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Scary costumes are generally relegated to the domain of Halloween, but I believe the scariest costume I’ll see all year came weeks ago, in the form of former Republican Senate Majority Leader and current sad clown Tom DeLay on Dancing with the Stars.
Really, it was a series of costumes. Week one saw DeLay doing the cha-cha to “Wild Thing” in a suede vest, while a stiff, Frankenstein-like DeLay danced the tango in a black suit and shirt on week two. But week three was the scariest: DeLay, dolled up in red pants and a candy-striped shirt, gyrating grotesquely like Bert the Chimney Sweep in the porno version of “Supercalafragilisticexpialidocious,” did the samba to War’s “Why Can’t We Be Friends?”
Hm, why can’t we? Perhaps—I’m just throwing this out there—because of politicians like DeLay himself, whose anti-gay, anti-sex, anti-fun-having politics were so rigidly party-line that during his time in the Senate they called him “The Hammer.”
To be fair, DeLay is no longer a politician; he resigned in disgrace in 2005 when accusations of money laundering forced him to step down (the case still has not been brought before a jury). Perhaps wishing to disgrace himself further, DeLay then reevaluated his career plans and decided to become a universe-warping paradox by embodying both sexually intolerant repression and butt-wiggling at the same time.
Except that, thankfully for everyone else, those plans didn’t work out. Citing injuries, DeLay has withdrawn from the Dancing with the Stars competition. Evidently, the strain of being two inherently opposite things at once caused stress fractures in the bones of his feet.
Aside from the cringe-inducing spectacle of a family values nut air-thrusting like a fatter, live-action version of Quagmire, there’s a real life lesson we can take from this sad, sad tragedy: Being a greedy, power-hungry autocrat with no ethical boundaries and then making a fool of yourself after you get caught does not make you any less of a greedy, power-hungry autocrat with no ethical boundaries. It just makes you a greedy, power-hungry autocrat with no ethical boundaries and also no dignity.
If DeLay wished to erase the memory of his shady politics by making himself into a clown, that clown was more reminiscent of Insane Clown Posse—somewhat menacing, but really more pathetic—than it was of such beloved clowns as Bozo.
Either way, he’s scary to children.
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