Goodbye to August, the maddest month of the year.  Long days with hot air breezes.  Takes me back to the times when we kids would clamor to go to the amusement park, maybe the cheezy big one on the Wildwood boardwalk, or that decrepit old one back in the woods along a Pennsylvania country road.  We couldn’t wait to go to the funhouse, that scary dark place where we’d get on a rickety car on rails and find ourselves transported into a long, twisty darkness full of distortions that were, at once, utterly frightening and completely fascinating, smelling of old sewers, stale peanuts, popcorn and kids’ fear.

This August felt like a ride through the old funhouse.

Clicketyclakclicketyclakcliketclakclikclk… is your seat belt fastened?

Clakclakclakbumpgrindclackwhoooosshhh…..

AAAAaaaaarrrgggghhhhhh!  What’s that, a bat? No!  A Beck!

Faces flashing on the screens, eyes wide open, mouths agape, headsets screaming…

Reclaim, restore, renew, revise…

Beckbeckbekbeepbeepbeepedybeepbec….

America has wandered in the darkness….til flashing laser eyes light up the tunnel…show us the way! where are we going?  how did we get here??

Clakclicketyclakclikclak..

Huge glasses shining in the echochamber, what’s she saying? Caribou Barbie channeling Martin Luther King, Jr.?  Reclaiming civil rights?  Down the rabbit hole and through the looking glass where nothing is as it seems…

Clicketyclackcliketyclakclicclicclic

Reload, Sarah!

cliketyclaketycloketycluelessaiiieeeee…..

Yikes!  Something moved in that corner, over there!

A mosque!  A mosque!

To arms!  To arms!  To twitter!  To blogs!

clicketyclackthumpwumpaaarrgghhhhsssssshusshhhh…

Glenn screams, Accept God!

But not in a mosque!

Do not defile sacred space!

But proclaim MYSELF from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial!

Walt Whitman pops out of the darkness:  I celebrate myself and sing myself…

clikcetyclakakakakakakclackwhoa! WHOA!

In the corner!  Flames leap up, tri-cornered hats, red white and blue, reclaim the revolution! Burn the constitution! Or only the 14th Amendment?

Save the Second Amendment!  Keep my musket free!

Freedom of religion for the religions we decree!

screechingyellingshoutinghelphelphelphelp…..

Blago almost exonerated, Roger indicted,

Tiger divorced, Strasburg undone…

A city turns its lonely eyes to… Donovan McNabb!

Hail to the Redskins. Aaaaiiiieeeeeeeeeeee…….

cliketyclaketywhooshwhooshscrapescreechSTOP….

Whew, that was pretty scary, almost lost our brakes!

The August funhouse ride grinds to a halt.

Move on, kids, summer’s over.

The funhouse is closed.

Time for the grownups to reclaim the stage.

(Seriously, I did consider writing something more erudite about all of this, but the mind boggles and words fail in the face of each day’s increasingly bizarre news…)

To see more serious commentaries on these topics, consider reading:

Eugene Robinson, Beck Can’t Mar King’s Legacy

Dana Milbank, Religious Intolerance Then and Now

Frank Rich, The Billionaires Bankrolling the Tea Party

Paul Krugman, It’s Witch Hunt Season

Kathleen Parker, My Name is Glenn Beck and I Need Help

Speaking of politics, how about the Fenty-Gray race?  See On Success

Follow me on Twitter @TrinityPrez