BUSH INAUGURATION MARRED
BY REHNQUIST NO-SHOW,
JENNA’S SLAPSTICK COMEDY

And welcome back to the Washington cocktail circuit, darlings; it has been such a long time between balls, don’t we agree? For my part, I had to cash in on my dubious Texas origins to score a ticket to the inaugural festivities. During this intrusive process, I personally was afraid my immigration status would be questioned. I am, after all, not altogether white, as you know, and the last time I checked, my residence permit had an INS lien on it. Please don’t tell.

Most freebie credentials were reserved for the thousand-member Bush clan and all those horrible friends of the Cheneys. “Big Dick” Cheney himself kept setting off the security buzzers all night at the Iraq-and-Roll event with his bionic prostheses and his pacemaker. Lynne confided to me over shots of tequila that his biggest problem is the metal plate in his head, which, before he had access to Airforce II, would send all three concourses at Reagan National into 24-hour lockdown every time he passed through a scanner.

Hey, did anyone else notice how many extra white people we had to put up with in Washington this past week? And not just white people, but RICH white people from the still virtually uncivilized western USA. Where the hell did they learn their manners? Many of them appeared to have massacred and skinned hordes of innocent rodents, which they wore in the most primitive fashion just to keep warm. For these next four years, my darlings, those of us who know how to eat with forks and wear textiles are going to have to circle the wagons.

As has been widely reported, safety precautions for the Republican tribal rituals were extremely invasive. A number of accidentally invited get-out-the-voters from Omaha were kept in stress positions for two days, my darlings, outside the Capitol Hilton. I can’t even tell you about most of it, but at another venue, an intoxicated off-duty sniper was observed playing Texas Hold’em with the First Lady’s breasts.

Chatting up an official at the Rotunda who had spent a long time checking purses throughout the inaugural afternoon, I found that Republican ladies carry amazing things in their handbags. Strictly off the record, he told me that he had confiscated an arsenal of small sidearms, a metric ton of controlled substances, innumerable half-pints of what could only be a very nasty clear liquor, and a cornucopia of fruit-flavored spermicide. And remember, this is the stuff they had in there after they’ve been told they’re going to be searched. Imagine the trash they had to ditch in the ladies latrine beforehand. I would go check in there for haz mats and hypodermics if I were you.

Unfortunately, I could not get around town well during the inaugural evening because of the ice and snow, and a pair of spectacularly high heels, but I did share a moment with generous Jenna at the 3 Doors Down performance. While we shared a moment applying “Honeysuckle” lip gloss at the short end of the bar, Jen passed me a couple of grams. “Must be good stuff,” she said. “I got it from the Feds.”

As you can see from my unflattering after-party photo, it was very good stuff. In the early hours of the morning, I had a few laughs with Newt Gingrich, who had cleverly removed his teeth during a series of very humorous “Bioterror” toasts. We were doing shooters of Stoli when Newt mentioned that the entire Iraq war was initially only Dubya’s opening move in the extremely fun Texas game craze: “Hold my beer and watch this.” Texans usually play this while running toll booths and bashing rural mailboxes, but Dubya figured that, since he had fighter jets, he could take the game to the skies. Newt and I were both trying to get our message out all evening.

So that’s it for me. I’m not feeling well this morning, as you might imagine. I do hope they have an opening again at Betty Ford, and that Betty will let me run a tab. Unlike the current administration, I think I better get clean.

Ciao now, GB