the citizen-viewer

The Washington Post has broken the story of sex, drugs, and oil at the Department of Interior, another Bush agency “captured” by the foxes that the feds were supposed to be keeping out of the chicken coop.

The details of the scandal are well told in the Post story—basically an office in charge of overseeing payment in kind (i.e. oil) for royalty taxes wound up trading sweetheart deals on the taxed oil for cash, hookers, drugs and a few other goodies.

I was shocked at the four millionth bad act by the team that vowed to restore “honor and integrity” to the White House. While waiting for my pupils to undilate, this item jumped out at me for what it says about what it takes to make a good Bush appointee go bad.

In addition to the standard money, sex and drugs, the sad sacks at Interior’s Minerals Management Service were also lured off the path of virtue by “gifts from energy companies … including golf, ski and paintball outings; meals and drinks; and tickets to a Toby Keith concert, a Houston Texans football game and a Colorado Rockies baseball game.”

I’ve read that Toby Keith (of FUTK fame back when he was bashing the Dixie Chicks for having the gall to criticize Bush) is now backing Obama. But he’ll always be famous for jumping on the ersatz patriotism money-wagon and riding it for all it was worth after 9/11. That scoundrel snatch-and-grab included Keith’s ode to lynching, “Beer for My Horses,” which a badly stoned Willie Nelson agreed to collaborate on.

And paintball? What better way to simulate war in a time of war when you don’t actually want go fight in a war. A thrill a minute, only topped by hookers, blow and cash.

This whole affair has the Sausageman shaking his head on the deep polarization of the red and the blue. Can’t we at least take illegal gifts in forms that don’t lean to one or the other David Brooksian stereotype? How about a free truckload of Chuck Mangione CDs? Maybe the entire DVD director’s cut of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? We have to start the nonpartisan revolution somewhere. One would have hoped the royalty officers at Interior could have at least done that much for the good ol’ USA.