The telecast of this year's July 4 festivities at the Washington Mall has been nothing short of spectacular. It has to have been the most Republican of all July 4th celebrations, featuring as it did:

--The host/MC, a demented, pill-popping, wife-beating washed-up has-been in a red tie and blue blazer;

--Clay Aiken, who, during his rendition of Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the U.S.A," began bleeding from the eyes, ears, and nether orifices; the pool of blood gathering around him on the stage began, obviously, to attract corpse-eating zombies from the audience; but when they began to swarm Aiken, the fresh-faced young singer, realizing that he'd been overtaken by a Spirit to which he was unworthy, saved himself and the audience by jamming a lit sparkler into his eye-socket, thereby shunting himself directly unto "the bosom of Abraham" and concluding the segment;

--The sassy-talkin' black woman who explained the wonderful legacy of Ray Charles to what appeared (on TV) to be an audience made up exclusively of suntanned young blond-haired future-kidnapping-victims, shaking their stick-flags and mugging for the cameras; following which a Ray Charles song was performed by (I believe) Vince Gill, or some other fat untalented soulless redneck;

--The upcoming finale, in which I understand a contingent of Iowa farmhands dressed as members of the Congressional Black Caucus will march onstage bearing Ronald Reagan's corpse on a bier; whereby, in a miracle-event based on Jesus' multiplication of the loaves and fishes, the partially-decomposed National Treasure will be used to feed all one million spectators, in lieu of BBQ (since BBQ grills, deemed a security risk, are not allowed), while David Brooks rides a rocket up into the mists above the Washington Monument and explodes into a corona of shimmering gold mustard gas--an event which his personal physicians assure us he can perform over and over again without harm to his physical "person."

Update: They just played Dixie for the second time--yes, the second time--during the fireworks display. This is not a joke.

I'm now waiting for the New American Flag--a computer-generated amalgam of the Confederate Stars & Bars, the crest of the Saudi Royal Family, the True Cross, and the CitiBank logo--to be unfurled down the side of the Capitol.

Has anyone written anything about tastelessness as a kind of evil?