The Clown has been absent of late, spending several weeks abroad soaking up the charms and peculiarities of the Continent, which is “across the pond”, as the British charmingly say.
I primarily soaked up French (the French) and Flemish (the Flems) cultures, both of which are notable for their wide range of peculiar plumbing fixtures. Among the mysteries are toilets with hidden buttons, buttons that don’t look like buttons, dueling buttons, the selection of which depends on the type of elimination involved, and special toilets for cramped spaces thus requiring a built-in disposal unit so that whatever goes in the toilet gets loudly ground to smithereens before sluicing away through narrow pipes. Should the first grinding not produce the consistency required, a second grinding is automatically triggered. Charming indeed.
However, regardless of this introduction, today’s post has no more to say about European charms and toilets. Today is mostly devoted to the Chinese government.
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China’s ruling Communist Party has banned its members from “extravagant eating and drinking”, engaging in “sexual relationships outside of marriage” and playing golf.
Xinhua News Agency, China
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Oh boy!
Chinese President Xi Jinping (which is the sound my car makes when I use cheap gasoline) is thought to have issued these directives as an attack on his foes within the Party. Many of these political foes can be recognized on the golf course, given their wide girth and the fact that their cart driver is a twenty-something with enormous breasts (often these drivers are female).
The Communist Party’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, tasked with enforcing these rules, can arbitrarily choose whom to punish and when. There are no checks or balances. This Commission is very similar to our own House Benghazi Committee.
Apparently, among the 88 million members of China’s Communist Party, there are cliques of rich officials who strongly oppose President Xi’s crackdown on corruption in which thousands of wealthy, golf-playing, drunk, pudgy adulterers have already lost power. Even if only 1% of the Party members are in this reviled category, that means that President Xi has to root out a mere 880,000 rich, fat lushes who cheat on their wives and probably at golf too, the scum.
Because playing golf is closely associated with wealth which is closely associated with corruption which is closely related to eating and drinking at expensive restaurants which often leads to diddling the hat-check girl, golf has become the keystone in President Xi’s new morality crackdown. This is as it should be.
Here in the Land of the Free, Home of the Brave and Senior Citizen discounted green fees, we know all about wealth, drinking to excess, eating too much (e.g. Denny’s Early Bird Special) and we’ve heard about adultery and corruption, although we certainly don’t engage in either. We know the corrosive effect that these activities can have on the commonweal. Just consider John Boehner and Barack Obama, both golfers. The game cost Boehner his House Speaker’s position; and, as golf is considered one of 12 (or is it 19?) Biblical signs of the Apocalypse, it identifies Obama as the anti-Christ.
The danger for President Xi, of course, is the possibility that waaaaaay more than 1% of the Chinese Communist Party consider corruption, adultery, great cuisine, single malt scotch and golf as part of the heritage passed down from Chairman Mao, himself a celebrated adulterer, glutton, sot and -3 handicapper. Playing golf with Mao was a wonderland of miraculous eagles, aces, free drops and daily lift, clean and place rules. The Chinese Communist Party has verified that Mao never lost a single match after an early defeat to a man who subsequently became a eunuch in Mao’s household, a group that was primarily populated with hat-check girls.
Should there be sufficient numbers of Party members who take umbrage at President Xi’s restrictions, the purge could backfire and the purger could become the purgee. Let’s not forget that The Party has a history of snarling and deadly reversals when the current leader seems to get too big for his own Sans-a-Belt golf slacks.
And it may not just be the golf restriction that turns the tide. For many Party members, being forced, while totally sober, to sleep only with the dumpy middle-aged peasant wife who makes Jiang Qing (the fourth Mrs. Mao) look desirable, or the ban on ordering the expensive and delicious poached piglet entrails in Champagne sauce, not to mention the rule against accepting several million renminbi in bribe money, may lead to open revolt. If 87,999,999 torch-carrying Party members march on the President’s Office in the Central Committee’s HQ, President Xi will need more than his Taylor Made 4-iron for defense.
As an old Chinese proverb explains: He who uses power to curb power will soon know the meaning of “neener, neener”.
Observoid of the Day: Most Chinese proverbs were written by Noel Coward.