The Persian gulp

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				THE
Column Archive				VIRGINIA GAZETTE
				WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA
The Persian gulp				February 22, 2006

According to the Greek historian Herodotus, the Persians got liquored up before they passed any laws. Later, when they were sober, they reconsidered the legislation. If they thought it suited their needs, they let it stand.

While I have no idea how many scholars of Persian law there are in the state legislature, I do have a hunch that they’ve zeroed in on Persian legislative customs and are winging it up there in Richmond with a bourbon in one hand and heavily caffeinated coffee in the other. Obviously the bourbon is winning.

Passing over a chance to do anything but twaddle about transportation, mental health, Medicaid and education, our whiskyfied legislators felt it much more entertaining to stew about the length of grass in Williamsburg. Should it be three inches, five inches, six inches? Who knows? Let the city decide, they said, and once again drooled over the piquant potency of the Dillon rule.

Now any Williamsburg resident who has a lawn can expect a visit from City Council’s grass gurus. Armed with a complete lawn metrics kit, they’ll measure the height of your blades. If the grass is too high and you refuse to cut it, they will hire someone to cut it for you and charge you for the service. If you refuse to pay, they’ll stick a lien against your property when you decide to sell.

I’m not making this up.

On another day that the rum was running, your delegates soared to their highest level of legislative lunacy and actually discussed at great length, guess what? Castration! Yep, overcome by the jive vibes and rummed up for rock & roll they really took seriously a bill that would allow sex offenders to voluntarily castrate themselves. Unfortunately for those offenders who were racing to get their knives, the delegates sobered up and decided that this bill was too wacky even for them.

This is not to say that they were giving up on sexual engineering, since this is the machine that drives the morality morons in the legislature. Following the lead of that pioneer of purity, Manassas delegate Bob Marshall, they literally within minutes passed an anti-gay marriage amendment to the Virginia Constitution that will doom the contractual rights of not only gays, but all unmarried couples.

Following this came the decision in the House to allow state public school systems to ban clubs that “encourage or promote sexual activity by unmarried minor students.” What clubs these may be the sponsor of the bill, Del. Matt Lohr from Harrisonburg, doesn’t say, though he’s obviously aiming, Cheney-like, at gay-straight alliance clubs. Or maybe it’s the French clubs. All that French kissing, you know.

The House never did get sober enough to rethink that bit of irresponsible and totally outlandish blither and so let it pass. The bill now is in the Senate, where those under the influence of more sophisticated mint juleps may do it in.

But I’m proud to say that it was my delegate, Melanie Rapp (R-96^th), who grabbed the most impressive headlines. Having pulled off no small coup when she got Tim Kaine’s cliché-ridden inaugural address moved from Richmond to Williamsburg, the Rappster is now recognized as the official travel agent of the Virginia state legislature. And, since she eschews alcohol, we know that when she light-bulbed her latest travel proposal she was completely sober. Whether the delegates were soused when they mulled it over we don’t know, but they are seriously considering the bussing of innocent delegates to Jamestown to open next year’s session of the legislature.

Perhaps Rapp would like to go even further and involve the legislators in a re-enactment of the Jamestown story. She, of course, would play Pocahontas to Tommy Norment’s John Smith. While Pocahontas Rapp is cradling Tommy’s head, the other legislators, playing members of Powhatan’s tribe, will, with clubs in their hands and wearing Paul Jost masks, stand over them and shout “Liar! Liar!” Or something like that.

Not to her credit is the fact that the Rappster revealed an uncharacteristically vindictive side of her personality when she joined with other Peninsula Republican legislators to oust recently-appointed Jim Dillard from his seat on William & Mary’s Board of Visitors. Dillard, who served as a faithful Republican in the General Assembly for 32 years, made the mistake of backing his friend, a Democrat, in the House race in Fairfax to succeed him.

We all know that booze can fire up the emotions for good or evil. Intense anger or vindictiveness may be the result. But there is simply no way that Republicans on the national or state level can all be so alcoholically hazed as to think that their party is well served by engaging in reckless recriminations against anyone who refuses to participate in mindless adherence to the party line. Dillard now joins Michael Brown of James City as the latest honorable politician to be embarrassed and orphaned by the party he served so well.

In the Persian scheme of things there were no political parties and no rigidly set political standards. They simply all came together, got snockered and passed laws. Then, when they sobered up, they reconsidered the mess they had created and cleaned it up. Unfortunately for us, most of the mess our legislature has created will fungify and rot on the legislative floors in Richmond for years to come.