“If you can read this, thank a teacher.”

“Visualize World Peace.”

“Maryland Terps No.1! Maryland Terps No.1!”

I’m stuck in DC traffic.

The market is driving off a bridge. I only want to cross a bridge. I wish I could fix the economy. I wish I could just get in front of the guy who’s in front of me.

Damn it, I should’ve taken 295. No, 295 is always backed up so is 95, 395, 495, 66, Georgetown Road, Old Georgetown Road, New York Avenue, Connecticut Avenue, Massachusetts Avenue, not to mention Wisconsin and 29 and 270. Yeah, 270, for the love of all that’s holy, is bumper to bumper to bumper at 5:30 a.m. What are people thinking? DC commuters are like hogs to the slaughter, or former Enron employees applying for jobs at WorldCom.

“I’d rather be fishing.”

“I’d rather be sailing.”

“Fear this!”

“My other car is a Porsche”

I’d rather invest my entire 401 (k) Plan in Tyco that sit in DC traffic. Like many my age, I have only been investing since 1999, when we were told we had to, HAD TO,get in the market. And like many my age, since then I’ve been losing money,LOSING.

If all the bragging in the late ’90s was true (“I get stock options for reading my email!”), then why do I personally know a bunch of people who used to be worth a bundle on paper but who now can’t afford to buy me a beer. To which my friends at Adelphia say, buy the beer on credit and record it as income.

Here’s the only stock tip you need: When the analysts say invest, don’t; when the experts say it’s time to sell, buy. And when someone says you’ll save time driving, take the Metro.

Remember the old saying, “Don’t trust anyone over 30; don’t trust anyone with anMBA”? Doesn’t sound so crazy now, does it? There is more insider information than information. There are more kickbacks than a rodeo. Trust is eroding faster than a Peruvian hillside during a hurricane. So now, just when you think Wall Street has hit a wall, no, it keeps on going—driving down Main Street, smashing retirement plans like bugs on the windshield.

“How’s my driving? Call 800-EATSHIT.”

“I make wide turns.”

“They can have my gun when they pry it from my cold, dead fingers.”

If only Wall Street could have been moved onto the DC beltway in the fall of 1999, it would be STUCK LIKE I AM RIGHT NOW. And sometimes going nowhere is the best destination. For instance, when standing on the edge of the Hoover Dam, it is better to stay put than step forward, young grasshopper.

Oh yes, a slow and steady market would have had the experts and analysts screaming and whining like Ned Beatty in Deliverance.“You need to keep on investing.” “Now’s a good time to be in the market, a bad time to be out.” “You need to keep pissing up a rope.” Nevertheless, had we just stayed put, the DOWJones would be over 11K, NASDAQ would be worth twice as much as it is currently, and Rob Lowe would still be on West Wing.

But I want to move. Yes, I wish the market were still on a Clinton high, but I’d rather get in front of the bastard who just got in front of me. Damn him. Who does he think he is? ASSHOLE!

“Support Choice.”

“It’s a child not a choice.”

“I have children and I vote.”

“I have children and I vote, so they have choice.”

I’m tired of sitting here, reading bumpers, listening to the radio news, hearing yesterday’s political quotes—everyone so absolute, “Let me be perfectly clear.” “Make no mistake.” “There’s no question.” Translation: “The next thing you will hear will stray from the truth and possibly from sanity.”

But let ME be perfectly clear, DC traffic sucks, make no mistake. And there’s no question that I am stuck in a goddamn backup on the beltway between the “mixing bowl” (where 95, 495 and 395 merge) and the Wilson Bridge (which leads from Virginia to Maryland—the DC beltway isn’t actually in DC). It’s 6:36 a.m.  I’ve been for in this jam for 17 minutes and have gone 0.3 miles. That’s about 1.1 miles per hour.

“You do that Math.”

“My daughter is an Honor Student.”

“Proud Grandparent of a Dean’s List Kindergartner.”

“We honor all our students at JFK Junior High.”

I wonder if that is John F. Kennedy— Junior High, of John F. Kennedy Jr.— High.

Oh, ooh, oohh, the traffic is moving. Here we go, here we go. And here we stop. Well, it wouldn’t be called stop and go traffic if it didn’t.

“Northern Virginia Drivers Suck” (on a car with Virginia Tags).

But honestly, with the second worst traffic in the nation, Northern Virginia drivers do suck. Cutely abbreviated “NoVa,” and quite accurately too, since, “No va” is Spanish for “does not go,” NoVa drivers spend an average of 89 hours per year struck in stand-still traffic.

As a Northern Virginia driver, my only response is, “Screw you, drivers everywhere suck.” In Pennsylvania, Maryland drivers suck. In Oregon, California drivers suck. In Oklahoma, Texas drivers suck (well that one’s true).

In spite of this, when stuck in traffic, one has time to ponder philosophical commuting conundrums and road rage riddles: What’s the sound of one finger rising? If you’re stuck in traffic, and having a conversation on your cell phone about how you’re on your cell phone only because you’re stuck in traffic— are you really saying anything at all? Are bad drivers drawn only to the Honda Odyssey or is there something in the Modern-Mondo-Maxi-Mini-Van that attracted them, too? Why am I obsessed about getting in front of the guy who’s in front of me?

Why? I’ll tell you why. That bastard just cut in front of me for no other reason than to cut in front of me. BASTARD. YOU BASTARD! Oh, for the love of God, he’s got a Jesus fish on his bumper. And another that reads, “WWJD?” I don’t know what Jesus would do, but I’m fairly certain he wouldn’t be DRIVING A LEXUS LIKE ANASSHOLE!!!!

That’s it. The CEO oath: “I may be a little off balance, but if it gets me ahead of the other guy, well, that’s fantastic.”

And besides, everyone’s doing it.

“Gore/Lieberman” (faded)

“Nader/LaDuke” (really faded)

“Bush/Cheney” (shiny and new)

“Don’t mess with Texas” (eternal).

If the President really wanted to save the economy, he would sell bumper stickers. Yeah, that’s the solution. Forget war bonds. Bush should sell war-on-terrorism bumper stickers. “My other car is a Patriot Missile.” “Got Bombs?” And even a stenciled decal of a “bad-boy” taking a leak on Bin Laden’s head. Heck, judging from Bush’s recent past, he could even sell them to kids. Yeah that’s right, bumper stickers and a car wash on the White House lawn. Or maybe he could do it door-to-door, kind of like Little League stickers, except the President of the United States would be doing all the selling. Come on, who wouldn’t buy a lousy bumper sticker from the President?

I see a Darwin fish on the back of a car. It’s like a Jesus fish with feet. Two lanes to the right, a Darwin fish is eating a Jesus fish. Then two cars ahead on the left, on the bumper of a Corolla, a Jesus fish that reads “Truth” is eating a Darwin fish with feet.

I drift into thought. In a survival of the fittest test, if Jesus snuffs out Darwin, isn’t Darwin the winner? And yet somehow dead?

“My kid says the pledge of allegiance with Pride.”

“God Bless America.”

“God loves America.”

“One nation under Allah.”

Shit, we’re moving. Shit, we’ve stopped. That’s why they call it moving-and-stopped traffic.

Yes, make no mistake, DC traffic sucks. But it does so with patriotic pride. Before September 11, every day, every commute, I could guarantee that you would be cut off by someone blubbering, smoking, cell-phone-talking, soccer mom, office-park-dad, asshole in a oversized SUV. But since September 11, every day, every commute I can guarantee you that you will be cut off by someone blubbering, smoking, cell-phone-talking, soccer mom, office-park-dad, asshole in a oversized SUV with an American flag in the window.

“OBX” (Outer Banks)

“MV” (Martha’s Vineyard)

“NYC” (Self Explanatory)

“ASS” (Looking at the driver, also self explanatory, [although it really means Assateaque Island])

I can’t take much more of THAT BASTARD BEING IN FRONT OF ME! Hold on a sec … It looks like … Ahhh, here we go, 15, 2, 35, 45, we’re moving … That wasn’t so bad. Only 47 minutes to go 1.7 miles. But now it’s OK, I’m creeping along to another day. I’ll get in front of that bastard later. Right now it’s all good. All nice. All shit. Shit. Why don’t you stop again, YOU FREAKIN’ MORON!!

They said that building all these big roads would eliminate traffic delays, and yet statistics show that after a roadway is widened, the average commute is either unchanged or slower. Whatever, just GET OUT OF MY AMERICAN WAY.Everything I ever needed to know I’ve learned from bumper stickers.

“Mean People Suck.”

“Nice People Suck.”

“Practice Random Acts of Kindness.”

“Teach Tolerance.”

“Save a Human—Kill an Environmentalist.”

“Nuke an Unborn Gay Baby Whale for Jesus.”

So, remember … Invest early; invest often. Stay off the DC beltway. And, do everything you possibly can to get in front of the guy who got in front of you. That, after all, is the American Dream.

All the quotes are actual bumper stickers sighted inside the DC Beltway. When this went to press, the author was still stuck in traffic.

This missive has been circling since January 1995, when good old Newt Gingrich (remember him?) and his Contract on America crowd wanted to eliminate funding for the NEA. For years, Jesse Helms had been trying to stop artists like Robert Mapplethorpe, Andres Serrano, and Karen Finley from committing “immoral” acts with govm’nt money, as opposed to the morally adulterous Gingrich, et al., who get their federal funding via direct paycheck deposit.

Anyways, my calculations put the percentage of the NEA’s tiny budget that Ms. Finely received at 0.001875%. Damn her. My kid needs lunch money. Stop her before she performs again.

In 1995, Congress, led by the Gingrich who stole Christmas, gutted the NEA by 40% and ended all grants to individual artists, except to writers. The paltry remainder of the money goes to museums, but mostly to big institutions like the Kennedy Center and Lincoln Center. Can you imagine the outrage if they stop being subsidized? But that’s another story. My point is, stop forwarding me the email.

If the petitioner who sent it to you really cared, wouldn’t they know they were 5 years late? The NEA is not going to be shut down by some ultra-conservative reactionary group of artist haters. Those groups are too busy trying to name things after Reagan. The NEA budget is too small for anyone to care about at this point. I mean, the budget for military bands is bigger—and they only know three songs.

With nothing to do since Clinton can no longer be impeached (or can’t he?), a reactionary group conceivably could want artists to obsess about losing the NEA,and they could want liberals to dread losing NPR so much that these folks would be blind to other things—like, say, appropriating 200 billion dollars to an un-needed missile defense system, or, perhaps, naming the aforementioned system the National Endowment for the Failed Ronald Reagan Star Wars Initiative.

But back to the problem with NPR and PBS—public television is supported, in part, by viewers like you. And you, on average overwhelmingly provide little viewing and even less supporting. So the Federal Government has to fund it just to keep it on the air. Since we the American people don’t want our government to spend our tax dollars on anything socially beneficial, we need to find constructive ways to fund the system, in order to give it a future.

My answer is to make PBS Pay-Per-View.

Since the Federal Government controls the airwaves (the FCC is headed by Colin Powell’s son Michael), it conceivably can fully decide what goes on TV and what does not. The FCC could thus take the top money-grossing shows and “regulate” those shows, or make ‘em run on PBS Pay-Per-View. That way, as the name implies, viewers like you, would have to pay-per-view.

No more fund drives, no telethons, no more coffee mugs for pledges under 65 dollars. Just simple Pay-Per-View, uniting the atheistic artist to the God-fearing artist hater. No on is forced to watch it; no one is forced to pay. It could be called the Ronal Reagan National Pay-Per-View Public Television Initiative.

Nevertheless, even a Reaganite would admit that to control broadcasting wreaks of censorship. People shouldn’t be censored. We need our freedom. That’s what both First Amendment groups and the NEA are fighting for. I mean, television now provides people with things they need, like their news, their divorce court, their “Friends,” their gossip, and chance to be a millionaire by either answering TV-centric trivia or by not being voted off the set. That’s why in the Ronald Reagan National Pay-Per-View Public Television Initiative, there would be no censorship.

To be fair, the real cries of censorship come not from Tipper Gore, but from Hollywood itself. And those cries are not really about censorship; those cries are about money. No one in Hollywood likes NOT to be able to make more and more money. It’s as un-American as those red-Commie-artist bastards who are raping the US for 0.001875% of a next-to-nothing NEA budget.

If network executives, however, were allowed to make money on PBS, they would flock to it. There would be convertibles and SUVs lining the block outside the PBS.A cottage industry of transportable schmooze support would spring up. You’d need a whole new federal agency just to read “spec.” scripts.

All political disagreements would be solved on TV. Imagine, if you will, all the bi-partisan wounds that television could heal. Even the tough questions become easy. Should there be a federal death penalty? Put the executions on PBS Pay-Per-View and let the Neilsen ratings decide. That’s “Govern-utainment.” I tell you, if they had put the McVeigh execution on Pay-Per-View, the cash cow would have been milked.

It is simple demand side-economics. Currently, the government passes rules that in effect give control of the media to 4 companies who in turn put money in the pockets of politicians who then decide where the money goes. On the other hand,PBS Pay-Per-View puts the money directly back into the system, directly where it’s needed most—the development of new TV shows. Of course, the excess money might “trickle-up” to social programs like, say, maybe hiring at least one art and one music teacher per 2000 students, or something crazy like that. Politics are odd and difficult to predict. TV, though, always follows the money. Here are a few shows ready-made for the new Ronald Reagan National Public Television Initiative:

WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONAIRE PRESIDENT? The Supreme Court Justices, here known as the Supremes, sing and dance their way around the Constitution. They ask questions of what would appear to be a randomly selected participants (but are secretly all white male millionaires). If the millionaire gets all the questions wrong, he gets to buy the presidency (or the next available highest office).

THE FIRST AMENDMENT SHOW. This is classic Public Television. Anyone can get up and say anything. Anyone can stand up and do anything. You never know what’s up next, and it’s shown completely uncut and uncensored. Viewer discretion is advised, but not encouraged.

THE SECOND AMENDMENT SHOW. A three-hour long weekly drama starring Charlton Heston. Each week a guy who thinks he’s Moses gets tossed into a town of people who favor gun control. With slow-motion kick-boxing and long angry speeches into the camera, he convinces most to join his side. But there’s always one who gets challenged to meet the NRA president at 10 paces. The do-gooder is then shot while trying to remove her child safety lock.

SNAGGED BY AN ANGEL. Hosted by Pat Robertson, this program is like “COPS” meets “Battle of the Network Stars.” Each week a group of illegal border crossers are rounded up and matched with a daytime Emmy-nominated actor. Together they compete in the three-legged race, the tug-of-war, and the obstacle course. The winners get a green card and “extra” role on their favorite soap, and the losers are deported.

RIGHT HERE; RIGHT NOW. A nightly late night talk show hosted by House Majority Whip, “Hot Tub Tom” DeLay. H snaps the audience into shape with his Biblical insight and rope tricks. He explains why, after years of boozing, over-eating, chewing tobacco, and womanizing, he has the right to lead the religious right. Guest hosts include other moral leaders, Rush Limbaugh, New Gingrich, Marylin Manson, and the Church Lady.

MOVIES OF THE WEEK:

• THE STARR REPORT—The Director’s Cut.
• VOODOO ECONOMICS—The Tax Cut.
• NATIONAL FOREST—The Clear Cut.

and,

• THAT’S MY BUSH—Bought directly, as is, from Comedy Central.

As for the last one, I say, Hey, Mr. President, if they’re going to laugh at you, you might as well make them pay.