Poll Shows Americans Willing to Relinquish Rights

recent poll has shown that, in the wake of the September 11 flight attendant's brunch gone bad, a vast majority of Americans would be willing to give up many of their Constitutional rights for a guarantee of some measure of safety and security and the chance to "sleep one full night without worrying about some goat-herder's son with bad breath slamming a loaded passenger jet into my apartment building," as one anonymous respondent put it.

Apparently, many citizens feel that a strong police state and the complete suspension of the Bill of Rights is the only way to keep terrorist activity from destroying our precious way of life. Among the rights that people polled would willingly give up are the right to privacy in their homes and persons, the right to avoid wiretaps and other electronic eavesdropping, and the right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure. There was initially some debate on the issue of whether Americans would give up the right to "supersize" their fast-food meals, but that has been tabled at the present time.

Said respondent Connie Bologna, who identified herself as a professional escort for generous gentlemen, "I'd be happy to have about five or six strapping young law enforcement officers handcuff me spread-eagle to an iron cot and give me a full body-cavity search with their nightsticks or batons or billy clubs or whatever you call them. Absolutely. If it helps stop these terroristical attacks, I'm all for it. Where do I sign up?"

Another poll respondent, diva Ladyboy Smacky, commented, "You mean let the police get their hands all up in my stuff? Honey, that happens anyway. But if it means saving our country, well, just let me get my lube first. And fix my makeup, mm-hmm."

Added Bologna, "Oh, yeah, uh huh, honey, I heard the hell out of that!"

The poll was conducted at the Motherlode Bar on Post Street in San Francisco, and has a five percent margin for error, considering that tired queen Charlene and her boyfriend Ray participated, and everyone knows they lie about everything and never answer a question seriously. When it was suggested that the patrons of the Lush Lounge across the street also be polled, Ms. Smacky sniffed, "Who cares what those bitches think? Honey, I'd have to go find a rat just to give a rat's ass."

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The president took an honest and sincere step toward covering up the recent questions of intelligence (the CIA's, not his) with his creation of a bipartisan (emphasis on the "partisan") commission this week. But the question remains: Are we supposed to buy this bullshit?

That question aside, and the answer is obviously a resounding "yes," issues still remain about the quality of intelligence the administration is receiving about terrorism. If the CIA thinks there are large deposits of chemical or biological weapons in an underdeveloped nation like Iraq, based, I might add, on some barbershop rumor floating around Nigeria, what does this mean for the safety of the country? Are we pretty much left at the mercy of the incompetence of terrorists? Much like they are left at the mercy of our own incompetence.

It might be easier for the American public if they knew exactly how intelligence is gathered for the purposes of national security. First and foremost, we buy it. Any episode of Starsky & Hutch should display this adequately. Foreign equivalents of Huggy Bears come nosing around our embassies, and back alley deals galore abound.

The second way is the kind we think of it most often: large, burly American national security agents wearing fake beards and dressed in swami hats and Lawrence of Arabia robes. These are the real heroes, the deceitful, backstabbing undercover agents who get the secretest information straight from the horse's mouth by putting their lives on the line in barely plausible disguises. There is no more dangerous job in the world, except for being an employee of Phil Spector. Many is the time some jihad-crazy Muslim terrorist flips out and frisks you to yell out, "Abdul's wearing a wire!" It's all over then, sir.

There is also what the government calls "option three": Kicking in doors of suspected terrorists, arresting them on suspicion and searching their base of operations without warrant. Right now this is still hard to do overseas, with their difficult laws preventing illegal search and seizure, at least in the more Westernized countries and some of the third world, but rollback in constitutionally-guaranteed rights in the states has made it a lot easier to fight terrorism on our own turf. We might have to annex the world before they agree.

So whose balls were dropped on this particular outing? Democrats suggest the administration manipulated intelligence to manufacture consent for an unjustifiable war with Iraq. Plausible, yes, and even the most likely case, which makes it a poor choice to discuss in this column. So I point the blame squarely at the acting schools in this country.

What kinds of intelligence operatives are we turning out? Nervous, jittery young rubes who make poor choices in their acting and offer only an overbaked performance any first-year Hamas fanatic could see through. Our guys show up on their doorsteps, spewing anti-American rhetoric in a British accent because it's all they can do, and the terrorist masterminds of the world are laughing at us. They tell our guys six or seven times a month they're ready to launch a major attack on our soil, when in fact their biggest effort is not to giggle while they discuss fake plans to use dirty bombs and chemical agents.

Hopefully this nine-person distraction Bush is calling a bipartisan commission will get right to the heart of our off-off-Broadway operatives. We're the richest nation on the planet, and our security is something we should not be paying half-price for. I say, shell out the $20 million for Pacino. De Niro, Hoffman, any of these guys. We should at least be able to afford Billy Dee Williams. He was fantastic in Mahogany.

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Seriously man, you're not messing with me? Why you think that girl was a hooker? She was nice, dog. Hey, just because she was nice to me doesn't mean she was a hooker! Damn. Girl even gave me her phone number. What kind of hooker does that, huh? You tell me that.

Yeah, I've heard that 867-5309 song. I know that shit. But that don't mean it's not her number. Think about it G, somebody's got to have that number for real, yo. They don't just put that thing in telephone number jail just because some fool wrote a song about it. Use your head, man. Lots of people got to have that number, if you think about it. Think about all the area codes out there. Each one's got an 867-5309, right? That's a lot of people with that number for real, dog. And why is it so hard to believe that some hot little honey hanging out on the street corner is one of them? Think about it, man, those odds are good.

Yeah, I saw her get into the car with that dude, so what? Maybe that was her brother or something, come to give her a ride or pick her up for church or something, right? I don't know who dresses like that to go to church, so what if the girl want to look good when she goes to see God and shit, right? If you go to church in a tuxedo some time I'm not gonna start telling people you're a lounge singer or something, you know? I ain't gonna be spreading no hate on your behalf just cuz you look good.

So what if he gave her some money when she got in the car, you never got money from your brother for something? I know you ain't above borrowing ten bucks, Luthor. She probably lent him the money, and he was being all prompt and shit about paying it back as soon as he saw her. That's a positive in my book.

Yeah, I saw that the dude was white. So what? You ain't got any white brothers floating around somewheres? You know how those mixed families go. Sometimes brothers and sisters don't even look like each other, sometimes one gets all the black while the other gets all the white. Happens all the time. Anyway, I didn't say for sure dude was her brother. He could be a cousin or something, or a business partner. Maybe girl is a school teacher, you ever consider that Luthor? Maybe dude was a parent giving her a ride to a PTA meeting or some shit. Or maybe she's a lawyer and he was some kind of judge or something like that, you know? You just know those peoples be giving each other rides to the courthouse all the time and that, like a carpool or something. No use wasting gas when you're all headed the same way.

Bitch sucked your dick? You serious? Man, why didn't you tell me that ten minutes ago? Shit. I been waiting on this street corner this whole time for nothing and you didn't even tell me. Man, you got to work on your arguing skills, Luthor, that's the kind of big gun you got to bring out early on, that's an argument-ender right there. You don't save that shit until the end like "Oh yeah, I just remembered this thing that totally erases the whole reason we was even arguing in the first place." Damn, Luthor. Yeah, you forgot. I'm gonna forget to call your dumb ass the next time I go out to wait on the street corner for some girl who I think ain't a hooker.

Yo, Luthor. How much that shit cost? Really? Huh. I think I'm gonna hang out a little longer, that ho might still come by. Later yo.

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