Branches More Like Twigs

 by Burt Prelutsky  

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Burt Prelutsky on the three branches of government plus the "fourth estate."

A recent poll disclosed that of the three branches of government, the one most highly regarded was the judicial.  I found it odd that most Americans felt that way, seeing as how federal judges, unlike those assorted executives and legislators, are appointed, not elected.  And what’s more, these judges are appointed by the very same schlemiels we don’t trust to do their own jobs!

Although I share most people’s attitude towards politicians in general, I do not hold in higher esteem those little tin gods who get to wear bathrobes on the job.  I’m not certain when I first began distrusting judges, but it may have been when, under the leadership of Chief Justice Rose Bird, the California Supreme Court began overruling judges and juries in capital cases.  At one point, they determined that in something like 149 out of 150 cases, the lower courts had erred in sentencing convicted murderers to be executed.  Worst of all, Bird and her cohorts denied that they had an anti-capital punishment agenda. Instead, they employed logic so absurdly convoluted it would have made Lewis Carroll’s head spin in order to justify their farcical rulings.

Since then, we in California have had liberal judges overrule popular votes in which the electorate overwhelmingly voted in favor of capital punishment and against illegal immigration.  Although those high-handed rulings have angered most of the people, one can’t help admiring the dexterity with which these left-wing justices, none of whom need to worry about being re-elected, manage to turn the Constitution on its head.

If I’ve been hard on the judiciary, it’s certainly not because I hold the other two branches in high esteem.  Although I believe that so-called election finance reform is a pipe dream, I think it would help things if we stopped referring to these payments euphemistically as campaign contributions, and started calling them what they really are; which is, bribes.

Now, having dealt with the three official branches of government, it behooves us to consider the unofficial fourth branch, otherwise known as the fourth estate.  If there’s any group in America that’s even smarmier than judges, it’s journalists.  And for that, I blame Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.

Up until the time that Woodward and Bernstein came along, the only folks who wanted to become journalists were those who had seen The Front Page once too often, and decided nothing could possibly top a life spent trading wisecracks and a bottle of cheap hooch with other ink-stained wretches.  But, thanks to Watergate and the outrageous success of All the President’s Men, left-wing college kids, who might otherwise have become phys ed teachers or gone into the family upholstery business, could envision themselves not only bringing down presidents, but getting rich and famous doing it.

The irony is that in the three decades since Nixon was driven from the Oval Office, all the presidents have served out their terms, but it’s been the media that has been shamed by one scandal after another.  The New York Times, itself, has supplied those of us on the Right with one laugh after another.  Its motto, all the news that’s fit to print, should, in all honesty, be changed to read: all the lies we see fit to print.

To be fair, it’s not the fibs that make the paper so reprehensible.  It’s the snotty attitude which allows it to claim the moral high ground while printing classified information that sabotages America’s war on terrorism.

But, of course when attacked, the paper’s editor and publisher merely point to the scores of Pulitzer Prizes on the wall.  But, we shouldn’t forget that one of those awards went to the paper’s Moscow correspondent in the early 30s for his fawning dispatches about the worker’s paradise overseen by the wise and benevolent Joseph Stalin.  Another Pulitzer went to the Times this past year for printing the news that the government was tracking terrorist activity by monitoring phone calls.  And when you realize that the next Pulitzer will go to the Times for informing the Islamic fascists that the feds have been tracking their money, you better understand why I have suggested that they stop calling it the Pulitzer, after a 19th century newspaper publisher, and re-name it more appropriately in honor of Tokyo Rose.

Humor

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