Seeing What's Been Broken For Centuries

Rick Perlstein absolutely nailed it last month: "In America, crazy is a pre-existing condition."

I want to take this extremely useful reminder one or two steps further. We need to ask ourselves (1) When dealing with manifest mental illness, what is an effective and humane form of behavior that doesn't make things worse, for us or for them? and (2) Let's be explicit about what kind of crazy we're facing here.

Once I was having dinner with an old friend who had retired to a rural area for a while after an extended, messy break-up. She was back in town and we were catching up. She looked much brighter and happier than she had when she'd left town, and I was relieved to see it. Before we got to dessert, however, she confided that she'd finally gotten over her heartbreak after having visitations from aliens -- she could name the planet and galaxy -- who let her know she'd been born there, not on Earth, and she would always have problems relating intimately to Earthlings. I broke into giggles, but she was dead serious. She had come up with a way to cope, a narrative which worked for her, and I had about twenty seconds to figure out what to do.

That sort of situation, once the shock passes (take several sips of tea), is not so hard to handle. Ask questions, stay kind, remind yourself what they -- any of us -- really want/deserve is love and interest. Easy to remember when it's your friend. She didn't have any children she was responsible for, she was clean and eating well and driving okay, and she wasn't going around telling everybody she was from Planet X, only the folks she trusted, so she wasn't about to get locked up. Functionally delusional.

I'm thinking, at this point in America, about one out of every three people is functionally delusional. I think we've always had more than our share because of the nature of our immigration here -- folks who can healthily adjust to and remain in their home communities don't leave those communities. And being persecuted doesn't mean you haven't also become pretty messed up along the way.

On top of that revisitation of the great American myth, I also believe that white supremacy, woman-hating, class exploitation, and child abuse are all concrete forms of mental illness. They are interlinked, they have for millenia been fostered and supported by European governments and the Christian Church, and they are the bedrock upon which our country was founded. When Che said he envied us because we live in the belly of the beast, the point is not whether he was being sarcastic: The point is that living in the belly is a very poor strategic position from which to fight the beast unless you first acknowledge all your sustenance is coming from the beast.

To put it another way, if you say you are not a racist, you most definitely are. Racism is a core value in our culture and nobody escapes the conditioning. And the basic tenet of racism is not that "there are differences between the races" or whatever Websterian bullshit semantic game you want to trot out: The basic tenet of racism is white supremacy. If you are not white, you are second-class (on a good day). You are the Other. You are a risk to the American Way of Life.

Yes, some white Europeans got labeled not-quite-white or The Other for a while, but that merely proves the point. You can lose your position of safety in a system built on racism by associating with/defending/or becoming not-white. It keeps white people in line, this risk; most especially working-class white folks who are already on thin ice.

So, because of a brilliant campaign in which one of the subliminal messages was "I'm not entirely black, I'm not black like Jesse Jackson or Jeremiah Wright, I've picked up enough class polish to not embarrass you like Dubya, and I will NOT make America deal with its bedrock racism", we've elected an African-American to the Presidency. I'm not saying those are the only reasons Obama was elected, but for too many white people who cast the deciding votes, I believe the hope that we could simply side-step racism and Just Be Together made Obama someone they voted for.

Plus: The mess about to handed to the next President was godawful. Who do we get to clean up our messes for us in this country? The really terrible messes, the ones that make you need to gag? Women and/or People of Cullah. Goes without saying.

But for that 30% who are functionally delusional, part of their functionality vanished when the Presidency didn't go to a white guy. They simply cannot cope with what has actually occurred. They are, to use jargon, decompensating. I happen to believe the impact would have been just a great if Hillary had been elected, and if there's one bright lining in all these, it's that I'm not having to listen to the non-stop woman-hating jag that would be going on if she'd been elected. Not Sarah Palin, because she is a Real Woman, according to the delusion, which means she's under the thumb of a man. But in comparison to all the horrifying racism that has bubbled up to the surface (didn't have far to go, let's be honest), if it were Hillary as target, it wouldn't just be the Right. It would be all our nice liberal boys who get twitchy at the mention of her name.

You'll see their flecks of spittle start appearing in the comments as soon as I post this. Until I delete those comments for being unhingedly off the point, that is.

Thus, the racism that was always there, always running the show, has been unmasked for a lot of white people, and we can't live in the same comfortable pretense that we had before. Even those of us who have other labels which make us pitchforks-and-torches targets -- dykes, fags, Jews, crips, poor and not upwardly mobile -- have had a jolt, seeing how much crazy is pouring from the seams. To quote Madge, "We're soaking in it."

And the only way to clean it up thoroughly is to scrub down to bare wood. Otherwise, we'll keep having what we've got.

It won't be Obama and his inner circle who does this work. It's going to be so-called progressives (which is not a cohesive, clearly defined community, either) who will help steward our culture from about to self-destructive Crazy to admitting-we-have-a-problem-and-maybe-we-can-work-on-it Crazy. What I've promised myself in this process is to not lie just because what I'm criticizing Obama and his crew for may remind me/us of the hate pouring from racism. I have to remember, I voted for him, I want him to succeed, I want him to find a way to live up to ideals that he may have only mouthed for political expedience, but people can change.

And here's a few thoughts I've had over the last couple of weeks.

(1) The Birther insanity is code for "There is no such thing as a legitimate black birth." Admitting that black children can be born with as much legitimacy as white children strokes a sledgehammer blow at white supremacy. ESPECIALLY if it's the result of miscegenation, which was still illegal in this country for a chunk of my lifetime.

(2) The school speech "controversy" is code for "We don't let our children see or hear black people who speak well and with pride." This is no joke: Families built around authoritarian principles don't let African-American images in television come into their homes, unless they are being arrested by cops, clearly poor and/or "know their place", or the parents are there to make sure the kids hear non-stop racism instead of noticing the black people look/sound like people. White people who have been raised with this kind of isolation and deliberate poisoning are all around us. Continuing that practice is the real point of not letting their kids hear Obama speak in a non-racist, public setting. Contagion, you know -- if they find out they can be lesbians, their daughters will never choose men, and if they find out black people can be smart and powerful, they'll insist on living in a world where that's the case.

(3) Having lots of people openly carry guns makes public settings extremely unsafe for everybody present. Statistics have proven it over and over again: Add a gun to a crowd, and the odds of somebody innocent dying go way up. The point of having armed presence at public forums is to scare away the non-crazies, to get us used to further militarization of our discourse and community environments, and to have weapons handy in case somebody goes off the deep end and DOESN'T HAVE ONE OF THEIR OWN TO USE. "Hey, I was just carrying for self-defense, how was I to know that lunatic would snatch it from my holster and fire at the President?"

(4) Recruitment and glomming together of the deranged can be subtle. During the 1980s, the activist group I worked with finally figured out how come the Klan and Nazis kept having rallies in places where they were absolutely going to be shouted down by the opposition. They didn't hope to persuade any of us to change our minds, and they knew they were pissing off the neighborhoods they intruded upon. But because of that antagonism, they had to be surrounded by cops two or three rows deep, cops who were facing screaming commies, Jews, lesbians, and POC. Those cops were the Klan's recruitment target. These days it's cops plus the military.

(5) If somebody says, in any translation, that they cannot handle what is actually occurring -- and we're hearing that now, 24/7 -- we need to point out over and over again that THEY are the ones with a problem. Crazy people seldom admit they are crazy.

(6) You don't argue with crazy people. We go on with our work, and if they interfere, we say "Nope, I don't have time to help you right now with your emotional imbalance" and MEAN IT.

There's more...

Wuz I On “C.P.” Time Tha Diz-zay They Wuz Handin' Out Da Fatiguez?”

“We Have Waited Thirty Years To Spring Our Afro-tastic Trap...UNGOWAH!”


Apparently so, brothers and sisters. The latest from Rush's Bat-Shit™ Cave, (via Crooks and Liars)

LIMBAUGH: “We know that technological advancement is going along at light speed. And yet during this period of time, whether it be the last 57 years or be it the last 20 years, it seems that a majority of the black population has remained angry, frustrated, and behind. They've been left behind. They are acting like they've been left behind, and of course we've heard that this is because of racism, natural systemic institutional racism in America, that we are unfair, that this country is just horrible and rotten.”

“...The federal government became the father. The father didn't have to hang around in order for the kids to be okay, depending on ow you define okay. But as you study more and more of this ACORN stuff, you find that it has been part of an entire movement that has been going on for two, maybe three decades, right under our noses.”

“We thought that it was just liberal welfare policies and all that that kept blacks from progressing while other minorities grew and prospered, but no, it is these wackos from Bill Ayers to Jeremiah Wright to other anti-American Afrocentric black liberation theologists with ACORN, and Barack Obama is smack dab in the middle of it, they have been training young black kids to hate, hate, hate this country, and they trained their parents before that to hate, hate, hate this country. It was a movement. It was a Bill Ayers, anti-capitalist, anti-American educational movement. ACORN is how it was implemented, right under our noses.
It has been a movement, it has been a religion, and Obama and Jeremiah Wright and William Ayers were all up to their big ears in it.”

As the days grow shorter til' the election, and McCain's odds of winning grow ever longer, the din from the crazed dissonance from the whackdoodley-est of the whackdoodle right will be so Goddamned loud, you won't be able to hear yourselves think—or in Black folks' cases, hear our Publlic Enemy / NWA mash-ups on our freshly riot-liberated stereo consoles perched atop our shoulders.

There's a panic goin' on. A quiet riot in the minds of folks like Limbaugh and his drooling drones with their AM talk-radio i.v.'s on wide drip. Should things go the way they appear headed election-wise, you will hear talk of secession of this place and that from the United States, like NewYork's wingnut haven Staten Island wanted to do when the city dared elect a Black mayor. We already know Sarah and the rest of the “Whiter Shades of Palins” up north are down with that sort of lunacy. But most laughably, you will hear these poor, twisted souls cross up the talking points something fucking awful as their hate-fried synapses sputter and crackle wildly, like downed power lines on a wet street.

Rush's crazy from yesterday is one such example of the combination of fear and a lifelong ingestion of mad-cow bigot burgers messing up and already fragile mind.

'Cause your talking points Rushie? Well...Papa just don''t know what to make of 'em any more.

Are Black folks the biologically, bell-curve addled child-people you generally make us out to be in your daily three-hour hate, or are we now these crafty geniuses with the long-term planning chops of NASA imagineers and the strategic vision of a Sun Tzu?

Which is it, o' sex-touring, dope fiending, posteriorly pilonidally pustuled one? Iz us Black folkz dum...b, or iz we smart? Your precious Bell Curve says we can't be both, so which is it? If we're still dumb, it means you've spent years frantically sphincter-ing out a talking point you just denied, and Obama's ascendance has more to do with him (Horrors!), and not the grand conspiracy your swollen heart craves believing.

If we be all smart and crafty and Machiavelllian, and stuff, well, what the fuck does that do to your whole “We are born preternaturally stupid” argument.

You make the call, Tiny.

But seeing as how this is all conflicting and whatnot for you, howsabout I, as the spokesman for all Black people (because you know we all know each other and stuff...) propose this solution...

That things be “the way they ought to be” and we be as you have wished for years, more like you.

Which apparently, is stupid...all...The. Fucking. Time.

Hey Rush...Is That Riot Still Goin' On In Your Head?

There's more...

That Crazy Genie Is Loose And Happy...And Hates Its Goddamned Bottle

“Um...yeah, Master? About that 'Your wish is my command' crap?' Um...Nope!”

It's the age-old parable. Man creates uncontrollable monster. Man uses uncontrollable monster for his own selfish gain. Uncontrollable monster is of course, un-controllable and does heinous things. Man tries to bring uncontrollable monster to heel. Uncontrollable monster says “Fuck that!” and it all goes downhill from there. From the legend of Frankenstein, to tales of lamp and bottle-chucking genies going for theirs, to the attempted “taming” of King Kong and Disney's in-over-his-head Sorcerer's Apprentice it's a well-worn story where ego-fueled “masters” grossly underestimate the destructive forces they unleash when they tamper with that which no man can truly harness.

We spoke on the original “Three M's” from last week—“McCain, The Mattresses, and Menace”, his campaign's harsh and incendiary words. And thanks to John McCain's desperate, reckless political gambit, we find ourselves reminded of three other “M's”, linked through tales we all know, and as noted above, once released, nigh impossible to re-contain—Magic, Monsters, and Murderous Rage.

The play backfired. Badly for him. Shakily mounting the Ayers stalking horse himself like some city-poser playing cowboy-tough, and with Sarah Palin doing the vile scut work of trawling the depths of wingnut fear-mongering and regurgitating that crap with such dippy glee that folks wondered if she was medicated...it all seems to have come apart. He has stoked his crowds—his racist, hate-filled republican base crowds to such a high temperature of intolerance that the news media felt that ugly heat a mile away and reported on it, and ol' Johnny boy himself took some third degree burns to whatever prestige remained attached to him.

He may have also helped to crispy-critter his party's brand with this reach into the realm of ugly. And his in-party co-horts are pissed.

Senior members of the Republican party are in open mutiny against John McCain's presidential campaign, after a disastrous period which has seen Barack Obama solidify his lead in the opinion polls.

And as disputes raged within the McCain camp yesterday, Democrats took another symbolic step towards healing the party after their bitter primary battles, as Bill and Hillary Clinton made their first joint appearance in support of Mr Obama.

From inside and outside his inner circle, Mr McCain is being told to settle on a coherent economic message and to tone down attacks on his rival which have sometimes whipped up a mob-like atmosphere at Republican rallies.

Two former rivals for the party nomination, Mitt Romney and Tommy Thompson, went on the record over the weekend about the disarray in the Republican camp. And a string of other senior party figures said Mr McCain's erratic performance risks taking the party down to heavy losses not just in the presidential race but also in contests for Congressional seats. Mr Thompson, a former governor of the swing state of Wisconsin, said he thought Mr McCain, on his present trajectory, would lose the state, and he told a New York Times reporter he was not happy with the campaign. “I don't know who is,” he added.

GOP'ers love to trot out the old “11th Commandment” of Ronald Reagan: “Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican.”, as evidence of their party unity. Evidently there was a little-discussed “Commandment 11A” scrawled at the bottom of Saint Ronnie's jellybean jar that only a few read back then, but many seem to know now. Said addendum reads...“unless the idiot's gonna blow our shit sky high.”

And Johnny's fucking with dynamite, kids.

It was evident he was rallying the nutbar base of his party as independents have begun to tune him and his cave-bright co-hort the hell on out. A desperate ploy, this going all native, you see. But this maverick whipped mule, with the polls sliding and his chances getting away from him released that genie, sought to domesitcate “Kong”, and messed about with the Sorcerer's powerful spellbook, and of course the ensuing situation got away from him embarrassingly. When you have one guy campaigning on “Hope”, and “Change”, and detailing how he's gonna fix the broken stuff in political D.C., while the other guy's got screaming, crazy supporters citing chain-letter, black helicopter bullshit as the reason they're “a-skeered”, and how the opponent must be bombed, defeated, or killed, well...that's gonna look bad for the latter guy.

Of course, he didn't realize that until the external poll numbers began fleeing away from him, and didn't even hint at changing up until the internal numbers clearly (although they'll NEVER admit to it) imploded. The sane among us saw those crazies at his rallies—the “He's a terrorist!”, “Bomb him!”, “Kill him” crowd and didn't have to make a Bob Beamon leap to see the dangerous place that anger was going. Those lunatics are that hard-nut core who will back the worst, most retrograde shit, and cannot stand the very idea of being either called out on their obvious biases or being out of impactful power. Both of those things trigger a pathological response in these “people”—a misplaced, transferred play at victimhood. The same kind of victimhood” seen in D.W. Griffiths' “Birth Of A Nation”, where beleagured Whites were forced—forced I tell you!—to take up arms, sheets, coned hoods and blazing crosses against the Black menace that post-emancipation “threatened” the country.

The unnervingly bitter folks in these videos speak volumes.





Yes, I said “bitter”. What turned these moments into a pro-Obama springboard was their clear validation of a painful early Obama campaign narrative come a' cropper...namely that “bitterness” he spoke of during the primary season. It manifests itself in these brusque moments and the countless others chronicled since John McCain decided to beat the whackdoodle beehive with a tree limb and think he could tell the bees that swarmed out what to sting and when. It plays to Obama's not only having been right, but also sagely prescient about how these folks will “go to ground” when the shit hits the fan.

And for them it is clear, a Black person at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and not working in the kltchen is the shit hitting the fan.

McCain and Palin knew exactly what they were doing when they played these cards with the crazies across from them at the table. They just didn't figure on everybody else instead of following these sad lunatics, standing back and disassociating themselves from the bigoted batshittery. And in isolating those morally sick people with the candidates who amped them up, and then puiblicizing the stupidity of their words, McCain's gamble wound up crapping out. “Regular” folks didn't want to be lumped in with “those” vicious goons who sounded like the loudmouth sidewalk bystanders from old newsreeels screaming invective at civil rights marchers.

Shame is a helluva thing. When the polls worsened for McCain after this ill-thought-out / ill-timed tack, the situation in fact, blew up so badly that McCain had to beat his “monster” back with a flaming torch alá Frankenstein's Monster by talking his most insane “supporters” down from dementia as noted above. The stumped “No?” from the crazed anti-Arab woman is priceless. It's as if she's saying “But that's what I got from what you were saying, John...”

McCain even had to issue a press release disavowing the wild rhetoric he sired, and worst of all for him—for once he had to publicly acknowledge Senator Obama as a human being with feelings in trying to clean up after his 'followers' hateful verbal diarrhea.

And then, it put wingnuttia's most prominent shills on the defensive as well. When you have the likes of the rope-belted perfesser, Glenn “Instahack” Reynolds and Michelle “Diss The Cheerleader And You Save The World” Malkin running scared, and running interference to cover for the nuts they play to, but make believe they don't, you know a line got crossed.

First, Reynolds: (No links. Crawl through the cybersewer “Shawshank Redemption”-style to find their turds.)

NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE? So we've had nearly 8 years of lefty assassination fantasies about George W. Bush, and Bill Ayers' bombing campaign is explained away as a consequence of him having just felt so strongly about social justice, but a few people yell things at McCain rallies and suddenly it's a sign that anger is out of control in American politics? It's nice of McCain to try to tamp that down, and James Taranto sounds a proper cautionary note -- but, please, can we also note the staggering level of hypocrisy here? (And that's before we get to the Obama campaign's thuggish tactics aimed at silencing critics.)...

...The double standards involved --particularly on the part of the press -- are what are feeding this anger...

...So while asking for McCain supporters to chill a bit, can we also ask the press to start doing its job rather than openly shilling for a Democratic victory? Self-control is for everybody, if it's for anybody...

And then, our poor, special child Shellykins has the blogospheric equivalent of a two-year old's shit-fit while sprawled on the floor of a Stein-Mart:

The Obamedia is attempting to set yet another false narrative: The narrative of the McCain “mob.” McCain-Palin rallies are out of control, they wheedle. Conservatives are mad! They’re yelling mean things about Obama and calling him names! It’s scaaaaary!...

...Please.

Let’s talk about “insane rage” and “violent escalation.”
This is insane rage — Madonna bashing Sarah Palin and shrieking “I will kick her ass:”...

...This is insane rage — Sandra Bernhard bashing Sarah Palin and cursing her head off with hate warping her crazed face:..

...And speaking of violent escalation, let’s revisit the Unhinged: The Mugshot Collection for the violent escalation last election cycle that the Obamedia ignored:...

The two whine-fests are funny for so many reasons. One, you can tell when something is under Instahack's onion-thin skin because you can feel the abject agony of his having to actually write something beyond “Heh”, “Indeed”, “Ouch!” or somesuch passive-aggressive pablum that ends up agreeing with heinous winger shit. Two, when he's going on about the mean, old press being responsible for these kooks' anger, remember...this is the clown who's been crowing like a rooster with short-term memory disorder about the death of the old media, and their loss of influence. As they are apparently being replaced by such new “Tiffany Network”-grade work as seen at Pajamas Media, of course. Malkin's piggy squeal though, first comes off like some over-the-top ad-lib shit off the “Mean Girls” cutting-room floor—“It's scaaaaaaary!” But that's almost appropriate, considering her emotional maturity level (Hey, she may have actually written this little screed herself, by gum!), and then she lapses into the lamest defense since The Patriots' fourth quarter ass-tumbling last winter against the Giants. “Waaaaaaaaaah! Lookit what they did!”—followed up with mealy-ass filler from her most recent bound failure of a string of consonants and vowels, “Unhinged”. (This will NOT bump up sales Malky, sell 'em outta your trunk like the hoodrat snuff-fiction you know it's equal to)

But notice one key thing about these two leading-low lights and their defenses. There's not a shred of contrition, folks. If anything, there's more of the “Raaaaaaaaargh! I hate, therefore I am victimized!” keening. Why?

Simple. It goes back to something I said two weeks ago about today's wingnuts when I called them “The Lost Generation”.

...And the likes of Palin and her fellow travelers, skipping down the road of stupid like Dorothy, The Tin Man, The Cowardly Lion, and Scarecrow...not in quest of heart, home, courage and yes...brain, but power instead—represent the core of what passes for leadership on the right. There is NO brilliant—but wittily evil mind on their side like Bill Buckley's any more. His generation is dead and gone, and he was at least entertaining in a thought-provokingly maddening sort of way. No. What we have is a cloud of dumb-assery, raining grating “Dontchas”, “Betchas”, “Hear-yas”, and “Back-to-yas!” upon us to where we stand knee-deep in in a sludge of bullshit and stupid.

There remains only a vestigial brain—just sophisticated enough to walk, breathe, chew gum and hate with.

The modern-day republican is hammer-to-the-temple stupid and is reduced to just a hateful “id”. Reynolds and Malkin and those hooligans at the rallies exemplify it. They are never wrong—somehow only provoked and misunderstood. Pushed to their state of crazy by a world gone mad.

Bullshit.

In Robert Louis Stevenson's original “Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde” the venal Hyde was not something that Jekyll became outside of himself. The brutal “Hyde” was a thing within him that if not acknowledged as a component, would repeatedly subsume him. (Which it does in the novel)

The GOP of today is the ascendant, unfettered Hyde. Jekyll is no more. Lamented in his passing by Andrew Sullivan and others through the reality of classic “conservatism's” having been overwhelmed by the lunatic fundie base. The genie is out of the bottle for good now, and that scares the living hell out of the sane and sober “silent majority” of classic republicans. What we see at these rallies is the inbred children of old-line Birchers, and Wallace-ites, raised on Rush and Coulter on home-school talk ray-diddio, and taught to read by reciting black helicopter-and-illuminati-filled chain letters. They were looked at as the “special” kid the shamed GOP elites kept in an attic closet or in a special hidey box like “The Gimp” in “Pulp Fiction”. Well, a desperate John McCain has set those maladjusted people loose—to spark something...Anything!—to get his campaign turned around and instead, it blew up in his face.

Exposing him as craven and feckless, and them as the damaged loons we always knew they were but were maybe too reticent to group in.

The reason you can't stop these people is because they are “the base”. That core 25-28% who still support Bush in spite of his royal 'King Feces Touch' and will back anything a nut with an “R” in front of his name and a bible under his arm says. They are the concentrated pure essence and cannot be diluted at this point—for they are what remains. You can't ask something that is what it is to be something else. The dangerously flawed John McCain chose to appeal directly to them—and not the independents who've abandoned him in droves, because they are the shock troops, the instant offense you go to when you need a furtive boost. Not what you base a winning team on.

John McCain's sweaty desperation helped him to forget that. And now the big, ugly gear of intolerance in the republican machine has laid itself bare. For the Reynolds' and Malkins of the world on piss-pot damage control duty, there is NO spin away. There is no masking what those crowds are down with.

You can try to stuff that genie back in the bottle, Johnny-Boy. But first, you'll have to glue that fucker back together after you smashed it open in a panic.

And now that the genie's (a pretty powerful one, too) tasted freedom, thanks to you...it's gonna be damn near impossible to get it to “go home”.

'Cause those blinks when it gets angry are no joke.

There's more...

The Post In Which Karl Rove Channels Hall & Oates' Hit Single “Out Of Touch”

The Above Visual Metaphor Worked. The One Karl Rove Cited This Morning? Um. No. Never. And What The Fuck?

As it's hot as hell today with Summer officially on, let's just dive on into the deep end of the cool pool of GOP crazy, shall we?

Rove: Obama's the Guy at the Country Club Holding a Martini Making Snide Comments About Everyone Else

June 23, 2008 1:36 PM
ABC News' Christianne Klein reports that at a breakfast with Republican insiders at the Capitol Hill Club this morning, former White House senior aide Karl Rove referred to Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, as “coolly arrogant.”

“Even if you never met him, you know this guy,” Rove said, per Christianne Klein. “He's the guy at the country club with the beautiful date, holding a martini and a cigarette that stands against the wall and makes snide comments about everyone who passes by.”

----------------------------------------------------

Interesting that Mr. Rove would use a country club metaphor to describe the first major party African-American presidential candidate, whom I'm sure wouldn't be admitted into many country clubs that members of the Capitol Hill Club frequent.

But the picture Rove paints is interesting. Who, pray tell, is Rove at this country club?

The guy telling funny stories near the band?

The charming president of the club's philanthropic arm?

The brainy guy with all the sports scores?

Or the guy who vandalizes your car and blames it on the kitchen staff?

I'll wait while you feel around for your eyes on the floor seeing as how they popped out of your head a few seconds ago.

Washed 'em off? Got 'em back in? Good! Let's make short work of this Tacoma Narrows Bridge of “reasoning” on Rove's part.

First of all, you should take note that Karl Rove been damn near out of his mind with his every loopy pronouncement since the fall of 2006, when he screeched about how he had “The Math”(favorable to the Republicans) immediately prior to the mid-term elections he bollixed up so badly for the GOP. He's managed to make the ramblings of an end-stage syphilitic like Al Capone (“The Bolsheviks! The God-damn Bolsheviks!”) sound like homespun folk-wisdom in comparison.

Perhaps sympathetically, like the person he's championing to replace his boss, he's utterly “lost his bearings” on reality. That's the truly crazy part of his “Country Club” statement—in likening someone who looks like Barack Obama to a pink-cheeked, millionaire swell sippin' Rob Roys at “The Nineteenth Hole” or somethin'. How out of your mind do you have to be in America to make that kind of rhetorical leap?

Let's spell out that leap:

Yeah. It's the Black dude whose father booked up on him, leavin' his White mom to raise him alone, who stilll managed to excel academically, and in spite of that—came back to the South Side of Chicago to work in the 'hood' with his 'peeps', instead of taking the stoopid-money Wall Street jobs...who's the arrogant guy at the country club. Not the guy who married into millions, took part in a Savings and Loan scam, ripping off even mo' millions, and...owns like eight houses in choice locales all over the country. Mmm-kay?

I mean...this is a land where a well-to-do Black Lawyer went undercover a decade ago as a busboy at an exclusive Country Club in Connecticut (as that was the only way he could get in the place) to find out first-hand what down-their-nose White folks really thought of Blacks when they felt they didn't have to hold their tongues around them out of concerns for propriety. There are places where my Black ass would be hauled away and arrested “The Dude” style just for lingering too close to the Goddamned shrubbery at the gate, and Rove somehow sees Barack Obama—who the last time I checked, doesn't sign his name as “Biff”, “Chip” or fucking “Cadwallader” as the “the Guy at the Country Club Holding a Martini Making Snide Comments About Everyone Else.”?

There are too many of these clubs in America where if Obama showed up unannounced with a “member”, all of a sudden there'd be a full course and no room to play—but hey, there's always room in the back for another n*gger to scrub bits of Cobb Salad off the dishes and whatnot, eh?

So, color me wet sand-trap brown, but I'm just not getting this analogy of Rove's with Obama as the swell and... I guess his boy McCain as the scrappy outsider. Is Rove's issue with his inability thus far to elicit the desired “response” from the senator from Illinois? The desired “Angry Black Thug” angle he's so desperate to exploit—whether its rooted in an actual statement or rebuttal from Obama or not? “How dare he seem above the bullshit I'm trying to run! That arrogant S.O.B.! He won't get 'ghetto' like he's supposed to!”

That just may be it.

That...and the whole “Tiger Woods” comparison redux. We first noted this a couple of months ago when a lesser McCain surrogate ham-fistedly made the comparison of Obama to the hated Tiger Woods in pumping up the sad spectacle of the GOP's “champion”...

You see, the usage of Woods as a slang shorthand for Barack Obama speaks to a certain racial paranoia of the part of folks like Bellavia. I was in Augusta, Georgia the weekend that Tiger Woods officially burst onto golf's lily-white scene in 1997. I wasn't there for the tournament mind you, but rather, I was visiting a significant other who was performing in town. I found myself at trip's end at Bush Field, the city's airport waiting for my flight home, aimlessly walking from my gate to the oddly crowded bar and back. I finally stopped at the bar's fringe—I couldn't get in it from the huge crowd packing the place—and noticed what everyone was looking at, namely the final round of the Masters tournament just a stone's throw away in which first-year PGA pro Tiger Woods was ripping through the course like Caddyshack's Ty Webb on a fast-drip adrenaline and espresso I.V.. There was a 99% White crowd in that airport bar, and all you could hear over the hushed announcer tones from the TV were grunted “God-damns”, “Fucks”, and an almost percussive slamming down of beer bottles and cheap glass tumblers at every dead-solid-perfect drive and seemingly magnetically-guided putt.

No slurs...just a palpable displeasure with what was transpiring. There was a lot of head-shaking and napkin-tossing. And I must say, more than a few almost hissed “Unbelievable. Fucking unbelievables”. I intentionally lingered there amongst that grumpy assemblage, maybe courting trouble, but mostly getting a secondary visual dig in at that unreasonably angry bunch. There were two Black people within thirty feet of that ball of anger. Me, and a guy I thought was an airport employee as he had a uniform-ish-looking outfit on and was leaned against a trash bin. He and I made eye contact for a moment and there was a knowing smile. He was lingering too, a fellow “chip in the cookie” like me. He shook his head with a silent laugh as Woods trod the green grass back to the clubhouse, post-massacre, and the man pulled his wheeled bag hidden by the bin and walked down to his gate...with a big “Callaway Golf” logo on the back of his windbreaker. Golf fan? Duffer? I don't know what he was exactly, but he was getting as much enjoyment out of the first wave of the “sea change” we had just witnessed. I turned back to the crowd and couldn't help but notice their noticing us. There was an odd silence amongst them as they looked on. An almost collective audible and visual sigh from them looking at us, clearly translating as an exasperated “Oh great...we'll have to hear about this shit from 'them' forever about this.”

Woods' win there and his subsequent hyper-dominance and revolutionizing of the game is something that many look at with a level of awe...and a lot of others scowl at with barely-concealed disgust. He effectively took a game—golf—away from the demographic group that pretty much owned it outright since its inception 600 years ago.

He's in the process of re-writing the record book, and doing so at a younger age and with a more punishing dominance than his predecessors. Those facts have upset many of his peers, with requests that courses be “Tiger-proofed” with new and more challenging layouts, spiteful talk of how the game's popularity is in jeopardy due to Woods' “Colossus amongst men” skewing of the sport's talent curve (“If no one else is gonna win—why watch?”), and even outright verbal denigration from...well, there's no other word to use but “haters”

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But the underlying zing from the mumbling, GOP-backing sergeant is that aforementioned fear-and jealousy based dissing that Tiger Woods is the constant recipient of. When you think about it, Bellavia's stuttering blather smacks of that same “How dare you enter and rule my last bastion of power?”-speak—I mean, this is the Presidency we're talking about here—not too many last bastions beyond there. And as Woods' emergence represented some serious applecart upsetting, just the consideration of an Obama's ascending to the Presidency flips the whole damned orchard upside-down.

'Oh no. This is the one thing you will not take take from us. not this. NOT the fucking Presidency'.

It was a punk-ass scream for help that he thought was a silent dog whistle.

Well...woof-woof, mother-fucker..

Thus, it's Obama/Woods all over again. I liked the “beautiful date” part of it this time, though. The whole equating the statuesque Michelle Obama with Tiger's Swedish ex-model wife Elim Nordegren. Can you feel the hate, kiddies? Grrrrrrrr! Spinning the senator as the casually victorious, “arrogant” king of all he touches, as some sort of passive-aggressive “poor-mouthing” of the scrappy, l'il McCain's candidacy.

“Outta nowhere. A former greenskeeper, now, about to become the Masters champion...”

Oh...fucking...please, Karl. Really? That's the talking point, now? Seriously? Even ABC's Jake Tapper is clowning your ass mightily with your unfortunate bit of drama-queenery from this morning, noting Rove's obvious familiarity with the “Country Club Types”. Again:

But the picture Rove paints is interesting. Who, pray tell, is Rove at this country club?

The guy telling funny stories near the band?

The charming president of the club's philanthropic arm?

The brainy guy with all the sports scores?

Or the guy who vandalizes your car and blames it on the kitchen staff?

Who is Rove in this setting? None of the above.

He's this guy.



The fuck-up scion of the man in charge...lucky because of where he is, but not who he is. Never called on his bullshit, and given enough rope to hang ten men. The mean, spoiled, and classless in spite of his being “To the Manor Born” Spaulding-fucking-Smails from “Caddyshack”. He's the “kid who can do no wrong” because he'll always get another chance, and everybody around him gets the fist upside the head as punishment. He's right twice a day, just like a broken clock and that's been his “get over” for years.

But...if you look at his record—especially lately, he's still...a...fuck-up. Just like his boss. Can you spell “transference”, kids. I bet you could.

All that's left is for him to do is to drunkenly puke his guts out into the sunroof of an expensive car at this point.

I'm hoping it's a Texas-bound limousine pulling out of the White House driveway on January 20th 2009.

There's more...

Yes, It's Pat!

Uncomfortable In His Own Skin...Disturbing Comedy Gold

In what has been in many ways a bruising primary season, there haven't been enough genuinely chuckle-inducing things to laugh at. But in the last several weeks we've been treated to an extended punch-line of sorts with a few surprise (or not so surprise) stunt-laugh cameos.

We've seen Joe Lieberman don the flower-sprouting hat and floppy red shoes and go Will Ferrell, balls-to-the-wall shameless with his various laughable pronouncements about Iraq, his worry about the “dangerous” drift of the Democratic party away from its Liebermanic home in between Karl Rove's pasty cheeks, and the embarrassing soiling of his nose while checking on John McCain's...um...well...“bearings”.

Then there was the Jerry Lewis-on-crack once-every-two-days spectacle of Terry McAuliffe's wild cheerleading / spinning / petit mal fits on the cable news shows. If you were watching him in HD with your kids, they probably ran into another room, fearing that Terry's eyes would actually pop 3-D-like from the acreen and burn them. Not to mention the Joker-esque rictus grin he's been brandishing during these talking head spots like a blood-letting weapon of happy-face.

But the cake, oven and whole bakery taker has to be Pat Buchanan's recent post-primary MSNBC meltdowns. He's been looking to all the world like one of those rubber-bodied stress-relief toys your job's HR department gives out to middle managers—his head seeming to inflate, quiver and pop it's eyes just like one of them after a mighty squeeze.

There being nothing like a hard mainlining of racism to get him going in general, it was the primary results in West Virginia that fired him up, if you'll pardon the pun—to a white hot on-air rage. It was obvious what things touched it off. The calendar and reality. As the primary season has wound down, and Barack Obama has managed to successfully negotiate the PR and electoral minefields before him, while John McCain in spite of having his race settled for months is still as gaffe prone as an hour of Dean Martin show outtakes and is seemingly one press appearance away from totally imploding, an obvious panic has set in.

This is the man who still staunchly defends the unbalanced, racial slur-prone Richard Nixon, whose legendary volcanic temper has been captured on tape and transcript. Pat's political paterfamilia. And the wormy, soured apple Buchanan has fallen so close to the Nixonian tree that he scrapes the bark on the way down. The paranoid fear over the increasingly distinct possibility of a Black man's becoming President of The United States was all over Buchanan's face during his screaming on WV primary night. My daughter was watching with me and was definitely discomfited by Pat's purple-faced freak-out.

“Whoa!”, she said while laughing nervously. “That dude's gonna have a stroke! Is he like that whenever he's on?”

“No,” I said. “He's just freaking out something super-special tonight. It just hit him that Obama might win this thing and well...he can't deal with it.”

“He could use a drink or somethin'.” she noted fearfully.

“Babes...I think alcohol'd be counter-productive for someone that upset.

We watched him for a couple more minutes, his face making Barney The Dinosaur's look ashen, and then she said, “Oh no. No drinkin' for him. He'd probably kill somebody.”

See Pat rage! See Pat be the craziest one there is!



You could hear the laughter off-camera and on in the studio as Buchanan spazzed out. And there's a palpable, manic venom in his tone, words and body language.We've seen Buchanan do his shaking, balled-up-fist face thing over other subjects before, but he seemed gut-level shaken here—a virtual talking head Vesuvius, and a slightly closer look at cable news in recent days “pulls the sheet from over the head” of Pat's and his co-horts' problem without much effort.

As it has become apparent that Obama's the presumptive Democratic nominee, and will face the increasingly un-telegenic and un--inspiring (in comparison) John McCain, the right's most plugged-in pundits—folks like Dick Morris and Buchanan (both former White House right-hand-men) have gone to fear-stoked ground.

They're not playing “the race card”...they're flipping over the whole Goddamned casino table while screaming “Black-hi-jack!” at the top of their lungs.

Morris went there on Faux news with his mumble-mouthed spewage...

Dick Morris gleefully predicted that Barack Obama will raise such racial animosity in Republicans that they will be wildly energized to vote for McCain. Morris called Rev. Jeremiah Wright, “the chairman of the get-out-the-vote operation for the McCain campaign.” With video.

In a segment on last night's (5/19/08) Hannity & Colmes, Alan Colmes asked about Morris' statement in a column, “Growing fear of Obama will drag every last white Republican off the golf course to vote for McCain.”

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Colmes said, “Hey, Dick, when you say, 'Drag every last white Republican off the golf course,' and now you're talking to (sic) Jeremiah Wright, that sounds like you are creating a racial divide that may not exist and you're accusing Republicans, who I'm not here to defend by the way, of being racists.”

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Colmes asked, “Why inject the word white and use golf as if you're painting Republicans as white people who play golf and won't vote for a black guy?”

Morris smiled gleefully and said, “Cause 90% of the Republican Party is white. I'm not sure 90% plays golf but a lot do.” He didn't mention anything about Republicans' willingness to vote for an African American.

The internal polling for the GOP must be terrible for November's prospects. Going this bold-faced this far out is a straight-up cornered rat move. Iraq is an unusable issue, save for the mealy-mouthed mutterings of electoral boat-anchor Joe Lieberman who has all of the voter-inspiring ability for McCain of a morphine drip on wide to a coma patient. The economy? The vaunted-til-February-by-Bush-in-spite-of-its-crapper-gurgling economy? Um...no. There's no faux-righteous wedge-issue to strike with lightning and make walk like a scary monster to frighten people.

There's just the shaky, flip-flopping, fact-fucked old guy, and the charismatic, telegenic younger guy everybody seems hot for...who's got a little something different about him...

What to do? What to do?

Call out the townsfolk, of course!



Pat's anger morphed him into that crazy, roof-screaming coot from “Blazing Saddles”. And that's what he's reduced to. No pithy barbs, or collegial snark. He went batshit. And he hasn't quite come down off the rush of “Blood In The Face” yet. He was at it again on kentucky's night, and as every worrisome day goes by leading up to Election Day, his fuse'll grow that much shorter. I can almost see him snapping at some point soon and letting slip a teeth-clenched “N*gg*r! That's right...I SAID IT!” in a frustrated panic.

He's that close to the edge . Along with a slew of shit-scared media buddy fellow travelers for whom this possible historical event is just too wide for their narrow-ass minds to bear. The resulting meltdowns should be quite entertaining—in that cringe-humor-y “The Office” way—to watch.

Right now, “It's Pat!”. The follow-ups “It's Sean...and Bill-O...and Glenn...Brit, Joe S.”, and the comedy short “Tucker, Too” I await with popcorn in hand, and TiVo at the ready.

I don't think I'll be waiting very long, though.

There's more...

What's In A Number?

“Sure Hope There's A Bottomless Pretzel Bowl In Hell!”

It was last April when I began a post on “The Math” of Iraq's awful, destructive numbers thusly:

"Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas." —Albert Einstein, 1935

"Math class is tough!" —Teen Talk Barbie, 1992

"You may end up with a different math, but you're entitled to your math. I'm entitled to 'THE' math." —Karl Rove, November 2006

In that post, I crunched, deconstructed, re-processed and then ground out the brutal numericals as best I could—even using mathematical anecdotal evidence offered by a family member with some hands-on experience in dealing (in a law-enforcement manner) with “bad” numbers.

But let's go back to Iraq's numbers--and ugly numbers they are. Look past if you can for a moment at the simple U.S. forces casualty number of 3,317 dead and the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi dead. Hard as that may be, let's focus on some of the other hard numbers of this war.

25,000,000.
That's the approximate number of Iraq's population.

150,000.
That's the approximate number of U.S. forces presently in Iraq.

Now, in spite of my aversion to hard math, I do enjoy the minutiae of statistics. It's probably from the sports nut in me. But in all seriousness, some of the numericals involving Iraq are plain, old riveting. The above numbers are examples of it. A few years ago, I sat with a cousin of mine, a former (as of now) NYPD Internal Affairs Detective. It was around the time of the trial for the cops involved in the Amadou Diallo shooting, and I noticed an oddly ramped-up police presence as we rode around.

"They're getting ready for people to spazz the f*ck out, huh?", I opined.

"Total waste of time.", my cousin said ruefully. "If things really got stupid, we couldn't do a Goddamned thing to stop it. It's a show. An expensive, overtime-sucking show."

"That's kinda rough.", I said.

"It's f*cking reality. Eight million people versus 35,000 cops?", he mused. "Please. You saw what happened in L.A. LAPD couldn't do sh*t. They booked. The numbers couldn't work. And it ain't like they actually had everybody in town in the streets buggin'. You can't really police a big number like that when they wanna tear sh*t up. What's it? Ten million people over there? Say five percent get froggy and jumped--that's like...half a million people--versus 10,000 officers--maybe 6,000 on call at any given moment. 6,000 versus half a million. You see why that sh*t went down the way it did? That's why Five-O couldn't do a damn thing when stuff blew up in the 60's. Or even now. Yeah, 35,000 NYPD's gonna stop eight million people. Or let's keep it real--20-25,000 cops--real cops on peak call are gonna shut down half-a-million people out for blood. It's cosmetic. Fighting the numbers is f*cking cosmetic."

It is now a year from that time. The reported U.S. casualties in Iraq were as of that day, April 20th...3317.

The total today, April 1st, 2008? 4012 Just about 700 more soldiers dead since that day. Averaging about two soldiers a day, blown to bits, shot down in streets, captured and tortured to death...mutilated till the heart simply spares the body by saying...enough, and mercifully gives out.

And for what? The hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens snuffed out? Blown up, phosphorus scalded and bulldozed en masse into ignominious, lime-dusted trenches. For them? Their lone freedom is from life itself.

Is it the remaining populace...who want us out of there in the absolute worst way? To where a sizable percentage of the country's twenty-five million people support the efforts of the militarized thousands who pick our troops off like so much ripe fruit? What exactly are we doing for them? What is that positive thing that we can look on with pride?

Was it taking down Saddam Hussein? How long ago was that, pray tell? Five years ago this month? Captured him that winter? “Mission Accomplished” was declared that Spring. Happy Crocus Day...War is over!

And ninety percent of the U.S. military casualties have occured since that “victory”.

For what?...the deaths of 4000 American soldiers.

A number denigrated by the soul-dead, no-skin-in-the-game cheerleaders for this abominable conflict. Some like to say that all things being relative, the figure's not so bad, while others simply pooh-pooh the carnage and callously blurt a “So?” when confronted with the people's discontent with the wastefulness of the conflict.

What's four thousand lives gone, really? I mean, what's in a number, really?

If you took every Major League baseball player who appeared in a game last year—just under a thousand players, and every NFL gridder, from Tom Brady to the most obscure “suicide squadder” whose cleats brushed turf for a down—some 1700 players, then threw in every NBA rim-hanger, brick-tosser and superstar—about 500 people and finally topped it off with the total of all whose feet cleaved ice professionally for the NHL las t year—about 950 padded, gap-toothed zoomers, put them all in an arena at once and then caved the roof in while setting the place ablaze...you'd end up with about 4,100 dead. Not a far cry at all from the senseless Iraq total thus far.

Or perhaps...perhaps if you sold out the world-famous Apollo Theatre in Harlem for three straight nights, but instead of a stunning show, had a team of assassins simply mow down everyone seated in the theatre. Fill 1400-plus seats three times over and have those people blown away and tou get to 4000 easily.

My high school graduating class consisted of 508 students. Multiply that by eight and you're at...4000 yet again.

Let's take a page from the poison book of our “So?”-spouting vice president if you will for a moment and link 9-11 to Iraq, shall we? Take the number of people killed at the World Trade Canter on September 11th, and then add to that ghastly total another 300 firefighters.

Then add 300 more policemen.

And then, tack on 300 more civilians to the death list and you're right there again—at the heart-sinking and un-magical 4000 number.

When you put it in that perspective, it's not such a piddling number, is it?

That question's really for our tough-guy veep—the flightless bird and defenseless friend-shooting Mr. Cheney.

But people like him and his “boss”, and the oleaginous Michael O'Hanlon, the wattle-full-of-deceit Fred Kagan, and the “Stratego™-is-like-real-life” believing Victor Davis Hanson see lost American lives as blurry, non-corporeal haze. Vapors and dust to be burned off with the light of never-ending, hubris-driven war.

These are people. Real people in that 4000 who are dead...and gone, and will speak no more. Individuals with as much to give as anyone else, only to be sacrificed as human fucking kindling to stoke a senselessly burning fire.

I've seen Steven Spielberg's “Saving Private Ryan” maybe four times. But I've only watched its frightful first twenty minutes once. The film didn't depict those carried off in death's bottomless satchel as the typical faceless wave of falling bodies in costume department camo.

You remember those awful deaths individually.

The soldier blown in half as Tom Hanks is dragging him across the beach to “safety”.

The poor bastard who takes a fatal bullet to the forehead after cheating death moments before thanks to his then still-on-his-head helmet.

The beach's radio operator, frantically dialing for back-up one second, and then—little more than a blast-emptied skull a moment later.

Every death is an individual one, no matter how those who wish to wave away and downplay them as a collective, faceless lump of sacrifice to an unnameable “greater good” may try to. Parts yes, of that bigger than you think it is “4000” number, but individuals nonetheless.

Like Sgt. Matt Maupin of Batavia, Ohio. Captured four years ago in Iraq and classified as missing ever since. Up until this past weekend that is—when his remains were found and identified.

Just one of four thousand. Or five thousand. Or hey, why not TEN thousand if the likes of the dangerously flawed John Sidney McCain should ascend to power and opts to make this a “Hundred Years War 2.0”.

I said it this weekend when that death was added to the scrolling tally...

“Just...Goddamn the waste of it all. How do people sleep at night behind this out-of-control meat-grinder of a war?”

Those who cheered. Who signed off. Who to this very day will NOT see it for the historical clusterfuckery that it is. I realize now that these people don't sleep. To sleep you must be alive. And these people are dead. Soul-dead as a hunk of petrified wood or a shard of rough brick in a pile of refuse. They may close their eyes and lay down to “rest”, but it is a vampire's rest.

And 4,000 lives sucked away is nothing to them at all. A mere apéritif...before an eternity if there is such a thing as “Karma”, of dining hopefully as bellowed in the movie “300”...in hell.

There's more...

WORLD PREMIERE—Get Ready To Shake Your Moneymaker—It's A NEW Group News Blog Video Production!

But first...some background...

When the GOP picked its logo for the '08 Convention in Minneapolis late last year, I wrote the following:

“As I work in graphic design, I'm highly sensitized to...oh, how do you say...gaffes of the graphic sort. I was on vacation once, and wasn't able to supervise a promotional brochure my company was sending out. It was a book promotion featuring the Judy Blume series of “Fudge” books. (Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, Superfudge, Fudge-a-Mania, and Double Fudge—all about a kid named Peter Hatcher whose little brother was nicknamed “Fudge”) It was bad enough that the marketing division had myopically given my department copy—that no one caught—calling the asssortment of books a “Fudge Pack”, but then, the designer for the ad depicted the books on a brown “splash” field with the words “Fudge Pack” on what appeared to be a dark hole. Ostensibly done to pop the letters out, but you can imagine what it looked like.”

I've worked in advertising and graphic design for close to thirty years, and in TV and radio for twenty. Been in the office when a goof came back from the printers—been on set when things got shot and we looked at them later on air and said “Oh my God...how did we miss that?” There is an amazing level of planning that goes into producing content, and simultaneously a lot of by-the-seat-of-your-pants flying.

There's the contrived, shoe horned-in, subtle “message”.

There's the “What the fuck were we thinking?” myopic miss of a gaffe.

And lastly, there's the “Um...have you been hitting the Goddamn rubbing alcohol again, dude? You are fucking seeing things!” delusional moment of making something out of absolutely nothing.

Our exclusive video today is a response to one such recent example of the barking mad latter.

I wanted to think this was a joke, but it wasn't. Evidently, everyone's favorite lunatic midwestern law professor (who's unfortunately doing a semester here in New York at Brooklyn College) took the time to watch Senator Hillary Clinton's latest ad, the controversial “3.a.m. Phone Call” spot meant to promote her readiness in the event of late-night craziness on the part of foreign threats. Call it what you will—a play to fear, a call to “security moms”, “Goldwater's Revenge”—in the end, it's a hardball ad that tries to burnish her national security image. Whether it passes or fails at that is purely subjective.

Law Professor Ann Althouse however sees something in the ad so sinister, and so destructive that she found it necessary to blogospherically ride through the streets alá a buck-nekkid, keening Paul Revere and call our attention to...

“Gasp!”...a subliminal racist dig in the ad on campaign Clinton's part at Barack Obama through...I'll give you a moment to swallow any liquids you're drinking now so you don't ruin your computer screens...

...The shocking appearance of the letters “N-I-G” on the sleeping child's in the ad's pajamas.

Mind you, the pajamas read with the words “Good Night” repeated all over them everywhere (and part of the word night is those three letters), but...somehow, only the eagle (and bloodshot) -eyed Professor Althouse has sussed out the deep, mean-spirited racist code-ology of the artful cropping of the frame so that the word—or word-let “N-I-G” (actually reading “N-I-C” as part of the “G” is obscured)—is left there, all out-in-the-open to inflame...

...what exactly in the flying fuck?

I swear I thought this was a joke. A piece of parody on the oversensitivity of this campaign season that was rejected by the fine folks at “Sadly No!” because it was too off the wall to even get a laugh—instead, just a head-cocked “Ehhhhhh?” But no, Althouse is deadly serious with this—down to posting screen grabs and digital enhancements that would get laughed out of an “I Shot My Own UFO Pics” convention as being “Uh..pretty fucking dubious, man.” I mean...this is straight-up hate-fueled hallucination—all wrapped up with a bugfuck concern-troll bow garnishing the top. Wingnut projection-slash-race baiting--slash-delusions--slash-hide all the sharp stuff when you see this kook coming near—please!

I can't...I won't link to it—because I just have a personal policy of not doing direct linky-love with batshit stuff. Kind of how I vowed in my early twenties to not sleep with people I knew were certifiable. Instead, I leave it to Kevin Drum to say his piece...

BAD DAY TO STOP SNIFFING GLUE... This is one of the most harebrained posts I've ever read. I guess that means it's bound to get a link from Instapundit, right? Chris Matthews might want to investigate too.

...As do the fine folk at Lawyers, Guns & Money, and the estimable Thers at Whiskeyfire.

I mean...I know it's the so-called “Silly Season” politically, where a cartful of hay can be made from a stray fluff of kitten down, but sweet Jesus—this is simply one of the most batshit, glass-chewing lunatic blurts of hot, blogospheric air I've ever had the chuckling pleasure / deep, pitying regret to come across.

And it's NOT the first time for the professor—thus rendering the “Silly Season” moniker inoperative for her. This kind of crazy is year-round' for her. It's fucking evergreen.

She's the one who spazzed out over the “Bill Clinton meets the bloggers” photo-op a year and a half ago—freaking out about one attendee's breasts in the picture and basically...crazily accusing the woman (who she didn't know from Adam or Eve) of posing to entice President Clinton”. All in the guise of “I'm here to call bullshit on feminism”, when her dim, retrograde ass was bent on raw, unfettered Clinton hatred—of Bill and Hillary. And then when called on that hatred proceeded to simply wig the fuck out—and have it captured on internet video for-ever.

She's also the one who upon seeing Senator Clinton's Sopranos finale-inspired “Choose the campaign song” ad, mixed warmed-over Freud and peyote buttons and came up with and promoted a weird psycho-sexual angle involving the absence of onion rings in the spot, how they (somehow)represented vaginas and carrot sticks as phalluses.

I shit you not.

I let those examples of mad-cow brain-nibbled raving slide—as well as a few others, but this one...The crafty subterfuge of the “N-I-G” pajamas” is just too fucking much. It is...a desperate cry for help...followed by a nose-stinging burp, and then a projectile spewing of the deep purple contents of an entire box of wine. For the sake of those poor law students under her tutelage—who could learn more about jurisprudence from a tryptophan-hazed half viewing of a TBS-chopped showing of “My Cousin Vinny”...I am forced to act.

Thus, with apologies to the Ray Bryant Combo (doing one of my all-time favorite oldies), filmmaker John Waters, and all you old-school tail feather-shakers out there, I give you this toe-tappin' rebuttal to all things utterly insane from the mind and keyboard of our dear, “Nutty Professor”...

“It's Batshit Fool From Madison Time”

What can I say, save for...POST IT!

There's more...

The “Ex” We Just Can't Get Over

Obsession Is Only Ninety Miles Away

I awoke yesterday morning, stuffy-nosed and bleary-eyed to the sound of the local all-news radio station's anchorperson breathlessly spluttering something about Fidel Castro. I cleared my throat, propped myself up on an elbow (taking care to stay covered on this chilly morn) and listened closer, thinking by the news reader's tone that maybe...this was it—Fidel was dead at long last, and Ohmigod, the party would be “on like Donkey Kong” in Miami, Union City, NJ, and more than a few painstakingly restored Georgetown/Dupont Circle townhouses where talk of J. Edgar Hoover's choice of Max Factor foundations and minimizer garments has never dared be discussed.

But then, the report petered out—hype and ear-grabbing bluster mostly, as it turned out to be about about Fidel's resignation as Cuba's President and not—unfortunately for the aforementioned would-be grave-dancers—his death. Before I knew it, the hyped report had blurred into a commercial for Tylenol or some such triviality and I chuckled for a moment before rising from bed. My little bit of excitement was over how to digest and consider a potential big news story, while the grave-dancers had clearly broken out their character shoes, old Xavier Cugat records, and 48-starred American flags—ready to do a zesty jingo-mambo, but then, realizing that nothing had in fact really changed—put all that silly shit away, back into the trusty, dusty “Castro Is Dead—And We're Getting Cuba Back!” go-bag.

I almost felt bad for 'em.

Until I remembered just how pathetic these clowns all are.

It's been a Lucy Van Pelt-football snatch every couple of years for this crowd since I was born. Without going into deep detail about the history, it goes as follows.

1.) U.S. companies, the U.S. government, and U.S. organized crime, often working hand in hand with each other, simply debased the sovereign nation of Cuba for the better part of half a century—colonizing it, basically stealing the natural resources, and converting it into a veritable off-shore sin “dump” where anything went, and powerful Americans went to get their debaucherous freak on—gambling, parking ill-gotten money and using it as a seedy, open-air brothel—the prototype land of “What happens here...stays here” wish fulfillment.

2.) Said interests played upon Latin America's ugly embrace of racial and class tropes of subjugating the poor and darker-skinned as slave labor and lessers to their wealthier, Whiter upper class who “ran” the country and worked hand-in-hand with the greedy outsider interests.

3.) Growing tired of being fucked over, the oppressed in Cuba began to embrace Communism and Socialism—as far back as the 1930's and started rebelling against all controlling interests—regardless of if they were home-grown or flying in the 90 miles to plunder or drunkenly grab-ass.

4.) Finding a friend (and funder, and arms-supplier) in anti-Western, anti-colonialist ideology in the nascent Soviet Union, Cuba's seething underclass, and more than a few tired-of-the-bullshit students led by Fidel Castro and a hundred rebels hiding in the mountains of Sierra Maestra ran the corrupt Batista government out of the country, seizing the land, assets and much of the pride of their plunder-enabling brethren and the foreign interests who used the country as a playground and palm-fronded ATM. (Watch The Godfather Part II for a rough, short-hand, but colorfully revealing synopsis of the decadent playground/money tree Cuba was pre-Castro)

5.) Said foreign interests after fleeing—along with many of the country's racist and classist native enablers—seethe here in the U.S. for half-a-fucking century, angry over getting booted out on their dollar-padded asses and anxiously await the moment they can return to a Castro/Communism-free Cuba to again take up the mantle of lording over the dark and poor, while feasting on the untold riches of the country's being open again to all manner of resource-filching, and investment-slash-kleptocracy. And actually, they don't just await—they attempt to hasten, with lame-assed assassination plots, fucked-to hell coup d'état goof-ups and U.S. aided, government-destabilizing terror attacks gone embarrassingly awry.

The troglodytic elements of U.S. government and the most rabid members of the Cuban exile community sat yesterday morning with bated breath like some idiot suitor—no, not a suitor—but a selfish, spoiled lothario...who in spite of years of having had their way elsewhere, amassing more and more power, and dissing a grossly abused ex that spurned them, can't get over the fact that said “ex” moved on, didn't just shrivel up, lose her looks and come back to “Mack Daddy” for forgiveness.

Cuba is the “ex” this country just can't seem to get the hell over.

How dare she maintain herself and somehow outlive Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Reagan?

How dare she survive our effective cutting her off from all things wonderful and U.S.-centric, to where she somehow keeps going thanks to self-starting pluck, ingenuity and a heaping helping of “fuck you” spite at our expense?

I've got male acquaintances who are otherwise relatively sane, clear-thinking people who exhibit this same sort of crazy-assed, passive/aggressive, hyper-possessive behavior over women with whom the relationship ended long ago.

“Fuck her. She's nothing to me. Look at where I am now!”, they say in one breath. Then in the next, after hearing something—anything about said woman's present doings, especially if it's something with a hint of negativity where maybe, just maybe homeboy could rush in to be there to pick up the pieces...they're all ears, in rapt attention and practically vibrating with anticipation...of something.

It's fucked up, but I'd be a liar if I said the better-adjusted of us in my circle don't quietly laugh up our sleeves at these duplicitous losers.

And losers are what those types are.

With that, there's no diplomatic way to approach a person like that. And there's no diplomatic way to approach America and it's Cuban exile supplicants on their idiotic, ego and machismo-fueled way of dealing with Cuba than to say simply...that Cuba...is not your bitch.

Get over your sick psychosis. Stop your creepyfuck stalking of her—Cuba.

Martians didn't come down in saucers and “steal her” from you. A native-born Cuban with connections to the other superpower, tapped into the power of a downtrodden populace that you abused, and abused, and abused—and he/she/they finally put your dumb ass out.

It's not about what was done to you. It's about what you did to her.

Acknowledge what you did. You America, and the you, old heads in the Cuban exile community who fled the smackdown for lording over your “lessers” and your enabling the plunderers.

You've embarrassed yourselves so completely over the last fifty years that you've managed to turn other potential partners against you—Venezuela and Chavez, and Bolivia with Morales along with a seeming sweep of the anti-you school of thought through the region. (The seeds of your Pinochet-backing evil are only now a' flowering into hideous, meat-eating Venus Flytraps)

But it starts and ends with Cuba...the ex you fucked over, then when she left you, futilely sought out to destroy.

Don't you get tired of clockin' her? Hoping her situation goes down the tubes, so you can step in with the bullshit altruism you honed with this selfish and stupid pining in the early 60's—and would deploy tangle-foot clumsily in Vietnam and again in the present dumb-assery in Iraq? I saw the wan near-celebrations in Miami's Little Havana, and the pissy old men grousing about downtown Union City on the news when it became clear that yesterday's initial excitement would end with an “Eh.” moment.

They seemed...spent or something.

All that “hateration”. And naked spite. And unvarnished, selfish interest...50 years worth...and now you have difficulty “getting it up”.

Which only makes you madder. “Sigh!”

Let. It. Go. Let. Her. Go.

Face it. “She's Just Not That Into You”.

Point blank: These fifty years almost of simultaneous, goofy moon-eyes, pigtail-dipping and passive/aggressive shenanigans hasn't worn well, America—you the rheumy-eyed, “Cold War” hawks on your bottled oxygen and your Cuban exile co-horts gorging on, regurgitating, then re-gorging on faux outrage. What's left of you? Cranky, liver-spotted old White men of means missing the nasty “girl and pony shows” of back-street pre-Castro Havana and the state-side, howling Marisleysises and crying Donatos whipped up by bitter Papas, Tios and Abuelos who bray about the money, land and honor they left behind with those undeserving “guajiros” and “niches”.

The day will come...soon perhaps, where what Cuba is will no longer be. A different government, a different philosophy—things will change. And we as a country should be ready for that when it comes. Perhaps they'll reach out along the lines of how they've reached out but been spitefully rebuffed over the years because it wasn't exactly on our terms.

We need to be there for that. We owe Cuba that much for our decades of malfeasance.

But this silly, anticipatory grave-dancing and dollar sign-eyed hovering is an embarrassment. And it's been going on for fifty years.

Fifty years. Which should by rights make us adults in this relationship. It's long past time we started acting like it—instead of like a maladjusted, spiteful stalker with control issues. Period.

If you need to dance...to celebrate something, you don't need a grave to do it on. A simple song wil do.



Even Karl Rove's boogie-deficient ass could shake it to that. Or not. Which would probably explain all that irrational hatred.

There's more...

What Price The Quest?

“We wants it, we needs it. Must have the precious.”

As we knock loose teeth and shatter limbs and joints during our “pre-season” figuring out who's going to start for our side in the “big game”, it seems our opponents have already made a choice of champion. So while we kick our own asses grabbing at the fleeting thrill of Varsity glory/ avoiding the agony of JV ignominy, there he stands in the tunnel—the other team's “choice”, awaiting us. Awaiting America.

An immensely flawed “choice”.

Dangerously flawed, in fact.

Yes, I said dangerously flawed. And there's not a whit of hyperbole in that phrase.

Let's dig into the phrase itself for a second though—shall we?

dangerous (dān'jər-əs)
adj.
1. Involving or filled with danger; perilous.
2. Being able or likely to do harm..

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flawed (flô'd)
adj.
1. Imperfect, in an often concealed way that impairs soundness.

If you could put a dictionary-style picture next to that phrase that would sum it up, you couldn't find a more perfect one than the photoshop mash-up that heads this post. John McCain—as the quest-twisted Gollum from “Lord Of The Rings”. He is the GOP's champion. Their standard-bearer. This time-and-disrespect gnarled man who the very pursuit of the “golden ring” of a collective, national pat on the back has grossly disfigured.

Not externally disfigured...but soul-deep. Heart-deep. Core-deep.

When a person allows his sense of values—hard-core right and wrong to be so eroded that it is but a chip to be tossed onto the pile in trade for prestige...when a person will push his self-respect across the table and cheaply barter it for a chance at something he doesn't need, but his ego craves—you are dealing with a dangerously flawed individual.

Let's look at him again...John McCain.

Now, you might think of that image as cruel, or snarky...but I put him and Gollum together because I can think of no better way to visually represent what has happened to this man than to see him as this creature—simultaneously sad, pitiful, quest-addled, and yes, dangerous.

Read a little on Gollum and try not to bruise your lap from the jaw-dropping irony:

Originally known as Sméagol, Sméagol was later named Gollum after the guttural, choking, coughing noise he made in his throat. His life was extended far beyond its natural limits by the effects of possessing the One Ring. His one desire was to possess the Ring which had enslaved him. He pursued the ring for 76 years after having lost it to Bilbo Baggins.

During his centuries under the Ring's influence, he developed a sort of split personality: "Sméagol" still vaguely remembered things like friendship and love, while "Gollum" was a slave to the Ring and would kill anyone who tried to take it. In The Two Towers, Samwise named the good personality "Slinker" (for his fawning, eager-to-please demeanour), and the bad personality "Stinker" (for obvious reasons). The two personalities often quarrelled when Gollum talked to himself (as Tolkien put it in The Hobbit, "through never having anyone else to speak to") and he had a love/hate relationship with himself.

“His desire was to possess the (brass) ring which had enslaved him”.

“He developed a sort of split personality”.

“His fawning, eager-to-please demeanor, and the bad personaliity”

Hmmmmm. Let's connect the historical dots, shall we?

The Senator and candidate came from a family of Navy officers—his father and grandfather being Admirals actually, and the first father-and-son to achieve four-start ranking, no mean feat. He would also take to the military, albeit with less-successful results. He was renowned as a “red-ass”—rebellious and rambunctious at the Naval Academy, he accumulated so many demerits per year (over 100) that he was enshrined in the infamous “Century Club”—a rare assemblage of ne'er-do-wells who piled up fuck-up after fuck-up. He blanched under authority and developed a bad reputation for it—while simultaneously trying to measure up to the family's Naval officer tradition.

He would graduate nearly at the bottom of his academy class—894th out of 899 cadets.

The man...was a callow, daddy-addled, headstrong Tom Cruise early-90's movie character come to life (Top Gun, A Few Good Men, Days Of Thunder) with repeated incidents of reckless derring-do, narrow, near-death escapes and wild living.

And then, he was off to Vietnam where his ability to be in the middle of freaky incidents would follow him like a hard, film-noir shadow, and then...he was captured by the VietCong after his A-4 Skyhawk was shot down. His body, broken badly in the ejecting from his shot-to-pieces plane (he broke both arms and a leg) would be further savaged as they bayonetted him, shattered his arms again and again, bound him, tortured him, beat him and to sunder his mind, solitary confined him.

I don't want to even think of the nightmares this man must have. They wrecked him body and soul for five-and-a-half years—sometimes getting the mayhem up to three beating a week for extended periods of time. His spirit...would eventually give—as pretty much anyone's would under that sort of onslaught and he painfully signed a statement written by his captors agreeing with their depiction of the U.S. as an imperial, invading power, calling out himself and his fellow members of the U.S. military.

Understand that this was a third-generation Naval Officer doing this, “(dishonoring of) his country, his family, his comrades and himself by his statement.”

He would eventually rebound and withstand later pressures by his torturers, but the die had been cast, and the spotless run of the two previous generations of McCain “excellence” would sadly end there. He would come home. He would see his broken body fixed as best as it could be. But in spite of his heroism and gumption, the landscape had changed in his absence. There would be dinners and photo-ops with hawkish politicos, but the broad-based respect he craved would not come. There would be no third-generation McCain Admiralty.

Life would grow fragile. A marriage would end after several affairs and a final, advantageous liaison with a wealthy, connected daughter of industry as his career in the armed services petered out (He'd retire as a captain). He'd fallen in with a political circle as a Navy liaison to the Senate and would then curry favor in his now-new wife's family's business circles as a base to launch his own political career from. He'd parlay this into a career as a member of the House of Representatives, and eventually onward when he would be elected Senator in 1986. He was, “a comer”, a close friend of President Reagan who'd embraced him upon his return from Vietnam, and on his way upward when he hit the road-abutment that was his involvement in the “Keating Five” Savings and Loan scandal that effectively ended the careers of four of the five—the survivor being McCain alone.

What saved him? A canny ability to play nice with the political press and speak with a patina of bluntness. Exhibiting in essence...a “fawning, eager-to-please demeanor.”

That would garner him a “reputation” among the press cognoscenti as a “Maverick”, unafraid of what his words and actions would cause. The fabled “Straight Talk”. And he would appear to buck just enough trends (but never really follow through) to continue that facade right up to his master plan—his claiming of the ultimate respect, or “his desire was to possess the (brass) ring which had enslaved him”.

The Presidency of the United States.

It is here, during the primary season of that 2000 Presidential election that McCain would again find his lifelong quest for respect thwarted and his very soul—his service, his patriotism, his sanity, and his family ripped to shreds by his GOP opponent George W. Bush, and the Republican hierarchy who came to dislike him for not toeing the line 100% with its conservative values.

They trashed him for abandoning veterans on POW/MIA issues and having ”come home from Vietnam and forgotten about us.”—using a trotted-out, and sketchy veterans activist to deliver the brutal message.

They then smashed him as a traitor, using his torture-obtained statement in Vietnam as a weapon against him.

And then, they attacked his family—push-polling , faxing, flyering all of South Carolina, a key primary state with rumors of his being insane (due to his POW ordeal) wife's being a drug addict, and his having fathered a Black child out of wedlock—a brutal, but effective lie playing on his having adopted a non-white daughter from Bangladesh.

His campaign would never recover from that assault and Bush would triumph in that election—with a bit of help from the Supreme Court, voting irregularities and some bused-in hooligans in Florida. And as a terror-addled populace and war-crazed GOP rallied around the fear-mongering Bush—amplifying his power many times over, and freezing out any sort of “Maverick” opposition, something terrible happened to John McCain.

His lifelong quest for respect would lead him to repeat and sadly compound the one thing that had haunted him for thirty years.

He would again embrace a vicious tormenter. Unabashedly. And this time...literally.



The man and operation that dragged his patriotism and military service through the mud, slagged his wife, abused his child as a campaign weapon and play to racism, and then...effectively called him insane he was now practically fellating...for a bit of blessing for future considerations in that infamous “quest”. A trade of one's core integrity, a heaping scoopful of innate self-respect—handed over to the man and machine that tried to destroy him.

If that folks, is not “dangerously flawed”, my God...what in heaven's name is?

But it gets worse. Much worse.



John McCain, who once said after his ship-board near-death on the U.S.S. Forrestal, “It's a difficult thing to say. But now that I've seen what the bombs and the napalm did to the people on our ship, I'm not so sure that I want to drop any more of that stuff on North Vietnam.” would say mere weeks ago about the idea of the U.S.'s being in Iraq for an extended period of years, “Make it a hundred. We’ve been in South Korea …we’ve been in Japan for 60 years. We’ve been in South Korea 50 years or so. That would be fine with me.

Those are stunning words from a man who spent half a decade in a POW camp as a result of fighting a war we still can't justify today. It shows a sad broken-ness in the man. An inability or worse, an unwillingness to connect reality with the things he's seen, felt and still has the physical scars from. And that sad “broken-ness” was displayed for us all a mere 72 hours ago when Senator McCain—a victim of some of the most painful-to-rehash torture that any living American could ever speak of, did a 180º degree turn—a smart, spit n' polish about-face on his previous, well-documented stance AGAINST the use of torture against enemy combatants in the well of the Senate during a crucial vote on a bill outlawing the heinous acts.

Senator John S. McCain voted AGAINST outlawing torture.

He okayed it.

In November of 2007, he was against it—so much so that he wrote legislation outlawing torture—a stance he'd held ever since returning from Vietnam, saying to Kwame Holman of PBS's Newshour at the time:

“First, subjecting prisoners to abuse leads to bad intelligence because under torture, a detainee will tell his interrogator anything to make the pain stop. Second, mistreatment of our prisoners endangers U.S. troops who might be captured by the enemy, if not in this war, then in the next.”

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“If we inflict this cruel and inhumane treatment, the cruel actions of a few darken the reputation of our country in the eyes of millions. American values should win against all others in any war of ideas, and we can't let prisoner abuse tarnish our image.”

This man, who remains unable to raise his arms above his shoulders, and came home with legs so torture-wrecked that he could not bend his knees without the aid of multiple operations. Bayonet wounds to his stomach and feet. Teeth knocked out and a shoulder busted to bits like a stale fortune cookie. All of this at the hands of his brutal captors.

And now, because it is politically expedient as a wingnut stance during election season, he suddenly, cravenly embraces torture...just as he physically embraces the morally diminutive “man”—the President who signed off on it.

To curry favor with a party that in many quarters hates him.

A party run by people who for the most part are actual cowards who ran like light-struck roaches from serving in the war he sacrificed the health of his body and a bit of his soul to. His courage-measured lessers—men who couldn't put up with a tenth as much as he did, were somehow able to—without the threat of physical pain, mindfuck him into doing their bidding. To the point where he effectively sold off, like some internal organ he could semi-live without, to a wealthy, willing-to-buy patron—one of his core beliefs—in the inherent evil of torture.

What would you say of a man—no...a person asking you to trust him or her with the powers of the highest office in the land who would turn on his heel, and for a shitty little pat on the back, debase himself before the people who denigrated his daughter, slandered his wife, called him crazy, and then totally cede a personal principle the he need only look at his scarred body to realize it's terrible impact?

You would say that man is “dangerously flawed”.

Let me paraphrase Henry Fonda's “William Russell” character in the 1964 electoral politics film “The Best Man” in these words to Senator McCain—respectfully sir, “We can't let you be President.”

This isn't about simple horse-trading or deal-cutting. That's part and parcel of the life behaviors of a political animal. No...this is about willfully giving up every shred of your self-respect for a chance—just a lousy fucking chance at a brass ring you don't even know why you “need”. You've allowed yourself to be twisted, bent, mutated into something other than the relatively clear thinking human being you were. You're a creature that will give over anything and everything—family, integrity, self-respect to get at something you crave.

You...are Gollum. And you don't care how hideous, creepy or disgusting you're going to make yourself look in your pursuit of this “quest”. Something has totally broken deep inside you, Senator—something key, something intrinsic to living a decent life that no longer functions as it should. For that reason alone—beyond the retrograde politics you wanly espouse, and the bottom-dwellers you trawl with nowadays, you are NOT fit for the office of President.

Just. Not. Fit.

I am not calling you crazy. But I am saying that anyone who makes the decisions you have of late cannot be trusted with the affairs of state. You have no scruples. No balance. No sense of proportion, right or wrong, or a moral compass that works as it should. The decades-long and just as long, un-fulfilled quest for a plurality of Americans' “respect” on your terms has damaged you deep within. You are...a danger.

Long, futile quests can do that to a man. History and literature are riddled with such tales—Ahab and that damnable white whale, Nixon and his psyche-twisting pursuit of the White House and his going further 'round the bend—fracturing the very Constitution to keep it. But I suppose the one that best captures it is the one depicted in the film The Bridge On The River Kwai, where ironically enough after Sir Alec Guinness's driven POW camp detainee Col. Nicholson has selfishly sacrificed the lives of countless fellow prisoners in his crazed, perfectionist building of the infamous bridge at the behest of his captors, he himself meets his end—amidst the bodies of his co-horts as the bridge—the quest itself—is ultimately destroyed. A fellow officer, Major Clipton comes upon the terrible scene—seeing nearly everything laid to harsh, senseless waste. Lives, souls and that...quest, and he shakes his head and utters the film's classic final words that sum it up perfectly.

Words the Senator from Arizona if he has a shred of self-awareness left, hears as a whisper in the back of his mind based on knowing the damage of his feckless trading-off of his integrity. And if he hasn't that self-awareness anymore, it means he can't hear the words—but they ring doubly true as that “deafness” merely verifies them that much more—if not to him, then to we who look on, like “Kwai's” disgusted Major Clipton.

“Madness...Madness.”

There's more...