The friction between the somber Catholics and the rowdy Virtue Keepers could not be more obvious. The Virtue Keepers had arrived en masse and pasted "Virtue Happens" and "Got Virtue?" bumper stickers on the ornate stain glass windows of Our Lady of Duplicate Forms Church. The congregation was taken completely off guard by their incredibly enthusiastic guests who had draped the statuary in banners pronouncing Virtupalooza and 1-900-VIRTUES. A contingent from the bureaucrats union conspicuously shuffled papers throughout the mass in honor of their fallen comrade. Celebrities and politicians littered the crowd but many more were unable to gain access to the proceedings and crowded the surrounding churchyard.
In the center aisle in front of the altar rested an Airstream trailer with the well-folded body of William Bennett tightly compressed against the interior. The customized lid had been refitted to fill the contents. The suspension had been reinforced and customized shocks had been added and still the load weighed mightily on the tires.
From the opening hymn the tension escalated. What was not immediately noticed is that the Virtue Keepers had supplied their own lyrics, singing praises to the deceased at the expense of the original deity. "Nearer my God to Thee" became "Bigger Backside Than Me" and the congregation grew agitated at the discovery of each altered lyric.
The Mass proceeded despite the rowdy Virtue Keepers. A parishioner read from the Old Testament but was drowned out by chants of "8-6-4-2. What do we want from you? Virtue!" Continuing with a reading from 1 Corinthians 13, the orator silenced the cheers with a passage that was selected just for the deceased. "I am a noisy gong or clanging cymbal." Even the paper shuffling ceased.
Father Fenol rose to deliver the Gospel and he would shock the congregation with a passage from Paul's letters to Titus. "They profess to know God but they deny him by their actions." This line was read over and over and over and resulted first in a perfect silence and was then followed by a catharsis of cheering, and clapping and shouting and weeping.
The gathered continued their silent attention throughout Father Fenol's eulogy. But as other speakers got up to share their innermosts the climate again turned rowdy. Rush Limbaugh led off. "Heaven comes from the Greek word Helios meaning to expand. Benny was always expanding. He taught me a lot about the virtue of corpulence."
Not long into Limbaugh's shared grief an ominous sing song of "Virrr-tue", reminiscent of the "Sterrr-oid" chant that used to follow Jose Canseco, emanated from the back of the church. By the time Alan Keys took the podium it was again hard to hear the speaker.
Keys largely bragged about his own virtue and boldly proclaimed himself "The Viceroy of Virtue." Whether this agitated the crowd or if they chanted in support of the lector is unclear. But a new, livelier chant--Virtue! Clapclapclapclapclap--took over and it was clear that once again no one wanted to hear a word Keys had to say.
Kenneth Starr followed Keys. "Had there not been William Bennett there could never have been the Lewinsky investigation. Had William Bennett not promoted the idea of ruination for our moral inferiors, we would never been able to sidetrack the fifty million dollar Whitewater Investigation." By now the Virtue Keepers were going full throttle with a rousing version of "We got virtue yes we do. We got virtue how about you?"
Father Fenol was visibly nervous. When a Virtue Keeper cut to the front of the eulogy line to deliver a filibuster promoting upcoming events, he decided to take action. Amidst the waves of snoring from off in the distance and the now amplified paper shuffling and much scuffling in the churchyard and the Virtue Keepers now jumping on the seats, Father Fenol truncated the funeral Mass.
The tires on the Airstream were reinflated and a Humvee was backed in to haul it to its final rest stop. The exit from the church and the launching of the motorcade would be amazingly smooth. The procession to nascent Saint Smugly Cemetery would not be.
Within hundreds of feet of the entrance of the combination cemetery and country club William Bennett's old nemesis Pat Buchanan blocked the long line of luxury cars. Buchanan had always envied Bennett's fame and he was now holding a placard declaring himself the king of all virtue. The stalled motorists sat for an amazingly long time before Alan Keys emerged to confront Buchanan. Keys soon found himself in a headlock and his head was soon slamming into the bumper of Buchanan's Mercedes.
"How ya like that, Buckwheat?" Buchanan taunted as Keys implored him to spare damage to his shiny halo. It took a mob of Virtue Keepers, some of whom soaked up a lot of flack in the form pepper spray and spittle, to subdue Buchanan and dump his traffic-jamming Mercedes into a ditch that lined the road.
At Saint Smugly Cemetery a crane lowered William Bennett to his final resting place. Cemetery officials refused to reveal how many plots were required to facilitate the Airstream casket. The Partnership for a Drug-Free America paid for the extra plots in return for the placement of a colossal headstone that would emit anti-drug slogans twenty-four hours a day. "Just say no." "Users are losers." "You can't be a hit if you're high." These and hundreds of other mindless slogans will tug at the nostalgic follicles in a computer-generated voice designed to simulate William Bennett's once droning prattle.
At first it seemed the mourners would never leave. But someone uttered the word "buffet" and the mostly Republican crowd was reminded that not all of their longings stemmed from the heart. As the final guests drove away, the salutatory snoring could be heard off in the distance. The snoring would continue until sometime the following morning. The William Bennett headstone would not grow silent. Not until that fateful day when an asteroid falls from above. In the meantime, visitors can enjoy advice like "Money is better than drugs" and "Get high on virtue" in an endless loop of nattering drivel. It is doubtful if any other memorial from time memorial so perfectly captured the essence of its subject.
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Eulogies for William Bennett
The Bennett Chapaquiddick
Death by Conan
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