Move Over Mel Gibson: Here's "The Passion of Dean." [View All]

[David Zephyr]

"Hi. I'm Howard Dean and I represent the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party." Remember that?

Those were some of the most refreshing words I could have heard early last year from the good Governor of Vermont. Someone had heard us! Someone had sensed our great anger. It was as if someone had grabbed the national public address system and announced there would be revolution in the cafeteria during lunch break.

Doctor Dean became Prophet Dean. He became the voice of one crying in the wilderness against a stupid war. He railed against tax cuts for the lords and rulers. He barked about punitive new laws against teachers. And he raised his voice against the vilest legislation in the last 100 years: the Patriot Act. No doubt about it: Howard Dean's meteoric rise was a direct response to his channeling our passion, anger and disillusionment.

And Dean shook up the landscape like a prophet of old, calling down fires from the heavens and slaying the demons of compromise and fear of the king. But, we all know what happens to prophets who point out the error of their own people's ways, don't we?

There is this marvelous Old Russian Proverb that is applicable here: The tallest sunflower always gets picked first.

Damn. We were a mighty tall sunflower, weren’t we?

But in the darkened, musky and dank hallways of power, the whispers of disapproval had become a snarling roar.

And what a roar! “How dare this rabble insinuate that we are pro-war? How dare these outsiders suggest that we are anything less than caring, liberal, pacifists? How dare them call us "Bush Lite"? And for just a brief moment, Canadian blood pressure medications were reported to be outselling Viagra within the sacred halls of Congress.

Yes, the entire Washington Establishment including the Washington Democrats and the DLC were not exactly, how shall we say, humored any longer by the fact that one their very own had gone off the reservation and was telling tales out of school. “Good God, man, he’s talking about us!” Something had to be done. Things were simply getting way out of hand.

And so, it was then that the long knives came out and were distributed. Everyone dutifully knew what role they would have to play in the slaying of the Prophet.

"Let it be clearly understood that at any minute," it was said, "this mad Prophet Dean might arrive with his swelling mob of the dispossessed and dismissed carrying palm leaves and screaming hosanna, hosanna and cross over the Potomac and sweep us and our privileges all away. Stop him we must. Stop him, now!"

And then, from a place called Iowa came the scream from our prophet. They were killing him. The prophet’s scream was played over and over throughout the land so as to make certain that we all understood that he had been sacrificed.

And so, dear friends, yes they paid us back. Perhaps we poked our fingers in their eyes just a few times too many. In any event, they rolled us. We never had a chance.

And so here many of us are now: bloodied and hanging outside the walls of the city, strung up high in the air so that all who pass by us are certain to get the message, "Don't Mess With Al From and the DLC, Baby".