"Pack up all my care and woe, here I
go, singing low, Bye Bye Blackbird." -
1926 lyric by Ray Henderson and Mort Dixon
WASHINGTON - This month's diluted Mardi
Gras brings echoes of Hurricane Katrina the White
House would prefer not hear (nary a word of New
Orleans in the State of the Union address). But if
President George W Bush ever wandered among
foreign carnivals, disguised as a peasant, he
would be filled with trepidation.
For
years I've chronicled carnivals across different
cultures. With anti-authoritarian and satirical
roots planted by the ancients, the
carnival is a superb
barometer of the US image abroad.
Last
year's sojourn included sleepy towns in Portugal.
In Torres Verdes, the centerpiece - not a float,
the centerpiece - was called "Bushlandia".
Artfully rendered, five or so stories high, the
sculpture offered up Dubya as a primitive king in
furs, wielding a jeweled club and a scepter with a
golden skull. He wore a crucifix on which was a
soldier. Dubya sat within the jaws of a giant
skull
beneath the crown of the Statue of Liberty,
about which crawled wormy critters in turbans
(none of them depicting the Prophet
Mohammed, I swear).
Other heads of the
coalition of the willing - I get confused over Old
Europe and New Europe, but I doubt there were
Mongolians - were in his court. British Prime
Minister Tony Blair fanned Dubya with feathers and
scratched his backside. A likable lad, too bad he
ran with a rough crowd. On the flip side of the
sculpture, a bearded fellow with a turban (clearly
not a depiction of Mohammed) jockeyed a
wheelbarrow of explosives. Beneath him a
government minister struggled to feed the world's
poor children. Nuclear missiles flanked Dubya.
Penguins blew time-out whistles as toxic waste
washed over nature.
To the beat of
Brazilian bands amid the samba gyrations of
hotties, all revelers passed before Dubya.
Amazing, a small town in Portugal making this
colossal comment on US leadership.
Portugal is not alone throwing
carnival jabs. My first carnival was in Cologne,
Germany. Barely a month after the Monica Lewinsky
scandal broke in 1998, I nearly kicked my camera
off my balcony, lunging for it as a masterpiece of
German engineering rounded Koeln Cathedral. A
grinning Bill Clinton, big as a Mack truck,
groped a peeved
Statue of Liberty, followed by a padlocked White
House atop which stood Uncle Sam throwing blood
sausages to a crowd roaring approval.
They
could take a joke even if finger waggers like
Senator Joe Lieberman and members of the pious
press couldn't. Germans couldn't understand
Americans' mania over this fiasco as more pressing
worldly concerns tumbled into fire. Recalling that
national derailment, and voter reaction, US
Democrats pledged that "impeachment is off the
table".
But Dubya brings out carnival
knives. Two years back, despite German officials
urging softer blows prior to a Dubya visitation, a
Cologne float had Bush shooting flames from a
cross fashioned like a machine-gun. On another,
Uncle Sam bent over, trousers down, while
Chancellor Angela Merkel climbed a ladder up his
backside, her nose a shade darker. Foreign leaders
regarded as too cozy with Bush are fair game. Last
year, Merkel fared better, portrayed as Elastic
Girl. Dubya walked barefoot through bowls of fat
labeled "Kyoto", "New Orleans" and "Atomic
Conflict".
Carnival in Dusseldorf offered
up Iran's president as a rocket, caught by a
United Nations net (not, ahem, a US net).
It's short notice, but I'll be shocked if
the baker's dozen of US secret agents indicted in
Germany for rendition of an innocent German don't
make a parade.
Basel, Switzerland, throws
great punches. This unique Protestant take begins
in a blacked-out city at 4am the Monday after Ash
Wednesday. Thousands of costumed pipers and
drummers accompany huge gas-lit lanterns painted
with satirical images of politicos. Dubya will
again be the favorite foil, particularly as the
Swiss haven't former Italian prime minister Silvio
Berlusconi - likened to a hybrid of the Godfather
and Benito Mussolini, running his media empire
like an Orwellian villain - to kick around
anymore, at least as prime minister. Less likable,
he ran with a tough crowd, too. The former leader
of Spain ran, and fell, as well.
A modest
proposal for the US capital and its new mayor,
Adrian Fenty: bring on the carnival. What city has
more fantastic material than Washington? It may
not be a religious enclave, but Washington knows
how to fake religion.
Small towns in
Portugal use carnival to speak truth to power; why
can't Washington, DC? Is it too mean-spirited, too
unable to take a joke? The threat of ridicule at
carnival might rein in excesses, perhaps an
invasion.
Imagine the floats. Attorney
General Alberto Gonzales, dressed as the Grim
Reaper, axes dedicated prosecutors who pursue
corruption scandals. Or Vice President Dick Cheney
the Hunter stalking Joe Wilson, who blew the
whistle on the Niger-Iraq uranium fiction, and his
wife, outed Central Intelligence Agency operative
Valerie Wilson. Perhaps Scooter Libby, dressed as
a goat, will be Cheney's prey?
Tribunals
for terror suspects - suspects with Rip Van Winkle
beards - could sport the robes of the Spanish
Inquisition. Former New York Times reporter Judith
Miller, as Joan of Arc in jail eating bonbons,
entertaining neo-con admirers in an unlocked cell.
Doug Feith and Paul Wolfowitz as chefs, cooking a
vat of intelligence.
And carnival's
traditional spoofing of sex roles. Don't get DC
started (run for it, pages!). Dubya, dressed in
black vinyl, cracking his whip at hooded detainees
in Guantanamo.
Religion is a carnival
target. I foresee a takeoff on Alfred Hitchcock's
The Birds, with Kansas Senator Sam
Brownback ravaged by Charles Darwin's finches.
Revelers might pay homage to the hilarity
of Dubya's White House Press Corps Gridiron skit,
where he searched for weapons of mass destruction
under his desk. But now he looks for a Bill of
Rights in Iraq. Or one in the US, if his
surveillance schemes prevail. How about the latest
conservative estimate of the true cost of Iraq,
US$1.2 trillion, in play money going into a giant
shredder, dispersing carnival confetti to the
crowd? What the hell, use real money.
The
problem with satire, of course, is that it can
only sustain so much tragedy before it turns sour.
But consider carnival's pagan roots, to
rites of spring, chasing the winter demons, to
hopeful fertility, to planting anew. Irrepressible
despite authority's many stompings, when carnival
collided with the Church, it took on themes of
redemption and renewal. The carnival spirit,
burned in effigy, departs taking the woes of the
year, leaving all with a clean slate.
Has
there ever been a city more in need of a do-over
than Washington, DC?
Skip
Kaltenheuser is a writer in Washington, DC.
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beneath the crown of the Statue of Liberty,
about which crawled wormy critters in turbans
(none of them depicting the Prophet
Mohammed, I swear). 
groped a peeved
Statue of Liberty, followed by a padlocked White
House atop which stood Uncle Sam throwing blood
sausages to a crowd roaring approval. 
