CYNTHIA MCKINNEY HAS RETURNED, AND I’M ECSTATIC

The Lord works in mysterious ways. After enduring the unending righteous indignation of Al, a former television network correspondent, and Barney (not his real name) who is a “charter coordinator” of something or other (he won’t tell me) in the Atlanta area, I was about ready to insert bamboo splints under my fingernails and find another line of work.

Al and Barney took great umbrage with my assertion in a recent column on the 9/11 terrorist attacks that self-proclaimed comedian Bill Maher said the terrorists were “heroes.” Score one for Al and Barney. In fact, Maher did not say that. He said they were “brave”, unlike the U.S. government, which he deemed “cowardly” for shooting missiles at long range instead of ramming airplanes into tall buildings. I stand corrected. I should have said that, in my most humble opinion, his Smugness conferred heroism on the terrorists for what they did. After all, aren’t heroes usually brave? Al and Barney think that I owe Bill Maher an apology. Bull feathers. Maher can kiss my bumbum. If this is all that Al, the network guy, and Barney, the charter coordinator, got out of that column, they are poster boys for my contention that we haven’t learned a damned thing from the terrorist attacks.

Fortunately, just as I was considering a change of careers to become John Edwards’ hairspray technician, I get word that our former ambassador to outer space and reigning welterweight champion of the U.S. Congress Cynthia McKinney is considering a return to the political arena. Thank you, Lord. I have missed her like a possum misses rotten squash. Without doing anything beyond inhaling air, the ambassador was worth a minimum of six columns a year. Let’s face it: Not even the most imaginative among us could ever visualize Congressman John Barrow or Nathan Deal standing on the aisle of the U.S. House of Representatives in high-top tennis shoes waiting to wet-kiss the president (any president) after the State of the Union address.

I went immediately to the ambassador’s Web site, www.allthingscynthiamckinney.com. She’s back and badder than ever, hawking leftover T-shirts and yard signs in order to reduce the campaign debt she accrued when voters of Georgia’s 4th District had a temporary jolt of sanity and threw her out of Congress, telling us more than we ever wanted to know about her hairdo, ranting like a street-corner preacher and informing us of myriad government plots occurring right under our noses. Alas, there is also a bit of bad news: McKinney has turned down the opportunity to run for president of the United States on the Green Party ticket. Bummer.

She says she just can’t take the time right now to be our commander-in-chief and leader of the free world because of “postponed personal priorities.” I have no idea what that means, but I suspect she didn’t relish the thought of being wet-kissed by yo-yo members of Congress trying to get themselves on national television. Plus, if she showed up at the Group of Eight summit wearing high-top tennis shoes, the guy from Japan would fall down laughing and we might have to go to war with them again.  That would get Bill Maher’s left-leaning drawers in a wad, and I would get more love letters from Al and Barney.

McKinney’s former campaign manager John Evans told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “I have no earthly idea what she plans to do.” That is because she isn’t thinking about Earth, Mr. Evans. As a veteran McKinney watcher, I can tell you that our former ambassador to outer space’s head is in, well, outer space. Some political know-it-alls think she might try to regain her old seat in Congress. Not me. My impeccable sources tell me that she is aiming a lot higher, like running for prime minister of Pluto or viceroy of Venus or maybe even queen of the Quasars.

Whatever she does, it is good to have the ambassador back. Call her a bad joke if you like. To me, she is out of this world.

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