Not Too Amazing

Just a few minutes ago the body of President Gerald R. Ford was driven to his museum in Grand Rapids, Michigan, past a crowd of admirers who were willing to wait outside on a cold, January day just to catch a glimpse of the hearse as it passed. Waiting at the museum was his wife, Betty Ford, and a small army of children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, as well as the presidents of the University of Michigan and Yale, the mayor of Grand Rapids, and former President Jimmy Carter. Tomorrow's ceremony will be shorter, with eulogies from Jimmy Carter, Donald Rumsfeld, the Cheneys, and the Ford children. But today is today. Ford's flag-drapped casket was revealed in the back of the hearse to the tune of "Hail to the Chief" and all was serene and quiet across the plains...

...until the bagpiper began. Ford had specific requests for his funeral, he had picked out his exact burial spot and all the rituals that would accompany him into the ground. One of his requests was for a bagpiper to play the hymn "Amazing Grace" as his casket was brought into his museum for the public to show their appreciation. And the city of Grand Rapids answered his request, producing a police bagpiper to play at the ceremony.

Apparently they like that.

Now, I'm not the biggest fan of the bagpipes. They are generally loud and annoying. But the guy they dug up (forgive the burial pun) was absolutely dreadful. When I think of a good bagpiper, I think of a skilled someone able to use that despicable sack of noise to lure us into a soft, pastoral land far from the white noise of the city, invoking images of Burns' Scotland.

This numb-nut must not have practiced enough.

The sound that came out of the bagpipes as the Honor Guard beared Ford's body into the museum was not "Amazing Grace," and I would deny its encore on the grounds that it is a cruel and unusual punishment to all within the absolute threshold of hearing. The rendition, for lack of a better term, was even more squeaky and out-of-tune than most bagpipe preformances, and listening to it brought to mind a million wet sneakers running across an unbegotten and boundless linoleum floor. I think even Betty Ford, in her quiet mourning, was thinking "who is that and why are they strangling a cat?"

And the icing on the cake comes from Norah O'Donnell, who is that is currently covering the service for MSNBC, who commented on how beautiful the music was. I'd give an exact quote but it was too ridiculous to remember. Thank God for the choir chiming in during the ceremony, for helping to reunite my torn eardrums and easing my mind's pain. Will they pardon the bagpiper in the end? Guiltier men have gone free.

R.I.P Jerry. I hope they play better music in Heaven.

-Josh