Buckle Up for Safety

By Lance Hendrickson
Contributing Writer

So far, Sarah Tea Party’s first jobless election cycle (and what does she do for a living nowadays, anyway?) reminds me of driving. I learned the week Al Haig failed “25th Amendment,” when I was 12. Dad handed me the keys, got in the shotgun side, and offered one tip: “Buckle it tight.”

It was March in Michigan, so my back-road internship in V-8 management was less like Sears’ Parallel-Parking School, and more like a high-speed Shackleton expedition (if Shackleton’s navigator had a six of Pabst). And what the ice and the drifts didn’t scare outta me, a flirtation with overdrive surely did. (Sorry again, Mom.)

Laundry issues notwithstanding, after umpteen similar near-crash courses, facing juries two decades later wasn’t any scarier than I-96. And I wasn’t unique. Heck, half the freshmen north of Grand Rapids could’ve spun Richard Petty. Tough schooling. Deep ditches (we found). But helpful later, those lessons.

So when my two brothers and I flew to Phoenix to meet the new step-family, the pre-freeway gridlock raised no eyebrows. Neither did the ne’er-do-well stepbrother, Andrew, despite his tattoo and his Metallica t-shirt and his ditchweed stash. He was verrry cool (according to him), and verrrry tough (ibid), so when he told my dad he’d show us town, we figured it’d beat another afternoon of MTV.

I drove – legally, for a change, while faux-Butthead fogged the back windows of his mom’s cavernous Caprice with party-fight yarns for half an hour. Then when a Vega full of girls buzzed past two lanes over, headed for the mall, Andy’s bong-sucker finally flapped past tolerance: “There go Stacy’s friends! I party with them! Ah, damn, too bad, they’re gone. I could’ve caught ‘em, though…”

Chad knew better. “Hit it, Lance!”

I’d already checked the mirrors. “Strap in, boys…”

I only heard two clicks – I guess seatbelts weren’t cool – then I pulled a move I’d learned from Luke Duke, and over the squealing whitewalls and the mashed horns and the redlined 350 came a terrified, kitten-pitched “OHJeeeezisLancedontdoitnoooeeEEEE…” BANNFFMM!

I dunno what revealed more about ol’ Andy: the girly-squeal he let out when I cranked the wheel, the bloodstain his honker left on the far armrest, or the tears in his eyes when he ratted me out to his mom later. But in seven stressful seconds, we had that poofter figured out for life. (And, no, those girls didn’t know him from Adam.)

Anyway, the primaries aren’t even over, and we’re already getting a revealing peek at the nouveau Republicans. Lemme start with the first one I’ve agreed with since… well, since I’ve been driving, anyway. From the baggers’ Senate nominee in Colorado, Ken Buck (and I’m not making this up): “Will you tell those dumbasses at the tea party to stop asking questions about birth certificates while I’m on camera? God, what am I supposed to do?”

Beautiful. Well queried, KB. For that candor, I hope the bastards treat you a little better than Colorado’s other Kenny.

Then there’s this Mr. Hankey from a more-noteworthy Andrew (if you’re not a Phoenix cop), A. “Rocky” Raczkowski, the birthers’ primary pick in Michigan’s CD-9: “You have a president that seems to be, um…well…I don’t know if he even has been born in the United States, but ... until I see a birth certificate…”

Punch-drunk is as punch-drunk does, man. Maybe somebody could show Rocky a 50-star flag, and ask him which two arrived after Arizona’s?

Palin-endorsed (read: USDA Grade “Goof”) Vaughn Ward in ID-1 actually claimed Puerto Rico’s a country. Alas, somehow, he lost. So that leaves me giggling over grizzlyite Michelle Bachmann (R-Stepford), who said the $26 billion state aid bill “…will be essentially laundered through public employee unions, and spent to elect…Democrats in the fall…”

Aaaaahahahaha… Wow. She’d have livened up the Warren Commission some, wouldn’t she?

Funnier still, Nevada’s Sharron Angle’s hacked up another hairball, about why she dodged reporters: “We needed to have the press be our friend… we wanted them to ask the questions we want to answer so that they report the news the way we want it to be reported…”

Well, I guess it’d beat having to learn about the Constitution n’ maps n’ crap.

Amazing. It’s only the primaries – think of the generals as Daytona on ice. And the DNC’s already outraised whatever the RNC didn’t blow on strippers, while last month the DCCC’s cash on hand lapped the NRCC’s.

Hey, Republicans? I have just one suggestion: buckle up, baby.

Questions and comments: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)