When the transformative Halloween moon hung low in the sky and the early whistle of winter winds began to chill the late fall air, the altering spirits, shape-shifting ghouls, ever-changing ghosts, varying poltergeists, and unstable phantoms that clutter our political horizon showed their true colors in the nighttime darkness of All Hallows Eve. The genuine personae of some of the Administration's most obsequious, sycophantic cohorts were revealed in the macabre pale moonlight...
The heap of Uriah Heaps were eerily exposed: Paul Wolfowitz spat on his comb and instantly turned into Paul Were-wolfowitz; Bill O'Reilly at the stroke of midnight became Bill Ooooooo Reilly; Karl Rove interestingly became and stayed Gnarled Troll. "Joe the Plumber" revealed himself to be "Joe the Seal Clubber." Rudy Giuliani once again emerged at twelve as Rudy Ghoul-iani while Michael Chertoff became Michael Chop-it-off. Alan Greenspan spun into Alan Green-spew while Michael Mukasey unraveled as Mummy Mukasey, and Henry Paulson became Henry Crawly-son...but most frighteningly of all... Dick Cheney remained Dick Cheney.
With Halloween and the Presidential elections separated by only a few days, I began to examine the glaring similarities between two other creepy, scary figures...Hannibal Lecter and Sarah Palin (or if you prefer, her after-midnight eco-terrorizing alter-ego - Vlad the Im-Palin.)
Although one is allegedly a flesh and blood woman, her Stepford-Wifian qualities make me suspect, and the other a fictitious male literary character was brought larger than life in a series of Hollywood horror flicks. Both are small and impeccably groomed -- one with innate style and one with the $150K help of others; both are sleek and/or slick, and both have bright white teeth, (Fava beans anyone?). They each have perfectly coifed dark hair, strong wiry arms and each have eyes that reflect light in devilish pinpoints of red. One speaks in tongues and one eats tongues; one is muzzled while both ought to be.
Hannibal Lecter -- brilliant psychiatrist, individual of flawless taste and sophistication, oozing with poise and charm (umm, and did I mention a certain cannibalistic tendency, too?) is the fictional character from a series of novels by author Thomas Harris. If you remember, Anthony Hopkins brilliantly played the complete creep-zoid to perfection, distracting his victims with his dazzling intellect, while plotting to dine on their livers by candlelight.
Sarah Palin -- Republican Doma-Veep-trix running mate to Presidential candidate John McPain...oops, I mean McNasty, no, I mean McCain (Halloween brings out the worst in me.) sides more often than not with special big-business interests, drilling for oil in already sensitive eco-systems, and attributes global warming to being the cyclical way of nature rather than being the lady-made mishap it actually is.
Minus his intellect or gentility -- but like a cannibalistic stalker with her next bloody feast of human flesh within site -- Palin zeros in on Mother Nature. While offering up groans of lethal fright, horrid screams that reverberate into dreadful echoes of terror that slash through the silent frosty night, Palin taunts her victim to madness with "Drill, Baby, Drill" ecstatically watching our natural world fall prey. With blood-lust in her eyes, Ms. Im-Palin hungers for deregulation in much the same way Hannibal Lecter craves eating the lightly braised brain cells of individuals as destructive and dim as she.
She openly dreams of slicing through sensitive environments, strangling natural resources and stabbing repeatedly with the same callousness that the good Dr. Lecter did in the movie "Silence of the Lambs" minus the sexy bravado or sophistication.
(Who else here would like to see Palin in a straightjacket and face guard--with lipstick, of course?)