Worst American Birthdays, vol. X

Shortly after the new millennium failed to bring the Son of Man roaring back on a steed of fire, Tom DeLay thoughtfully pondered the nation’s future. He was optimistic that eight years of distracted, feculent Clintonian rule would be replaced by a more god-fearing enterprise devoted to something more pious than round-the-clock sodomy, perjury, and stifling regulatory maneuvers that redounded only to the benefit of environmentalism’s pagan gods. DeLay himself had known something of the darker side of life. His raucous, youthful indiscretions got him expelled from Baylor University during the heady days of the late 1960s, and by all accounts he received many a hot tub hand job while serving in Texas’ House of Representatives from 1978 to 1984. An erstwhile alcoholic who exchanged his martini glass for a hymnal in 1985, DeLay wiped the froth and scum from his upper lip and ascended the ranks of Congress. Though only midway between five and six feet tall, Tom DeLay was a fearsome thug — a human sack of doorknobs wielded on behalf of Republican causes. Sphincters trembled in his presence.

Now, as he prayed for the political fortunes of another ex-drunk, Delay asked:

Will this country accept the worldviews of humanism, materialism, sexism, naturalism, postmodernism or any of the other -isms? Or will we march forward with a biblical worldview, a worldview that says God is our creator, that man is a sinner, and that we will save this country by changing the hearts and minds of Americans? . . . We have the House and the Senate. All we need is the presidency!

Less than a year later, the elvish DeLay had his answer. Having temporarily ceded its electoral powers to the unelected justices of the United States Supreme Court, the nation declared itself by the slimmest of margins for Jesus and George W. Bush. Tom DeLay saw that this was good, rallying quickly to do exactly what the Lord of Hosts commanded of him — rollbacks on corporate and upper-bracket taxes; corporate lobbying junkets financed by oil gangsters; forced pregnancy for the poor; distracting legislative posturing on behalf of brain-dead mascots for the “culture of life”; illegal redistricting schemes; and stratospheric personal corruption.

Tom DeLay celebrates his 60th birthday today, his second under federal indictment.