Time may well be the greatest thief.  It loiters in the shadows before sauntering out to callously rob our heroes of the very attributes which brought them fame or fortune. The notion of an addled Ronald Reagan silently propped on a couch or of Michael Jordan in a Washington Wizards uniform, straining to lift a basketball to the level of the rim endures as a pathetic coda to rather brilliant history.  This inexorable decline is even more precipitous for our ersatz heroes (e.g. movie stars) for whom imagery – and not substance – is the fount of notoriety.  Vin Diesel’s decay, unlike that of, say, Stephen Hawking, will simply be too obvious to go unnoticed.  And there’s the rub.  What, for example, becomes of a Sylvester Stallone who can’t even make it on television?  Truth be told, Sly has been reduced to marketing a line of ready-to-eat protein-rich puddings.  Pitiful.  Hey, am I the only guy who thinks that protein pudding sounds kinda gay?   You know, like throat yogurt.  Does Sly offer gay flavors like Castro Street Cappuccino and Fire Island Fudge?  I certainly hope not.  Regardless, even Stallone realizes that man cannot survive on pudding alone.  As such, the aging action star is resuscitating both the Rocky and Rambo franchises in a desperate attempt to turn back the clock.

Not so for fellow has-been hulk Arnold Schwarzenegger. After the mega failure of Terminator 3, there wasn’t enough pulse in his film career to marshal a revival. So Arnie, flabby gut and all, turned to politics where he enjoys, as California’s governor, a lower approval rating (31%) than President Bush (38%). In a feckless attempt to lure back voters, Schwarzenegger signed a law banning the sale of ultra violent video games to minors. Never mind that he made his fortune peddling ultra violent movies. Audaciously, he is seeking to cut school funding (having already stolen $2 billion from the education budget) even though he launched his political career on the back of a 2002 ballot initiative which expanded after school programs. Time has also pinched Arnold’s sense of comedic timing the latest standardized tests reveal 40% of the state’s students are below the basic proficiency level. As Russlynn Ali, executive director of the Education Trust puts it, “No matter how you look at this data, California is at the bottom.” Yet the larger issue is that Herr Gropenator’s hypocrisy is being unfortunately mistaken by pundits as an Austrian thing when, in reality, it is a Republican thing. The Austrian thing – for those scoring at home -is keeping Turkey out of the European Union while stridently insisting, these many years later, that you were subjugated by, rather than willingly obeisant to, Hitler.

Republicans, at least those not under indictment, are consumed with shouting down any citizen who dares to question the administration. Seniors opposed to privatizing Social Security are guilty of sedition, legislators wanting to investigate FEMA’s response to Katrina are traitors and anyone that enumerates our failures in Iraq is unpatriotic. Yet when President Clinton committed troops to Bosnia, Sen. Rick Santorum carped, “[The] President… is once again releasing American military might on a foreign country with an ill-defined objective and no exit strategy. He has yet to tell the Congress how much this operation will cost. And he has not informed our nation`s armed forces about how long they will be away from home. These strikes do not make for a sound foreign policy.” Sean Hannity then barked: “Explain to the mothers and fathers of American servicemen that may come home in body bags why their son or daughter have to give up their life?” Were Hannity and Santorum unpatriotic? Not according to Tom DeLay who huffed, “You can support the troops but not the president.” Apparently, that ability has lapsed.

But then again, DeLay also quipped, “If I spend money on lawyers, I won’t have time and money for the Republican Party.” Ironically, DeLay, who routinely threatens lobbyists who hire or contribute to Democrats, now finds himself paying heaps of wampum to high-profile Democratic attorney Dick DeGuerin. Not to worry, DeGuerin isn’t susceptible to debasement his former defendants make Alan Dershowitz’s clientele look like guests at the Last Supper. Dick successfully defended a millionaire who dismembered a neighbor, a clergyman who molested a parishioner and a businessman who violated a trade embargo and sold $28 million of pipe coating to Momar Kadafi.

When not litigating, DeGuerin is busy doling out checks to Left Wing political campaigns and in fact supports DeLay’s expected 2006 Congressional opponent Nick Lampson. Dear God, what could be more delicious than Lampson (a victim of Texas’ redistricting) returning to the Capitol using legal fees extracted from his opponent? The answer, of course, is DeLay locked behind bars, his arrogance deracinated not by the passage of time, but by his fellow inmates’ insatiable need to celebrate the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Texas’ ban on sodomy.