Feast of Fools: Washington Style

This years Feast of Fools lived up to its name:



President Obama at the annual White House Congressional picnic invited guests to dunk Robert Gibbs, Rahm Emanuel and Peter Orszag. The President also joined in the fun. June 25, 2009.

The Medieval custom of the Feast of Fools was best dramatized in the opening chapters of Victor Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris:

It was, in fact, somewhat hard, and we have already hinted at it on the second page of this book,--for him, Charles de Bourbon, to be obliged to feast and receive cordially no one knows what bourgeois;--for him, a cardinal, to receive aldermen;--for him, a Frenchman, and a jolly companion, to receive Flemish beer-drinkers,--and that in public! This was, certainly, one of the most irksome grimaces that he had ever executed for the good pleasure of the king.

In the meantime, all the beggars, all the lackeys, all the cutpurses, joined with the scholars, had gone in procession to seek, in the cupboard of the law clerks' company, the cardboard tiara, and the derisive robe of the Pope of the Fools. Quasimodo allowed them to array him in them without wincing, and with a sort of proud docility. Then they made him seat himself on a motley litter. Twelve officers of the fraternity of fools raised him on their shoulders; and a sort of bitter and disdainful joy lighted up the morose face of the cyclops, when he beheld beneath his deformed feet all those heads of handsome, straight, well-made men. Then the ragged and howling procession set out on its march, according to custom, around the inner galleries of the Courts, before making the circuit of the streets and squares.

With President Mountebank, everyday is a carnival of liberty's destruction. The key difference is that in a more honest time, the Prince of Fools - Quasimodo - was grotesque on the outside, while being pure of heart on the inside. On the other hand, while the nation's leaders of today look (somewhat) as if they are normal men, their souls are hideously deformed and corrupted beyond all redemption by the malignant evil they have willingly chosen.

The supporters of Obama, Pelosi and their agenda are the fools, or worse.

Crossposted at The Dougout