“The Drift toward Despotism” is the focus of Mark Steyn’s latest weekly column:
At a time when over 4 million people have had their health insurance canceled, it’s good to know that some Americans can still access prompt medical treatment, even if they don’t want it. David Eckert was pulled over by police in Deming, N.M., for failing to come to a complete halt at a stop sign in the Walmart parking lot. He was asked to step out of the vehicle, and waited on the sidewalk. Officers decided that they didn’t like the tight clench of his buttocks, a subject on which New Mexico’s constabulary is apparently expert, and determined that it was because he had illegal drugs secreted therein. So they arrested him, and took him to Gila Regional Medical Center in neighboring Hidalgo County, where Mr. Eckert was forced to undergo two abdominal X-rays, two rectal probes, three enemas, and defecate thrice in front of medical staff and representatives of two law-enforcement agencies, before being sedated and subjected to a colonoscopy — all procedures performed against his will and without a valid warrant.
Alas, Mr. Eckert’s body proved to be a drug-free zone, and so, after twelve hours of detention, he was released. If you’re wondering where his lawyer was during all this, no attorney was present, as police had not charged Mr. Eckert with anything, so they’re apparently free to frolic and gambol up his rectum to their hearts’ content. Deming police chief Brandon Gigante says his officers did everything “by the book.” That’s the problem, in New Mexico and beyond: “the book.”
Getting into the spirit of things, Gila Regional Medical Center subsequently sent Mr. Eckert a bill for $6,000. It appears he had one of what the president calls those “bad apple” plans that doesn’t cover anal rape. Doubtless, under the new regime, Obamacare navigators will be happy to take a trip up your northwest passage free of charge. That’s what it is, by the way: anal rape. The euphemisms with which the state dignifies the process — “cavity search” — are distinctions that exist only in the mind of the perpetrator, not the fellow on the receiving end. Fleet Street’s Daily Mail reports that this is at least the second anal fishing expedition mounted by local authorities. Timothy Young underwent a similar experience after being fingered by the same police dog, Leo, who may not be very good at sniffing drugs but certainly has an eye for a pert bottom. At the time of Mr. Young’s arrest, Leo’s police license had reportedly expired a year-and-a-half earlier, but why get hung up on technicalities?
Mark’s recent interview with Canada’s National Post ends with a very different look at life at the bottom, so to speak:
[The] problem with predicting societal collapse is if you’re right the bookstores get looted and the banks get burned down so there’s nowhere to cash your royalty checks. You know, you write the apocalyptic doom-mongering tome because you want a happy ending, ’cause you want people to wake up in time.
Q: And buy books.
A: Well, you want book sales, but in the end I’ve got kids and my kids aren’t gonna profit from total societal collapse. You know, the Chinese think half a millennium of an Anglo European blip is coming to an end and the world’s returning to the natural Asiatic order. And they might be right about that. And the thing about that, is if they’re correct that’s the biggest story of the age and why wouldn’t you want to write about it? So it’s not just to sell books, I mean I could write a book about Miley Cyrus twerking and, you know, I could sell books on that.
Q: That’s easy money.
A: Yeah, it is. But, you know, in the end, it’s easy to twerk as Rome burns. You can’t see it because of Miley’s pert bottom twerking away in front of you, but behind the twerking is the biggest story of our time. And that’s why you’d want to write about it, regardless of whether you’re right or you’re wrong, or whether your book sells or it won’t. If you’re in that game, that’s the story to write about.
Q: What am I forgetting to ask you, aside from Miley Cyrus’s pert bottom twerking?
A: I’ve probably overstated the pertness of her bottom.
Heh, indeed.™ In the classic “Waldorf Salad” episode of John Cleese’s Fawlty Towers series, when a loutish American guest insists that Basil’s kitchen makes him the episode’s titular appetizer, and his chef is unable to comply with his request, demands that Basil go back there and “bust his ass” — and then when that doesn’t work, tells Basil that he’ll bust his ass, Cleese’s character deadpans in response, “Everything’s bottoms, isn’t it?”
Sadly, with America at its perigee, everything’s bottoms here as well, and not just concerning the economy and Mr. Obama’s polling numbers.
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