Following the sexcapades of Billy Jeff Clinton, the first Porn President (B.J. to his close friends), politics in America have taken a serious nose dive. After suffering through the collective blush of the Lewinski affair, Americans chose to depart from an era of peace, prosperity, and freedom (aka Oval Office hummers) to embrace a more repressed, less worldly, religiously righteous regime. No affable, dope-smoking Rhodes Scholars in the new bunch, not even an honor roller – plenty of holy rollers though. The only hummers the new administration would be getting would be painted in desert camo and laying tread marks on the corpses of liberated Iraqis. Never again would flustered Americans have to justify to their children the immoral behavior of their president – at least not by explaining the subtle nuances of oral sex. Now, a short four years after America’s cultural deflowerment, a stain on a blue dress seems trivial compared to the blood stains on our hands. The current administration’s thin patina of decorum conceals an ugly, festering core of ignorance and hatred, and it’s now clear that even the pretension of political naïveté has serious, deadly consequences. America has been used like a $2 whore, and the rest of the world knows it. Now we must do our best to salvage what’s left of our dignity by doing the right thing: voting. This Sunday Emo’s, never a place to shy away from irony, is hosting Burlesque for Peace: Burlesque the Vote, a voter registration drive thinly disguised as a burlesque show – or possibly vice versa. Starting at 9pm Sunday you can witness a dozen burlesque performances by local entertainers accompanied by the irony-drenched music of the Yuppie Pricks – just as long as you’re registered to vote and are … uh … holding $12. Hey, desperate times call for desperate measures.
This article appears in October 1 • 2004.
