Pelosi's San Francisco Values

By Will Durst, AlterNet. Posted November 13, 2006.

Hope you were hanging on to something solid Tuesday night because this country lurched so hard to the left, half of Washington woke up with a wicked case of whiplash on Wednesday. No, make that most of Washington. And all of K Street. And the Republicans should be grateful. Because if it weren't for Democratic persistence they wouldn't still be able to file for protection under the Endangered Species Act.

The electoral semi-tsunami means new Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi is next in line after Dick Cheney in Presidential succession. In other words, she's only two chicken bones away from the Presidency. And Bush does not look like a picky eater. Does the term unchewed pretzel have any meaning here? Not to mention one loud noise takes Cheney out like that, leading to... President Pelosi. And to conservatives, that's got to be scarier than a raw meat bathing suit in a shark tank.

Since she's the human embodiment of what right wing talk show hosts refer to as (cue theme music from Psycho) the extreme agenda of San Francisco values, people all over the country have to be curious as to exactly what are these alarming values? Glad you asked. Pull up a chair, plop the kids in front of "CSI: Topeka" and let me tell you about Ms Pelosi and the den of iniquity she represents and passes as the city named after Saint Francis of Assisi.

For those who can't wait to get Nancy Pelosi down on the ground to shave her head and expose her horns, I regret to inform you, they aren't there. She's a kindly old grandma now, and although she does smile like some fiend is twisting a knobby pole inserted up her butt, the ironic part is, in San Francisco, this supposedly frighteningly extreme liberal is considered a moderate and is often protested by leftist factions claiming she's too deep in the mainstream and has sold out. And yeah, there are factions here that believe the same is true of Fidel.

The best way to analyze The City, as we call ourselves, is to look to the movies. Like in "The Wizard of Oz," when Dorothy says, "we're not in Kansas anymore," that's our motto. Then, at the end of "Peter Pan," where Tinkerbell almost dies and the only thing that can save her is audience applause. Well, that's us too. We're not Kansas and we clap for fairies. So what? Big deal. Who cares?

What we believe in are the rights of the individual. Our biggest moral flaw is we hate judgmental people, a bit of an internal fallacy, I'll admit. We do go out of our way not to place restrictions on people or their actions or religions or appearances. When you think about it, what they're really afraid of is the freedoms that citizens of San Francisco enjoy. That's right, they hate us for our freedoms.

We may be part of America, but we're the exception that proves the rule. You've heard of "thinking outside the box?" Well, we outlawed corners. We're as far beyond that whole red/ blue thing as a sperm whale is beyond a toothpick. We're not blue. We're indigo. Eggplant. Plum. Aubergine. Periwinkle. And yes, a large percentage of us do know the difference between aubergine and periwinkle. And recent revelations seem to suggest that a large percentage of Americans do know the difference between hope and hopeless. And we are no longer the last pocket of resistance.

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Will Durst is a political comic, syndicated columnist, AM radio talk show host and defense liability.

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