Bamboozlepalooza is coming to NJ

I grew up largely in Westfield, NJ. It's your archetypal suburban town; with a reasonably thriving downtown area that's been largely taken over by chain stores, a movie theatre, restaurants, and not enough parking. It's fairly diverse, with many older homes occupied by middle-class folks, newer (1950's vintage) houses on the far fringes of town, one street that used to be a pretty tumbledown ghetto, which has been improved since I was in high school, and a couple of extremely wealthy sections, such as the Wychwood section, which is about as close to a gated community as you can get without an actual gate. When I was growing up, the story was that at one time, there was a sign right under the Wychwood sign that read "No n-----s, Jews, or dogs allowed."

Which kind of says it all. Needless to say, Westfield is a pretty Republican town; one of those picture-book towns that looks nice and genteel, until someone rocks the boat. When I was a kid, there was a big to-do one year about the high school's Christmas tableau. This was a bunch of kids posing as the nativity, while the school orchestra and choir played and sang Christmas songs. It wasn't the songs that were the issue, or even Jesus On Stage. It was because in order to be in the orchestra or the choir, you were REQUIRED to participate in this. Now the obvious thing to do would have been to exempt the Jewish kids, and anyone else who had a problem with this, from the Christmas tableau, and let them participate in the other programs. But no, instead they killed the Christmas tableau.

Well.

Suddenly there were anti-Semitic letters in the town paper, and organized boycotts of Jewish-owned stores, and even some stores with swastikas spray-painted in their windows, before it all died down.

Sounds sort of like today, doesn't it?

I don't go to Westfield much, mostly because I was pretty unhappy there, and I have no real reason to go back. But Westfield is in the news because George W. "Brother Justin Crowe" Bush is bringing his Social Security Bamboozlepalooza there on Friday, to spread his Gospel of dismantling Social Security to the masses.

Except that the masses are going to be pre-screened to be a kind of Stepford flotilla of Jeff Gannons:

Don't let the growing cadre of dark-suited men in Westfield alarm you. President Bush is appearing at the Westfield Armory Friday morning to discuss Social Security reform, and his Secret Service agents are already showing up.

But his suited guards are probably the most you'll see of the president.

Some 1,500 audience members were hand-picked by the White House, or received invitations doled out by local office-holders and organizations.

Bush has been traveling the country to try to build support for his proposal that would allow workers to put some of their Social Security taxes into private accounts.

Rep. Michael Ferguson (R-7th Dist.), who invited Bush to Westfield, said Friday's event will be "a conversation."

"He wants to speak to, listen to and talk to residents from around the state," Ferguson said.

The lone Democrat on the town's nine-member council objected to a town hall-style meeting being run like a campaign visit, with supporters packing the crowd.

"If the event is being billed as a town hall meeting for the purpose of eliciting views on one of his policy initiatives, there would be an expectation that people having differing views may be in attendance," Councilman Lawrence Goldman said.

But the public "hasn't been informed about how individuals can be selected to attend," Goldman said.

Most of the passes are being given out by the White House, according to Ferguson.

Given that people who aren't toadies can't get the kind of day passes to the White House Press Briefings that JimmyJeff Gannonguckert did, I don't know why anyone would think that those who don't worship C-Plus Caligula would be welcome.