Exterminator

"You make a nice cup of tea Mrs Murphy . . . Sure I'll be taking care of your roaches . . . Oh don't be telling me where they are . . . You see I know Mrs Murphy . . . . experienced along these lines . . . And I don't mind telling you Mrs Murphy I like my work and take pride in it."

"Well the city exterminating people were around and left some white powder draws roaches the way whiskey will draw a priest."

"They are a cheap outfit Mrs Murphy. What they left was fluoride. The roaches build up a tolerance and become addicted. They can be dangerous if the fluoride is suddenly withdrawn . . ."

-William S. Burroughs, Exterminator
(1973)

TIME: Your smiling mug shot—what made you think of that and what do you think the consequence of that has been?

DeLay: Oh, I don't know. I said a little prayer. First of all, you only get one take. It's a very humiliating thing, to be booked. And I said a little prayer before I actually did the fingerprint thing, and the picture. And my prayer was basically: "Let people see Christ through me. And let me smile." Now, when they took the shot, from my side, I thought it was fakiest smile I'd ever given. But through the camera, it was glowing. I mean, it had the right impact. Poor old left couldn't use it at all. They had all kind of things planned, they'd spent a lot of money. It made me feel kind of good that all those plans went down the toilet.

-Time Magazine, Tom DeLay Explains His Decision (2006.04.03)

Before today, it had never occured to me to look for Christ in Tom DeLay's fraudulent smile. If the Gospels are to be trusted, even Jesus was unable to muster a grin at his arraignment.

My guess is that Tom will get another take on the mug shot, what with a second top aide copping a guilty plea and metamorphing into a federal witness. It's hard to imagine how he could be a more jovial subject the second time around, with neither a majority leader's office nor even a congressional seat to fall back on. DeLay might have thought he could survive Ronnie Earle's state money laundering charges, but he must have reason to believe that a second round of indictments, this time on a federal rap in the Abramoff affair, would be a fatal dose.

The sudden self-squishing of the Bug Man leaves a much-needed void in the Culture of (Non-Insect) Life, just as the empty tomb was bad news for the Culture of Death. Still, there's more whimper than bang in this denouement. In his previous vows to fight to the last, DeLay had seemingly promised, if not a Calvary, at least a Hammerdämmerung. Instead, he has apparently opted for a condo in Virginia.

True believers must obviously be crushed. Less obviously, so too are some of those who have become addicted to the spectacle of DeLay's inexorable political fumigation. The prospect of making the Bug Man a poster boy for Republican corruption and misrule in 2006 had finally attracted the imagination of Democratic campaign strategists (better late than never, I guess). Viewed in this light, the more determined legal flailing from corruption-encrusted GOP incumbents over the summer, the better. So amidst the satisfaction of having finally seen DeLay's demise--which once seemed so improbable--there is perhaps a whiff of disappointment that the man turned out to have so little fight in him.

Such disappointment is misplaced. Any steps which ushers this man closer to the exits of our public life should be welcomed with banners and parades. As for the timing, it cannot be helped.

And as anyone who has ever seen a zombie movie can attest, you don't have the luxury of assuming that the dead aren't going to come back. If DeLay does return, you can bet he won't be looking anything like Jesus.