Thursday, December 9, 2010

Tragedy

The erstwhile Tea Party Senate candidate and dabbler in the black arts, Christine O'Donnell, has proclaimed, in the wake of Obama's deal with the Republicans, that "tragedy comes in threes: Pearl Harbor, Elizabeth Edward's passing and Barack Obama's announcemet to...extend unemployment benefits."

Easy to ridicule , of course, but how many people remember that Oedipus never would have left Corinth for Delphi and then, ultimately, Thebes - where, not to put too fine a point on it, all hell breaks loose- had he not been on extended unemployment benefits? Without those benefits, he would have been forced to find a job in Corinth, never knowing who his real father and mother were, and neither killing the one nor wedding the other. This is how tragedy occurs: the devil finds work for government- financed idle hands!

What? Nobody remembers the Chorus calling out to the King of Corinth at the beginning of the play, "READ OUR LIPS: DO NOT EXTEND UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS! DO NOT!"

1 comment:

Jack said...

Isn't it interesting to see how easily someone like Christine O'Donnell, who has held no apparent employment other than Candidate for Office, can be so quick to cast aspersions on the unemployed. I wonder if an ineritence can be categorized as unemployment insurance since it requires no work effort and is excused from federal taxation.