Dancing with the Hammer

So I’m watching TV on Monday. It’s the first night of the new season of one of my favorite shows, “Dancing With the Stars.” This show, as most of you probably know, is a dancing reality-type show in which a bunch of athletes and b-list celebrities are paired up with professional ballroom dancers. Each week the pro and celebrity couples perform a ballroom routine and a panel of judges score them. The TV audience also gets to vote on their favorite pair, and the celebrity with the lowest combined score is booted off of the dance floor and beaten to death by performing arts critics.

Anyway, I really like the program. The judges are wacky and can be rude, but they generally seem to like the dancers and care about ballroom dancing.  The women wear humorously skimpy outfits, which is a plus. Overall, it’s a nice program.

So imagine my surprise yesterday to discover that this year Cheryl Burke, one of my favorite pro dancers, has been paired up with Tom Delay.

Noted slimeball Tom Delay shakes his money-maker as the world weeps.

That’s right. Tom Delay. Ex-Republican House Majority Leader from Texas. Tom “The Hammer,” Delay, Newt “Trouser Weasel” Gingrich’s wingman in the 1990s Republican Revolution. Tom Delay, who despises the arts, doesn’t believe in evolution and who once killed a migrant worker with his teeth. He’s dancing with Cheryl.

Like, what the hell, Dude?

Let’s look at this guy’s record. In 1970 he ran a pest control agency, which was cited three times for failure to pay income and payroll taxes. In the Texas Legislature Delay earned the nickname “Hot Tub Tom,” admitting he was drinking up to 12 martinis a night at fundraisers. This, of course, can only earn our approval, but it’s the single bright spot in an otherwise dismal career.

Upon reaching the House of Representatives, Tom sought to get the National Endowment for the Arts’ funding cut. Later on, Delay would be one of the driving forces behind the House’s idiotic and ultimately unsuccessful impeachment of Bill Clinton (no doubt because Clinton was a far better tangoer than he could ever be). In other triumphs, the Hammer earned a rating of zero from both the Sierra Club and the ACLU, lacking only a similar score from the “Save the Little Fluffy Kittens Society” for the trifecta.

Anyway, this bozo resigned in 2006 in the face of an indictment for being a corrupt jerkface. And here he pops up, on one of my favorite shows, dancing with Cheryl Burke! It’s like turning on the radio and hearing Yasser Arafat doing a cover of Over the Rainbow.

Well, here’s hoping that Cheryl puts him through the works. With luck she’ll devise for him some bone-crackingly nasty dance step and all of his limbs will pop right out of his body, leaving him gasping and flopping around like a beached tuna while the kids who never got to take dance classes because of NEA funding cuts come up and practice paso dobles on his head.

Go get him, Cheryl!

Tags: ballroom dancing, Cheryl Burke, Dancing With the Stars, humor, pop culture, Tom Delay