“Poor Elijah’s Almanack” is written by Peter Berger of Mount Holly, who taught English and history for 30 years.
When Poor Elijah founded the Emperor’s Academy, he intended our awards as celebrations of absurdity. In his experience, few enterprises match public education’s flair for farce.
Last year, however, the academy voted to refocus on the machinations of American government and politics. We’ve reapplied the legend of the famously naked emperor and his admirers, believing its lessons about pride, stupidity, ambition, deceit and misplaced trust are now more desperately needed in our government than in our schools.
Our 2022 presentations begin at a judiciary committee hearing where Sen. Ted Cruz complained that the FBI characterizes protesters as “militia violent extremists” based on flags and other historical symbols. FBI Director Christopher Wray responded with the bureau’s standard clarification that “a symbol alone is not considered evidence of violent extremism” and should be assessed in the context of other statements and activities.
Sen. Cruz noted that the Gonzales battle flag, an emblem of Texas’s war for independence from Mexico, appears on the FBI’s list of likely militia symbols. Then while the gallery watched spellbound, he reached down and produced his boot, which he banged dramatically on his desktop. There on the boot for all the world to see was the factory-stitched Gonzalez flag label. Sen. Cruz announced he was “self-reporting” that he wears his Gonzalez boots to the Senate every day. His point, of course, was that any FBI protocol that identified him, a senator above reproach, as a possible militia extremist obviously “makes no sense.”
The academy appreciates the senator’s boot-label confession. We also recall that last October, Sen. Cruz expressed his willingness to secede from the Union if Democrats “fundamentally destroy the country” by adding justices to the Supreme Court or “(making) D.C. a state.” He promised that Texas would “take” NASA, the military and its oil with it if it secedes.
For Sen. Cruz’s glib readiness to launch a civil war, and for his shoe-banging homage to Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet Union’s Cold War premier famous for pounding his shoe at the United Nations, we present the Nikita Khrushchev Commemorative 8×10 Picture Frame, complete with a Photoshopped portrait of Khrushchev, Cruz and Jefferson Davis, another United States senator who was willing to consider secession.
Moving to the First Amendment, Rep. Lauren Boebert mounted a crusade against the separation of church and state. She’s “tired” of that “junk” and irate that the “separation” phrase comes from a “stinking letter” and isn’t even in the Constitution. She’s referring to a stinking letter from Thomas Jefferson. He wrote to assure Baptists in Connecticut that “religion is a matter which lies solely between Man and his God.” His letter also quotes the First Amendment.
The amendment states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The first half means the government can’t set up an official national religion or favor a particular religion, its rituals or its doctrine. The second half means the government can’t keep me from worshipping according to my beliefs and conscience.
It certainly doesn’t mean, as Rep. Boebert claims, that “the church is supposed to direct the government.”
To Boebert’s colleague Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green for championing “Christian nationalism,” to their ally Gov. Ron DeSantis for imposing “real history” on Florida’s students, and to Rep. Boebert herself for growing “tired” of other Americans’ religious liberty, the academy bestows its Salem Religious Freedom Dunking Chair.
The academy also salutes Rep. Boebert’s reply to calls for gun safety laws following mass casualty shootings: “When 9/11 happened, we didn’t ban planes.” Actually, we did ban planes temporarily. In the long term, we made it far more difficult for passengers to gain access to planes and cockpits. We also compiled lists of people who, based on their past behavior, are prohibited from boarding planes. For inadvertently suggesting we apply these post-9/11 precautions to guns, Rep. Boebert takes home the Gracie Allen Impeccable Logic Prize.
Honorable mention goes to the near-majority of surveyed Republican voters who agreed that “mass murders” are “something we have to accept as part of a free society.” The academy notes that mass murders are less common in free societies where guns are less common.
The 2022 Distinguished Priorities Cross spotlights Rep. Matt Gaetz for his declaration that unattractive women “who look like a thumb” shouldn’t complain about losing their right to abortions because they have “the least likelihood of getting pregnant.” Congressman Gaetz is currently under investigation for sex trafficking.
In a late-breaking development, a second DPC honors a Florida judge for ruling that a sixteen-year-old parentless girl can’t have an abortion because she isn’t “sufficiently mature” to make the decision to terminate her pregnancy. She is, however, apparently mature enough to raise a child.
In the recent primary election campaign, contingents of Democrats provided material support to the Trumpiest GOP candidates in the hope that outrageous MAGA partisans would win their primaries but then lose the general election to less outrageous Democrats. Those Democratic operatives’ willingness to risk placing the Republican Party’s most committed fascists, racists, liars and lunatics one step closer to elective office earned the Andrew Johnson Political Wisdom Laurel.
The academy next recognizes Republican Congressional candidate Carl Paladino for proclaiming Adolf Hitler “the kind of leader we need today.” Mr. Paladino also opined that Attorney General Merrick Garland “probably should be executed” for obtaining the Mar-a-Lago search warrant. Although he subsequently distanced himself from both statements, Mr. Paladino’s unredacted first intentions win 2022’s Diogenes Medallion. Honorable mention goes to Sean Hannity for reminding us in a discussion of his friend Donald Trump’s legal problems that “being a felon is not a disqualification” for the presidency.
Competition for our final honor, the George Orwell Creative Use of Language Award, is always fierce. Last year we toasted progressives for replacing the word “mothers” with the “gender-ambiguous” term “birthing people.”
At first, the odds-on 2022 Orwell winner was former Vice President Mike Pence for his stunning assertion that “never in (his) lifetime” had he seen a president lie as much as — wait for it — Joe Biden.
We are every day awash in lies. But rather than focus on lies as they’re spoken, it’s those lies as they’re heard that merit our attention.
That’s why this year’s Orwell belongs to each of us. We are responsible for what we say. But we’re just as accountable for what we do with what we hear.
Even Poor Elijah and me.
