Here are two types of "civil" "servants" prominent in the Bush era.
A. The Moronotron. Just under 30 years old, he/she (let's say she) comes from a large family of home-schooled children, five of whom are still active in the LifeForce Harvest Church of Milan, Ohio, pastored by the Reverend Mike. Family trauma (one of her brothers committed suicide; another had to be disowned when he moved to San Francisco with his friend Gabe; her mother recently entered alcohol rehab) has only strengthened her faith. She graduated from Brethren College, where students and faculty bask in an "authentic relationship with the Lord," with an honors degree in Christian Communication. After Brethren, she attended law school at Regent University, where she chaired the debate team and counseled pregnant teens. She was making fundraising calls for the Santorum campaign in 2004 when she was offered the position of assistant undersecretary for policy in HHS -- her roommate's cousin was a fraternity brother of a 'prayer partner' of Lynne Cheney's aunt Sylvia's husband. As White House liaison, she "relayed" information from the President's "closest advisers" to the Secretary. Now undersecretary of HHS, she oversees 160,000 employees and a budget of 800 gajillion dollars. She is unmarried and doesn't date, enjoys Fruit Loops, and someday, when her life is less busy, hopes to travel to third-world countries to bring good news to the unenlightened.
B. The Henchdoofus. He is now close to 60, a graduate of the Chadron State College in Chadron, Nebraska, with a degree in marketing. At Chadron, he captained the cheerleading squad and made a complete recovery from the illnesses (depression, fatigue, etc.) that made it impossible to for him serve in the military during the Vietnam era. He joined Exxon Mobil right out of college. He had worked his way up to a moderate-sized cubicle when he left to head up Patriotic Americans For Clean Energy (wholly funded by Exxon). PACE lobbied for a "balanced approach to offshore oil drilling." In 2000, President Bush appointed him chair of the Advisory Council of the Food Safety and Inspection Service. In 2001, he founded a K Street lobbying firm called ACS Associates which had as its principal client the American Melamine Council. ACS (from which his wife Christine continues to draw a $30,000 monthly stipend) is often credited with the resurgence of profits of both the melamine and the pet-food industries. He was recently appointed Undersecretary for Nutrition Policy in the Department of Agriculture. He's a dedicated environmentalist and hunter, and enjoys the wilderness in his SUV, his ATV, and especially in his Arctic Cat Panther 360 snowmobile equipped with an ATN 24x75LU peak performance titanium night vision telescope mounted on a Remington X-40 high-powered assault rifle.
Comments