Ayn Rand, Oil and Self Parody

Trey Garrison is losing it

President Barack Obama has been in office only four months. Judging by the tone Dallas' own libertarian writer Trey Garrison in the last week, Garrison is going to have to pace himself if he's going to avoid a breakdown sometime in the next four years. Faster than you can spell ad hominem, Garrison denies Obama's obvious skills and decries anyone who doesn't see it Garrison's way:

"The current occupant of the White House, meanwhile - a superficial, shallow, and wholly incompetent man - has a press corps following him more sycophantic than Pravda in the Stalin years."

The more progress Obama makes in rescuing our economy, the more Garrison wraps himself in his libertarian myths and hagiography. With failed irony and a little flummoxed grammar, Garrison claims, "Now, I don't much do much preaching here or elsewhere" before he launches into a rambling sermon on the merits of Ayn Rand. Not just her supposed economic and philosophic merits, but her literary merits, too. About now, I'm remembering a different group of worshipful followers, the Red Chinese, insisting on Mao's own literary skills as they clutched copies of his Little Red Book. (OK, that last was a bit over the top, but come on, comparing Obama to Stalin?!?) Hardly any but the devoted can make it all the way through cult works. In a final bit of irony, I had to will myself to make it all the way through Garrison's own overblown, tedious tribute to Ayn Rand.

Now, if there's anything that rivals Trey Garrison's irritation over a failure to respect Ayn Rand, it's a failure to pay homage to ExxonMobil. In another blog post that reads like a monologue by Stephen Colbert, Garrison attributes every good thing in life, indeed even life itself, to the wonders of oil and the good work of oil executives.

"So, thank an oil executive next time you see one. Give him a hug. Pay a few extra bucks at the pump. Go on, rev that engine and race someone when the light turns green. For god's (and your own) sake, vandalize a hybrid. Because petroleum is what makes life possible, and worth living."

How do you parody something like that? Trey Garrison's descent into self-parody is already well underway.