Watching the Sausage Makers
[Guest post by Jack Dunphy]
Everyone has heard the old saw about people who like sausage and respect the law should never watch either of them being made. I’ve never had occasion to observe the sausage-making process, but as it happens two of my siblings long ago had summer jobs at a slaughterhouse here in the Los Angeles area. For as long as they held those jobs I was regaled almost daily with tales from the “kill floor” and other aspects of the operation that saw livestock go in one end of the building and packaged meat products come out the other. It was those tales, together with the peculiar aroma that seemed stubbornly to cling to my brother and sister even after their after-work showers, that often had me feeling less than at my ease when sitting down to find my plate decked out with pork products.
But none of the tales I heard from my brother and sister, of people slipping about on hogs’ entrails, and of “no part of the animal going to waste,” if you dare to imagine what that might mean, none of it even begins to compare with the gory spectacle we observed this week in Washington. Indeed, if the sausage-making process were revealed to be anywhere near as gruesome as that which produced what has been labeled “health care reform,” demand for sausages would cease overnight.
The health care debate has brought a level of attention to Congress that has seldom been seen, and the light that now shines on our elected representatives is in most cases not a flattering one. Before this circus began, how many Americans would have recognized Nancy Pelosi if she stood up in their soup? Not one in a hundred, I suspect, but now lots and lots of people have had the chance to observe and form conclusions about the Speaker’s demeanor, and my guess is that few of these newly introduced Americans are comforted in the knowledge that Mrs. Pelosi is second in the line of succession to the presidency.
And as for the lesser lights of Congress, it should now be clear to those who heretofore had paid little attention to the goings-on of Washington that a disturbing number of Members are neither especially bright nor especially principled. That so many of them could be threatened, bribed, or cajoled into voting for this monstrosity over the clearly expressed will of the American people is, quite literally, frightening.
It took some time, but I did come to enjoy sausages again. It will be much, much longer before I can respect Congress.
–Jack Dunphy