The Hammer Dance: A Terrifying Update

I come before you today as a Reformed Retired Educator, friend to all animals and several people the world over, lover to Fred, overseer to La Bonne et Belle Bianca Castafiore, obsessed with bot fly larvae.

So hold on to your chair, grip the pew with your swarthy but-tocks, or whatever. (When I plug in but-tocks over at the Dictionary of Etymology? The ads called up by my interest in the origins of butt were: "Mercy for Sexual Abuse," and "Search for Sex Offenders!" Jesus, can't a person have a non-prurient interest in butt? What is exponentially more worrisome, however, are the two ads encouraging me to invest with Wells Fargo...)

Anyway, back to the Saved Me. I am pleased to present the first Biblical quote to grace the virtual pages of elle est belle la seine la seine elle est belle:

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. I Cor. 13:11

Whoa, Nelly!

The precise moment to which I ascribe my salvation?

It began at the 13 second mark of this YouTube vid:




Since there has been a groundswell of searches for the twinkle-toed version of Tom Delay (and since groundswells have been known to herald a mob) -- I'm reposting this glancing jab that was first published on 8 August.

Your eyes should be refocusing about... NOW. Some saline drops will help, somewhat. Of course, the best treatment is rest, and corrective progressive politics.
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So I am reading Important Stuff on Media Matters for America -- exercising my liberal knee-jerk and nod muscles -- when it fairly leaps off the page, this startling news that Tom DeLay has been cast for the upcoming season of ABC's Dancing With The Stars.

Okay, go ahead and gloat. Oh-so-au-courant you knew about the new cast five days ago. Major Whoop. I am not ashamed to have missed this bit of breaking news. I mean, we live in a cultural mecca right here in Marlinspike Hall, nestled deep, deep in the heart of the historic (and ever-newsworthy, though very décédé) Tête de Hergé. The television doings of the United States of America? At most a brief, luminous blip on our radar.

We do lay claim, after all, to La Bonne et Belle Bianca Castafiore. She's nothing to sneeze at.* At which she is nothing to sneeze? A bas, la grammaire!

Still, DeLay's latest is intriguing news, and I am barely awake, so let's go with it, shall we?

The most relevant cultural question almost poses itself: Will he do The Hammer Dance? (The Castafiore recommends that Tom take a gander at the MC Ventura instructional videos. See below.)

I was unfamiliar with Cheryl Burke, but it seems that her pairing with the Tomster is quite advantageous. I guess every contestant is paired with a pro? I dunno. I do know that she is the number one googled "Cheryl" at the moment, beating out Tiegs, Hines, Cole, Ladd, Miller, Richardson, and Crow. The result of my googling revealed her specialty to be ballroom, her Emmy nominations to have been for choreography, her back ramrod straight, and her values in pristeen condition for our Sugar Land Boy.

Why, she recently was honored by the Equal Employment Opportunities Committees of Actors’ Equity Association (AEA) and American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA), and the Ethnic Employment Opportunities Committee of Screen Actors Guild (SAG) at the 7th annual Ivy Bethune Tri-Union Diversity Awards for her encouragement of "children of all ethnicities to express themselves through movement." DeLay must have been instrumental in that -- he is all about diversity and equal opportunity. Lives and breathes it.

Think of him in the Marianas, and his friendship with a culturally divergent Abramoff! Cheryl can twinkle her toes in confidence that her partner looked after the welfare of the Saipan workforce, mostly immigrants from China, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. He made sure they recieved barely half U.S. minimum hourly wage. He guaranteed them a life behind barbed wire, in magnificent squalor, minus plumbing. DeLay knew the value of hard work and sought to legitimize their 12-hour work day, and their 7-day work week.

I am sure that had DeLay been in touch with his twinkle-toed side back then, the Marianas' textile workers would have used their breaktime to practice a "Spanish-influenced cha-cha, popular among the Chamorros" or might have stretched their tight muscles with "the 'stick dance,' a Carolinian import combining stick beating and foot shuffling." Cheryl may want to brush up on the personal inclinations of her Island Man!

DeLay traveled with his family and staff to the Marianas, where golf and snorkeling were enjoyed.DeLay fully approved of the working and living conditions. The Texan’s salute to the owners and Abramoff’s government clients was recorded by ABC-TV News: “You are a shining light for what is happening to the Republican Party, and you represent everything that is good about what we are trying to do in America and leading the world in the free-market system.” Later, DeLay would tell The Washington Post’s Juliet Eilperin that the low-wage, anti-union conditions of the Marianas constituted “a perfect petri dish of capitalism. It’s like my Galapagos Island.”

I can't say that ABC has garnered a new viewer in me with this move, though. It would take more than Tom DeLay to glue me to the tube to watch white-knuckled dancing.

Wait. What?

What's that you say?

Chuck Liddell? CHUCKY BABY? Nooooooo! Say it ain't so! Oh, now... that puts a new spin on the whole deal...

*Ted Nesbitt opines: NOT TO BE SNEEZED AT – “…People in older times imagined that a sneeze cleared the mind. It certainly gave them a feeling of exhilaration. Suddenly, 17th century Europe caught a craze for sneezing. It was considered the right thing to do in good society. Indeed, the more you sneezed, the more you proved yourself a member of the privileged class. To build up this new status symbol, all kinds of devices were used. It was soon realized that snuff caused sneezing. Therefore everyone who was someone carried with him a little box, containing a mixture of sneeze-producing herbs or tobacco. By drawing an ample pinch of it into the nostrils, a hearty sneeze resulted in no time. Of course only the rich and idle had time to sneeze or could afford snuff. Hence the self-induced sneeze became synonymous with aristocratic living. If you were able to sneeze ‘on call,' you showed audibly your status in society. But one matter had still to be decided. Just to sneeze haphazardly was not good enough. There had to be a special occasion. Soon sneezing became part of men's conversation. You indulged in it whenever you wanted to show your disapproval of anything said or, even more so, your lack of interest in the matter discussed. A sneeze was an unmistakable way of saying politely ‘you bore me.' Consequently and logically, anything ‘not to be sneezed at' was something really worthwhile.”

Achoo?

Meh!