State 50.5

It's dropped out of the headlines lately, since the story didn't contain the word "czar," but for a while there, it was looking like the District of Columbia might finally get their very own, actual, live, dishonest, self-serving, occasionally-showing-up-to-vote, official member of Congress.

Why on earth the good citizens of D.C. would want to drag themselves down into that mire with the rest of us is beyond me, but that's their business. I know they complain, and rightly, about taxation without representation. But if they think that getting their own Congress-human is the cure, I have some really bad news for them.

But lately, the topic seems to have been relegated to the American Core Values back burner, like border security, and Christianity. Maybe the project was scuttled by some alert organizers from the company that sews and sells us our American Flags, the Taiwanese Seamsters Union. Adding a fifty-first star could bung up their whole shop.

And what's with that, anyway? Why are US flags made in Taiwan? Can't we even make our own flags anymore? Has counting to 50 become a problem for American high school graduates?

At least the flags aren't made in China (though the Chinese might offer a territorial quibble). Have you tried lately to find an American product actually made in the USA? Something not made in China?

Actually, I did. I finally found something not made in China. Chinese fortune cookies. No, really.

One evening, I ordered some Chinese take-away. And after the feast, because I am just the type of Lifeless Idiot who would do such a thing, I spent a few Lifeless Idiot minutes reading the fortune cookie's little shrink-wrapped packaging. The fortune cookies were made in - ready? - Stone Mountain, Georgia. No, really. I'm not good enough to make this stuff up.

By the way, my fortune: "Your flight out of Atlanta will be delayed." Amazing. Right again!

But back to Washington. We can move quickly past the blisteringly obvious political motivations behind granting the District of Columbia its own member of Congress: an instant, dedicated voting bloc that will pull the lever for the Democrat ticket, oh, about 350% of the time, or more if ACORN gets involved. But I have a different question.

I wonder why the Founders initially chose not to grant representation to Washington, D.C.? Maybe they thought, "Aw, nobody's ever gonna actually live there. People will get elected by their neighbors, pack a bag, go do their turn, be responsible to their electorate, and then go home. Occasionally, when the humidity gets out of hand, they can blow off steam by caning each other on the Senate floor. And every now and then, we'll let them rename a Pony Express office. But then they'll head back home. It's not like anybody's gonna try to make a career out of this. I mean, there's a reason we stuck the place in a swamp."

I wonder if they foresaw a city of such size? A beltway of gridlock, a grid of monuments, a monument to greed? The pricey hotels, restaurants, real estate? Could they have even imagined the massive five-sided Pentagon? In the 1700s, pentagrams were pretty much the domain of the mysterious Masons and a handful of highly-motivated neighborhood watch groups in Salem, Massachusetts.

I wonder if they ever even anticipated the nation's capitol having a Mayor at all, much less a Mayor who would be charged with tax evasion, smoke crack, get caught, go to prison, and violate probation? And then get re-elected? No, really. I'm not good enough to make this stuff up.

Could the founders have ever conjured the concept of lobbyists? An corrupt and corrupting cottage industry, a class of classless clowns whose sole function was to bribe elected officials? Highly unlikely, because in those more elegant days, they didn't have lobbies. They had foyers and front porches. And anyone advertising their services as a "verandah-ist" would have been horse-slapped and tossed straight into the nearest harbor.

As Ben Franklin, America's first hippie, might have put it: "Dude, please. Get out! In America? After everything we fought and died for to create her? Rave on, dude. America, thee must be, like, nuts."

Amazing. Right again!