing the term “public service” as applied to politicians occurred to me after reading about the most senior member of the Senate and lead “public servant,” Ted Kennedy, who is collecting more plaudits for a career in “public service” with which he’s spent the last few decades oh-so-selflessly giving away somebody else’s money.
The “public service” accolades are accumulating. Kennedy was awarded an honorary degree from Harvard, which he may have earned by symbolically cheating on an honorary test. The Massachusetts Maritime Academy has announced it will rename its training ship “The Kennedy” (complete with high-tech sonar system that can detect submerged Oldsmobiles up to 5,000 fathoms down). And officials in Boston have proposed building a national institute focused on the U.S. Senate and Kennedy’s legacy – fittingly enough with taxpayers footing the construction bill. Kennedy has also received various official kudos from Mexico and Chile, probably as their way of saying “thanks for being so weak on border security.”
I realize Sen. Kennedy is ill, and I sincerely wish him well and hope he can continue on in the Senate. Besides, if Ted steps down, he’ll only be replaced by another, possibly even more liberal, Kennedy. If you weren’t aware, Ted Kennedy’s senate seat has been bequeathed forever to stay in Ted’s family per Massachusetts’ Kennedy Monarchy Act of 1962. That said, referring to Ted Kennedy or any other number of politicians as “public servants” is a gross disservice to even the broadest of definitions, not unlike calling the Hindenburg disaster a “reading lamp” or John Dillinger a “bank withdrawal specialist.”
Of course it’s not just Ted Kennedy who’s lauded for his “career in public service.” On any given day, you’ll hear John McCain, Nancy Pelosi, Arlen Specter, Charles Rangel and any number of national regulatory nightmares who never met a lemonade stand that shouldn’t be taxed to death either referring to themselves as, or being called, “public servants.”
What kind of “public servants” create inner-city policies that are in part responsible for cities like Detroit resembling a composite of Myanmar and Zimbabwe after a coup, where the only reason people still live there is because they can’t afford to leave? What kind of “public servants” leave the border as porous as the Detroit Lions defensive line and justify allowing illegals to pour across the border as fighting against racism? What kind of “public servants” only give taxpayers a piece of the corporate action on the downside? What kind of “public servants” take money from one group of people to construct buildings for other groups of people, and then have the audacity to have their names put on the buildings?
What is “public service” anyway? Prostitutes perform a public service, and it’s one I’m sure even Charlie Sheen would agree is more important than the one performed by most politicians in Washington. True, it’s inherently unfair to place both prostitutes and politicians under the “public service” umbrella – unfair to prostitutes. If a prostitute was a “public servant” in the way a politician is, you’d drive up, she’d get in, you’d hand her $50, she’d kick you out, keep the $50, steal your car, loan the spare tire to GM and then drive over to spend the night with George Soros.
And what happens when a politician does in fact perform a true “public service” –such as, say, helping keep the country free from a terrorist attack for over seven years? That politician is rewarded with a dismal approval rating, is mocked by the media and called a “war criminal” by the very public that was an unwitting recipient of that valuable public service.
If anybody in the United States Congress is reading this, please put into motion legislation that would ultimately prohibit the use of the term “public service” as applied to any politician. Ironically, this would be your greatest act of public service ever.
