From the 16th century to the dawn of the 20th, a special choir sang at the pontiff’s pleasure, grown men with the voices of angels and the range of female sopranos. There was a simple reason for their abilities: each had had his gonads surgically removed prior to achieving puberty.
I don’t know why, but the other day, while pondering the castrati (It., “castrated ones”), I started thinking about the 110th Congress. Could it be, I wondered, that we are witnessing the political equivalent of a choir of the ball-less pandering to the whims of a theological autocrat?
Naw, I thought, not our Dems – our guys are descended from the tradition of FDR and “The Buck Stops Here” Harry! We have a heritage of Massive Brass – New Deals and Great Societies that had to be shoved down the throats of backward-looking Republicans. There’s no way that folks of such stock could ever be compared to emasculated servants performing at the whim of a king, nor to the haunting voice of the very last castrati, the only one whose voice was ever recorded.
Or could they?