Paper Machete 3

Here's what the Dean of Mean had to say on the subject of transparency:

Transparency. Transparency. Everybody wants more transparency.

“Transparency” is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as “the quality or condition of transparentness, perviousness to light, diaphaneity; pellucidity.”

In current parlance, however, it has come to mean “obscuring more selectively” or “adopting a virtuous posture while lying” or “screeching a hollow buzzword in formless accusation when anybody disagrees with me”.

Take for example the temptingly named Freedom of Information Act, which might well rename itself the Act Entitling Individual Citizens the Dubious Privilege of Wrangling With Sinister Bureaucrats Who Withhold Information With Undisguised Malice. A shitty acronym, maybe, but there it is.

According to the LA Times, the Obama administration, after campaign promises to create the most “open and transparent administration ever” has seen a 50% INCREASE over Bush in denied Freedom of Information requests during its first year. Mr. President, as a voter, I would ask you: “What the shit-fuck? What the shit-fuck-damn-hell, man?”

Words like “freedom”, and “information” once – and I promise I’m not making this up – had meaning. Meaning about which I as speaker and you as listener could, in substance, agree.

For example, I might say to you: “Man, is that Justin Beiber a vacant-eyed little succubus, or what? Where’s the ACCOUNTABILITY for his parents?” And you and I would AGREE that the appropriate level of ACCOUNTABILITY for Justin Beiber and his parents would be to lash them to cinder blocks and drown them in sewage.

But those days are behind us. Words have come to be hollow signifiers – empty bins into which we can pour whatever meaning suits us. Words have deteriorated to such a point where George Orwell is, like, going around and around really fast in that dead guy hole place underground. With the stone.

And you’re probably like “Zip it, Grandpa. Words don’t even, like… they aren’t even… (PAUSE) Shut up, Old Man.”

I hear you. You make the beginning of an excellent point. Words, as you start to suggest, are no longer our primary means of constructing and conveying meaning. Once we would gather around fires and tell stories, or lean into the lantern light and read words that had been chosen with care and significance and intention.

Now, though, we use words mostly as a means of tagging hilarious videos on YouTube. Like that one, where the bride and groom are dancing and he does that spin move and TOTALLY PUNCHES HER RIGHT IN THE FACE. Oh my God. Classic.

Because, hey, I’m a regular guy. I’m like you. I just want to RELAX, watch some hilarious nut-punch videos and eat me a KFC Double Down while releasing a loose coil of turd into my diaper.

But so Transparency. We live in a world where a guy named Vikram Pandit who is the CEO of fucking Citigroup – which has been pounding the ass of the global marketplace with a razor wire dildo – can give a speech at Columbia University calling for greater accountability and transparency in the banking sector.

Vikram Pandit, who in 2009 “earned” $128 MILLION, and used to run Morgan Motherfucking Stanley, gets up IN PUBLIC and says to an IVY LEAGUE AUDIENCE with A STRAIGHT FACE that Citigroup is undergoing a "process of soul searching."

If statements were explosives, this would be a bunker buster that burrows into the earth, finds the truth where it hides in limestone caves, and pummels it to dust.

When you utter with apparent sincerity a phrase like “Citigroup is doing a lot a soul-searching”, your head should go off like a wet firecracker. When you use “Citigroup” and “soul-searching” in the same PARAGRAPH, the earth should open up a rectum of fire beneath your feet and burn you to a sulphurous little nugget, and then we as a society should bronze that nugget and put it on a pedestal out front of the newly erected Temple of Thieves Who Lined Their Pockets With The Tear-Stained Dreams of Your Grandchildren.

But for sheer testicular density, Vikram Pandit’s balls look like they are made of fucking CORK compared to the epic pair of nads swinging between Don Blankenship’s legs. Blankenship is the head of Massey fucking Energy, the company that owns the Upper Big Branch Mine in West Virginia that about a month ago erupted in a 2-mile fireball that killed 29 guys.

Blankenship testified before a Congressional committee this week – Congressional testimony being maybe the most ritualized enactment of Transparency we have in this country – and instead of saying something like: “Thank you guys so seriously much for not charging me with manslaughter,” he not only DEFENDS his company’s abysmal safety record, he goes on to ACCUSE the Mine Safety Agency of CAUSING the buildup of methane and coal dust that caused the explosion. So not ONLY does Blankenship have Satan’s cock in his mouth, but he must really know what he’s doing, because he is just COATED in Satanic magma spooge.

His blaming regulators is like a Catholic priest taking the pulpit and saying: “It’s not my FAULT I keep porking your sons. If there was a better SYSTEM for monitoring me at the choirboy buffet you have insisted on inviting me to, I could just about GUARANTEE you a 30% reduction in the number of your sons that I rape in the coming year.”

Or, hey, local politics. Hizzoner Mayor Daley has launched an effort to post on the City of Chicago website the names of journalists who file Freedom of Information requests with the City. Which seems aimed at putting journalists on a par with registered sex offenders. For this HEROIC dedication to Transparency, I propose giving Mayor Daley a plaque that reads: “In recognition of Richard M. Daley, for his tireless service to Obstruction, without which the shit-speckled sausage of governance could not be made, we hereby pledge our continued inexplicable allegiance.”

Or the headline: “Facebook Backlash Sparks Transparency Tools”. Facebook, which was BORN for the sole purpose of telling each other frivolous horseshit about ourselves, has now come under fire for not telling us who they’re telling our frivolous horseshit to. Which, apparently, is very upsetting. Since the frivolous horseshit has tremendous and lasting value.

Or, finally, the world of sports. Tiger Woods. Tiger Woods giving that press conference. About all the skeevy ladies. And getting beaten with a nine-iron by his wife. And the car crash.

And all the skeevy, skeevy ladies. I think its fair to say that if we represented these ladies as a pie chart, the largest wedge would be Chlamydia. As an example of Transparency, Tiger’s willingness to step to the podium and wallow for the cameras in the genital carnival that his life has become, pretty much sets the gold standard for Transparency. The gold, pube-encrusted standard.

In these waning days of the republic, we would all do well to pause for a the super hilarious videos we would rather be watching, and reflect upon the example of Transparency Tiger provides. We should heed Tiger’s wise counsel by following in his footsteps: we should each of us dip our penises into the most disease-ridden puddle of low self-esteem we can find, we should then get caught, and finally we should make an empty-eyed show of contrition.

Except that we don’t have anything like Tiger’s money, so when we do this, it’ll be more like a segment on Maury or an episode of Cheaters.

For I believe THAT is how Thomas Jefferson would have wanted it. THAT’S what our Founders wished for each of us: a televised ambush shouting match that pits us against one another for the fleeting affections of some fat skank.

Only by following Tiger’s sterling example can we fulfill our nation’s truest destiny: which, if we extrapolate from current trends, is that we should each be locked in a bare-knuckled fight to the death over a rack of discarded ribs retrieved from a greasy puddle in the alley behind an Outback Steakhouse while our fellow citizens bet on the outcome, like a cockfight.