Editor’s Note: Yesterday, we did a run of Marlow’s view of the current travails in the Republic we served. Today, the sky is gray. The big aerial parade over Washington has been postponed again due to weather. They hope to launch again tomorrow. We will see. In a curious way, the airshow seems to presage the course of the election. If we don’t get perfect conditions, we will at least have a spectacular show. Since everything is political, we will have a prelude this weekend with the nomination of a prospective Supreme Court Justice. It is a lifetime appointment. Although the President has not made his decision final, they are already smearing a likely candidate for her temerity in adopting two kids from Haiti. The accusation in its early stage is that the children were stripped from their birth parents and shipped to this land of plenty. It does not appear to have the sordid aspects of the slime smeared on Justice Kavanaugh, though it does have a scent of kidnapping. I have no idea why a good and honorable person would permit the Swamp to romp through their lives. It really is interesting, isn’t it?
– Vic

Author’s Note: I admire Vic for his perseverance in putting out the weekly Postcard from the Swamp. It has made me think of ways to lampoon a whole bunch of tempting assholes masquerading in the raiments of the pure defenders of the rights of all Americans. Yeah, and I’ve got some waterfront property in Arizona to sell you cheap, along with the Golden Gate. Back in the day, we took a family trip down to Florida and visited a bunch of the tourist traps, to include the Alligator and Snake Farms along old U.S. 41 (aka Alligator Alley) on the way down to the Everglades and the Keys. The feeding of live chickens to ravenous alligators and then watching pythons squeeze them to death was an exotic if now disgusting spectacle for an 8-year old in 1965. I let that memory lie dormant for years and then one day, I heard this song by RWH, and it all came back into focus. We could have a lot of fun with this in our own cynical ways – tattooing a new member of the Snake Farm each week or so – but that takes a lot of energy and attention to detail. Still, it might be worth doing since it does have a high, smart-ass factor, which is nice.

Snake Farm

Ray Wylie Hubbard

This song is by Ray Wylie Hubbard.
And no, it is not “Redneck Mother” but in many ways even more classic in its cynicism. Ray Wylie Hubbard (or RWH) has been around for a long time, and has outlived Jerry Jeff, Waylon, Townes van Zandt and a few other Texas country contemporaries. It was Jerry Jeff who made “…Mother” famous even in the introduction for then young songwriter RWH way back in 1973 which, if you do the math, was really a long fucking time ago for those of us old enough to remember.

Aside from its potential sly political aspersions, the song itself is remarkable for its simplicity, at least in the debut version which is RWH bending the strings and singing in his laconic, near-monotone narrative style, and a solo percussionist pacing his signature no-nonsense driving bluesy Texas beat playing a snare with a brush, and shaking a maraca masquerading as a rattle snake’s tale – genius. The first version when he introduced the song to an unsuspecting live audience is the best, so if you dare, click on the YouTube link below:

So what does it all mean? The words of the main verses are entertaining, but It is the refrain where the zeitgeist comes home to roost:

Well a woman now I love is named Ramona
She kinda looks like tempest storm
She can dance like little Egypt
She works down at the snake farm

Snake farm, it just sounds nasty
Snake farm, it pretty much is
Snake farm, it’s a reptile house
Snake farm, ugh[1]

The Original RWH Snake Farm in New Braunfels, Texas

The second verse is even better. I like the metaphor of the giant snake eating a little helpless mouse as the big bad government, Deep State, whatever, swallowing us little mice like so many hors’ d-oeuvres at a DC cocktail party. Besides, I’m a sailor, so partial to that dixie cup imagery. Pretty cynical…

Ramona’s got a keen sense of humor
She got a tattoo down her arm
It’s of a python eatin’ a little mouse
Wearin’ a sailor hat that says snake farm

Snake farm, it just sounds nasty
Snake farm,it pretty much is
Snake farm, it’s a reptile house
Snake farm, ugh[2]

So, what do we do with this idea? There’s lots of things that are possible; it’s easy to be an asshole but hard to be consistently clever at it – we could do an alumni series, starting with Ted Kennedy, and the Clintons, or just pick an asshole of the week, like this guy who was so clumsy even the lib-tard WaPo couldn’t ignore the greedy stupid shit he tried to pull on the DC taxpayers, and in the process dragging a witting or unwitting Howard University through the stinky muck of the Swamp:

Rashad Young

“A former D.C. government administrator has been fined $2,500 by an ethics board for his involvement in legislating a multi-million dollar tax break for Howard University, where he had been seeking employment.
The findings from the D.C. Board of Ethics and Government Accountability revealed that it appears City Administrator Rashad M. Young “inadvertently committed a technical violation of the Code of Conduct. After securing a $314M tax break for the university for a new hospital, he accepted a job offer from them on 02 August 2020.”[3]

Inadvertently? Like, he fucked it up and got caught? GMAMFB. Hospitals are worthy endeavors but this smells like the Swamp, and this slimy guy probably deserves his own cage in the Reptile House. Yeah, life can get interesting down at the Snake Farm. I’ll have to conjure up an apt one-two page format but, in the meantime – nominations for enshrinement are welcome.

I remain your faithful servant.

[1] Lyrics, Ray Wylie Hubbard.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Source https://washingtoncitypaper.com/article/351273/rashad-young-ethics/. Underlining and paraphrasing are mine.

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