The tragedy that is Zell Miller

August 20, 2005

Guest Post by Morbo

In Sinclair Lewis’ book about the coming of fascism in America, “It Can’t Happen Here,” a character named Adelaide Tarr Gimmitch eagerly serves the crypto-fascist Sen. Buzz Windrip by rallying the women of America to his self-serving brand of phony populism.

When Windrip is elected president, Gimmitch expects a big payoff and lets it be known that she would like a cabinet position. Instead, she is offered the slot of customs inspector in Nome, Alaska.

I thought about Gimmitch lately when I read the news that Zell Miller has been appointed to a seat on the American Battle Monuments Commission.

Miller sold out his party, his constituents and his country — and this is all he gets? I thought for sure he’d be named ambassador to the Seychelles.

Miller says he’s eager for the job and noted that it won’t take up much of his time. This is important, because that will give Miller plenty of time for his full-time gig as a performing monkey in the Religious Right’s circus. (Anyone catch his act during “Justice Sunday II”? All that was missing was the little red embroidered jacket and tiny fez.)

Zell Miller was a popular Democrat in a conservative state. He could have used his powers for good, not evil. He could have stood up for the poor residents in the rural parts of Georgia. He could have been a true populist. He could have rebuked the powers that be for creating a system that leaves the common man behind as the superrich pile up more and more wealth. Miller claims to take his religion seriously. Great. He could have cited the New Testament and the teachings of Jesus as he undertook this crusade. It would have been something to see.

Instead, he threw it all away because not enough courthouses are displaying the Ten Commandments.

Miller said he plans to write a book about Appalachia. That enraged me. I can tell already what type of book it will be — one that extols the “culture war” issues that for so long have convinced so many in this unfortunate part of the country to vote against their own interests. (I know; I was born there.) In short, it will raise the old right-wing bogeymen of God, guns and gays. This powerful trinity has misled many rural folks. How else can you explain dirt-poor blue collars workers living in substandard housing supporting a party that wants to abolish Social Security?

You get one shot at this life. As you prepare to die, you might, if you’re lucky, be lucid enough to take stock of how you lived. Most of us, never having had the chance to take part in public life as Miller did, won’t have much to answer for that goes beyond our own intimate circle of family and friends.

Miller will. Miller was given a rare opportunity to make life better for lots of people, to make a difference, to stand up against injustice, to raise some hell. He threw it away, choosing instead to make a fuss about raunchy rap lyrics.

As legacies go, it’s beyond lame.

Well done. He complains that our government does not warn people of the dangers of living a sinful life. Personally, I prefer a politician who is concerned with the Here and Now, and not preoccupied with the Hereafter.

  • Excellent rant, Morbo, and dead-on for the Zellout Man.

    I tend to believe that his sell out has a lot more to do with hurt feelings, that he became a member of the minority party and lost his power and prestige, than with real concern about “values” – whatever the hell that means to this callous man. Seriously, how can he proclaim to be a Christian when his actions DIRECTLY lead to people starving, or being homeless, or hungry, or not having a “good Samaritan” to care for them when they are sick?

    Instead, he goes over to the dark side, where the money and power are, and that makes him feel good. Shame on his pathetic old and hard-hearted ass. He is probably what all of the Dixiecrats used to be, who reveled in their “white power”, and never forgave LBJ for “selling them out.” Most of these white racists sold out long ago when they voted for and helped Reagan start to tear down the New Deal. Zell just hid it a little longer, since it took longer for the voting rights and other reforms to affect him personally in his insular abode way down there in the deep, deep South in Georgia.

    On the inside, Zell is the Picture of Dorian Gray; old, evil, cold, bitter, and myopic.The surprising part is that he has had so many opportunities to serve the public, but instead now figures it’s his time to cash in on the gravy train. That is the very definition of selfish, and it fits perfectly with Bush’s oxymoronic “ownership society” where if you’ve got your piece of the pie, then that proves that God has blessed you, and you therefore don’t need to bother with that “Thy Brother’s Keeper” thing that Jesus demands of us.

    Just another Lying.Fucking.Bastard.

  • Zell comes straight out of that hopeless tradition of “There’ll be pie in the sky by and by” and finding happiness through “a grave on the green hillside”. The kind of which makes people identify themselves in that hideous lyric from “Amazing Grace”: “… that saved a wretch like me.” All that stuff from The Heavenly Highway Hymnal about overlooking those “oth-ers liv-ing a-bout us, nev-er mol-est-ed tho in the wrong” and chanting “We’ll un-der-stand it all by and by.” And who can ever forget that immortal lyric: “Thank God for the blood / That washes as white as snow”?

    Lyrics like that have made countless numbers of poor people knuckle under and get by, enabling those like Miller who manipulate such people to live relatively pleasant lives themselves. The ethos is even looked upon fondly for the “sense of community” or even “righteousness” which such shared mindless chants provides. Unless you’re a minority (gay, independent woman, doubter, uppity black), in which case you provide a target around which the faithful can further re-inforce their sense of being right through ceremonial torment of the deviant.

    It’s a pretty sick picture. One which I’ve never understood in light of nearly everything Jesus is reported to have actually said and done. “Eye of the needle”, “blessed are the poor”, “love one another”, “do unto the least of these”, feeding the hungry, driving the moneychangers out of the temple, referring to the pharisees as “whitened sepulchers”, etc.

    Republicans (who are holier than we) like to ridicule Karl Marx’s “Religion is the opiate of the masses.” In fact, that phrase comes at the end of an interesting paragraph which could really be considered a tribute to religion:

    Religious suffering is at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

    It’s primarily a pain killer, one which diverts people from taking real-world steps to improve their lot (with the rare exception of a Martin Luther King, Jr. who did protest in the name of religion).

    The Democrats haven’t needed to compromise with Dixiecrats since 1964 and the Voting Rights Act. They need to learn how to remind voters where there real interests lie, how few the controlling billionaires are. They need to expose what Marx called “false consciousness” – the peculiar notions of what constitutes patriotism (this world) and religion (next world) as viewed by the ruling class and their trained monkies, e.g., Zell Miller.

  • Ed,

    Thanks for the history lesson, especially on the Marx quote. I’ve seen the “opium of the masses” line hundreds of times, almost without exception in a denigrating and certainly in a derogatory manner/context. There was always something about that short four word quote that bothered me, although I could never figure it out — and it wasn’t simply that I consider myself to be a religious man and therefore merely took umbrage at the snub to an important part of my life and my character.

    Now I know what has bothered me: those four words were QOOC’ed — Quoted Out Of Context. The sheer dishonesty of those who seek to belittle or refuse to have rational discussions about religion resort to these kinds of cheap tricks, of turning something benign or even positive into a “spit-in-your-face” epithet.

    IF one puts those four words together with the preceding sentences — as you did, Ed, in your Comment — then it IS a positive tribute to religion. Thanks for setting me — and all the damn miscreats who would use religion as a club against those who have faith in a diety — straight!

  • And let’s not forget that attaching the name Karl Marx to that quote is a lightning rod in and of itself. His name is akin to the anti-Christ vis a vis the capitalist foundation of this nation.

    Again, it’s another example of how the far right consistently invokes very sensitive hot buttons to disparage its opponents. They’ll call someone a communist, an atheist, a baby killer, a traitor, a homosexual, a (fill in the blank) in order to convince others of the absolutely evil intentions of their opponents. They play on people’s fears, the greatest of which for many people is the fear of God. The saddest commentary on human behavior is that this tactic works, time after time after time.

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