Bunting

We grow nose-blind to persistent smells we breathe in all the time,

become desensitized to even the most

obnoxious, penetrating odors and stenches.

Some get into the marrow of our bones

till others can smell them on us and around us

from miles away. Profound and arrogant ignorance

is the most redolent such malodor, and

some not only don’t mind reeking of it,

but insist that their fetid breath is a fresh breeze.

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At his Senate campaign launch, Rick Collingsworth turned a typo into his identity. The crowd laughed, nodded, clapped—and before long, everyone was inhaling the stench without noticing it.

____________________________________________________

Georiga

The bunting sagged across the courthouse square like underwear on a clothesline, washed too many times and never dried. It had hung there for weeks, a wilting symbol of patriotism, but no one would admit how shabby it looked.

This was the stage Congressman Rick Collingsworth had chosen for unveiling his Senate campaign. He came stomping up the steps, chin pointed heavenward, belly pushing forward, his smile plastered on his face like a decoration pilfered from somebody else’s funeral.

The video started. A choir wheezed from the speakers—tinny, off-key—and the giant screen lit up with golden letters:

A BRIGHTER GEORIGA!

At first there was silence. Then came the nervous coughing, the throat-clearing chuckles, the tittering, and the laughing. Collingsworth, insensitive to everything but his own importance, spread his arms in triumph, as if the laughter were adoration.

More banners dropped. They too declared, GEORIGA.

A reporter up front gave a snort that turned into a choke. That was enough to set the crowd off. Laughter spread like a brush fire, fierce and unstoppable. The laughter was drowning out Collingsworth, so he grinned, grinned as though grinning could save him.

Behind him, his aides scrambled like ants in a skillet. A young intern, chalk-white, rushed up to whisper that the mistake was everywhere—the website, the jingle, the teleprompter. Even the yard signs stacked by the courthouse doors were blazoned with it. GEORIGA wasn’t a slip. It was baked in, like original sin.

Collingsworth raised both palms, preacher-style, and bellowed into the mic: “Friends, this is no mistake. This is a heritage spelling, from the days when men were men and women held their tongues!”

The crowd laughed even harder. He pressed on, his voice swelling into a sing-song of declamatory fervor. “In the new Georiga, we don’t have to put up with lib’ruls tellin’ us we gotta live with gays, and transes, and interracial marriages, and, and, and—spelling!”

If there is anything more dangerous than ignorance, it is ignorance dressed up as inevitability. The crowd laughed, but not one of them believed Collingsworth was joking. An old man in the second row nodded solemnly, as though he had heard the truth spoken plain, and others copied the nod without knowing why. The crowd had seen plenty of people tumble and call it flying. They had gotten used to nodding and clapping at the lie told so many times it’s easy to pretend it’s true.

But the spelling line set off a new round of laughter, sharper, more saw-toothed. A boy cupped his hands and yelled “Spell check!” before his mother grabbed his collar and dragged him off red-faced.

Sweat rolled down Collingsworth’s forehead, but the grin never slipped. “I meant Georiga!” he hollered. “The new Georgia, stronger, purer!”

The aides caught his drift. They flew the flags higher, blared the jingle louder. GEORIGA blinked brilliantly from every Jumbotron screen in the square. The crowd clapped at last, but the sound was thin and wavering, like the applause after a botched stand-up routine.

That night, the headlines made it official. COLLINGSWORTH REBRANDS GEORGIA AS GEORIGA. WELCOME TO GEORIGA. SPELLING THE FUTURE. Video clips sped around the internet, late-night comedians made Collingsworth their punching bag, and within hours the whole country knew what was happening.

By next morning, Collingsworth was on a friendly television network, the grin still fastened to his face. “The fake news wants you to think it was a mistake,” he said. “But we meant Georiga. We’ve always meant Georiga. This is who we are.”

And the bunting stayed up long after it had gone sour, its mildew thick in the air, like an unheeded judgment.