summer's end 2005

By the early years of the twenty-first century, many had concluded that Freudianism had (speaking in the passive voice so necessary in those years) "been discredited." But many also still spoke in the pop psychological vernacular of the previous century, and they knew that their "inner child" was, like the Freudian model of the mind, tripartite. The inner elementary-school-age child, like all children, was on the one hand a raging traditionalist, on the other hand a raging moralist, and on the third hand, a raging individualist. And, not merely Freudianism but also Darwinism had been ravaged. After Intelligent Design, science was also in ruins. Rationalism itself was on its last legs. So a fourth hand was possible in the tripartite model, and thus one's inner child spoke also as the Class Clown.

One's traditionalist inner child was scandalized when the circulars advertising back-to-school specials began appearing in the local paper in mid-July, since she hadn't had to start school until after labor day and had been released before Memorial Day and had learned three times as much as these kids today. The raging moralist inside was deeply offended at the mere volume of the advertising circulars which had long ago entirely supplanted any real news. And the individualist was trying to decide if it was worth going out to buy school clothes on Tax-Free Weekend when one would have to circulate among the legions of the Great Unwashed. The individualist hated the Great Unwashed.

Naturally, the moralists had long been attempting to convince us that Tax-Free Weekend was a Grand Injustice, anyway, what with all the millions of dollars in potential income that the state was merely throwing away and the Lege wholly unable to settle on a means to finance public education. What's more, it wasn't like anyone really saved money, at least not anyone human. WalMart&Penneys&Target&Mervyns used to have even better Back-to-School specials back in the day, the traditionalists reminded us. Now they didn't have to; the government did it for them. Tax-Free Weekend was obviously just a way to funnel money to the massive homovorous corporations.

And, again, it didn't really matter. Back-to-school specials or no back-to-school specials there would be no Back to School, not this year, not with the Lege completely impotent to pass a school finance bill. Even worse, the traditionalists among the inner children of the Lege had not been able to force schools to stay closed until after Labor Day each year. As the final 30-day special session drew to a close one got the feeling that the Legislators were tossing paper airplanes across the chambers and watching bootleg DVDs of Dukes of Hazzard on their laptops. The extent to which the House had simply Given Up was made manifest when Speaker Tom Craddick-- in full Class Clown at the end of May mode-- suggested that Representatives simply vote to adjourn three days early. His Press Secretary went for the sympathy jugular by pointing out that the Speaker would not get to go on his scheduled Alaskan fishing trip if the Lege was still in session.

And what a sacrifice that would be! The latest energy bill did not include the wholesale destruction of Alaska yet, and Alaska's globally warmed climate hadn't approached that of Phoenix-- yet-- but most now believed that the opportunity for Alaskan wilderness excursions was passing like the window for getting an increasingly rickety Space Shuttle launched or landed. And if the window for school financing was similarly passing-- well, Craddick's constituents would surely understand that a man must fish. I mean, weren't they Christians?

Well, some weren't. There was always, for example, the self-styled Texas Jewboy, Kinky Friedman. The Kinkster hovered close to the capital, at least as long as the bars on Sixth Street were open, and they always were. When Kinky got roaring drunk on whiskey and putrid cigars he would scream in a Shakespearian drawl "a pox on both your houses"-- and many Democrats appeared in a mood to cooperate with the Kinkster's apocalytic vision. There were those Democrats, for example, who had proven that the days of "Draft[insert outsider candidate's name here].com" were oh-so-2004. Those Democrats had replaced such grassroots activism with the "Draft[insert failed and dreadful dull insider candidate's name here].com" model. Yes, the Worst Case Scenario for Texas Democrats had arrived. John Sharp might really be running this time. And the fifth type of inner child, the rebellious li'l shit, was poised to reap the benefits. At least the li'l shit's named Kinky, not Thomas, Friedman-- though one is sometimes hard-pressed to see a difference.

Meanwhile, far, far away from Texas a trend that had begun here reached the East Coast. Long ago, the Amarillo Globe-Republican had axed its Books page and utilized their administration contacts to send the page's 2000-year-old editor, Mary Kate Tripp, to Gitmo. The AG-R Publisher was well aware that his readers were a congealed mass of illiterate troglodytes whose bookshelves consisted of The Conscience of a Conservative, The Way Things Ought to Be, and Treason-- and that the Republican Party could instruct its minions to purchase those books without the help of the AG-R, which paper, after all, needed the pages for yet more advertising. That act of brazen anti-intellectualism-- the coming of inner child number six, the slow reader-- went unnoticed on the Llano Estacado, but it was only a matter of time before the Washington Post would print a scathing review by Marianne Wiggins of John Irving's latest book. When Irving cried foul, noting that Wiggins was the ex-wife of his buddy Salmon Rushdie-- with whom he often attended U2 concerts-- WaPo recanted. The editors claimed they didn't know that Wiggins had been married to Rushdie.

And the Great Book of the Annals of American Literary History slammed shut amidst a mungo dust cloud. Didn't . . . know . . . ? Rushdie's not incidental to the literary history of the last quarter of the twentieth century. Matter of fact, he's not exactly incidental to an understanding of the War on Terror. Wiggins was his wife when the fatwa was declared. The American media are the seventh inner child: the gossipy tattletale. And they didn't freaking know?

It was like saying you didn't know about Scott's wife Zelda when you cracked the joke about the loony bin.

SPACEDARK