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.”

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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..

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

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.”

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

“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...

Your Wingnut Fuck-Up Of The Week

(God help me—Photo of an actual botched Wal-Mart Cake)

Or 24-Percenter Tales To Astonish!—Issue #41:
“Jesus and The Amazing Time Travel Machine”

Many readers and commenters here have rightfully cited a simple point in fact—a point in fact that is troublesome to have to deal with, but is undeniably so—that there is a hard-core 20%-to-30% of the American people who will unflinchingly believe as the one, true Gospel anything their lunatic, dim-bulb masters tell them.

I'll tell you why that's distressing. It's the uncomfortable feeling that these wind-up bots of muddle-headed group-thought will say and do just about anything to defend their positions—wrong as they may be, and are just as liable to lash out irrationally when their side loses enough clout to where they can be more easily ignored.

Let's focus on the slightly better prospect of the two—the “say and do just about anything to defend their positions” path. We are talking about people who have had it imbedded deep in their primary operating systems—like Robocop's “Prime Directive” list—the guiding mantra that THEY MUST NEVER ADMIT TO BEING WRONG...EVER!

They can answer 2+2 =5 as a “Final Jeopardy” question before a live audience of hundreds and millions of TV viewers, or run down from the stands and drop kick a just-grabbed-from-the-stands newborn 70 yards through the goalposts on ‘Monday Night Football”, and as sure as Djimon Hounsou ain't Edgar Winter's brother, they will find a way to deny, straight lie and justify their goof-up as somehow not being a goof-up at all.

The case in point today?

The broken-hammer dumb Bill O'Reilly while playing his role of skeevy Father O'Falafel on the radio for his 38 listeners, got all authoritative with a caller about how the Middle East's current clashes were all pre-ordained, stating:

(November 13th O'Reilly Factor: RADIO via Media Matters)

...“Go to Revelations in the Bible and look at the prediction for the end of the world. It's fascinating, because it does involve the Middle East, and it does involve the clash of cultures, as Jim pointed out.”

“Now, a lot of people think that's superstition, nonsense, all of that. The secularists reject it out of hand. And I'm not trying to convert you to be a Bible-thumper. I'm just saying it's an interesting read. This was written -- what? Five thousand years ago?”

Um...I have found that even a great many non-Christians know the simple and oft-repeated time-frame of the Bible's time of creation—Jesus died 2000 years ago, and the Bible was written shortly thereafter. 2000 years ago! I know it, You know it. Even the most lapsed CEOs (“Christmas and Easter Onlys”) know that hammered-in little factoid.

But Bill O'Reilly somehow didn't, and in fact pulled an extra 3,000 years out of his onanistically-diddled ass and plain-old fudged (Good God! Did I just use the verb “fudged” in that sentence too?) the date.

Keith Olbermann didn't miss O'Reilly's half-assed Bible schooling either, and here's where it gets hilarious:

(O'Reilly) who blasts secular progressives and makes fun of people who slip up on their biblical knowledge; he made a bible reference himself; “go to revelations in the Bible and look at the prediction for the end of the world.  This was written, what, 5,000 years ago?” 


Five thousand years ago?  All right, let me go through this slowly for you.  The Revelations in the Book of Revelations are said to have been written by John after an Angel came to see him with these revelations from Jesus Christ.  Jesus Christ, Bill.  Now, he was supposed to have died roughly 2007 years ago, which is where we get the number on the calendar, the calendar things with the years on it.  It‘s a.d., ano domini (ph), year of our lord.  It is sort of dated back to the death—

The rusted, cinderblock-propped clown car that is Newsmax.com—the “Dick and Jane” primer for the freepazoid set then decided to come back on Olbermann, chiding him for dating A.D. as “roughly 2007 years ago” as opposed to subtracting the assumed 33 years of Christ's life to get the “proper” 1,974 years.

O'Reilly missed by thirty centuries and they look the other way, Olbermann says “roughly 2007 years”—missing by about thirty, and he's the fuck-up? Well, to complete the “no limit to their ass-covering” circle, Newsmax went here—without so much as a fare back:

But were you right in suggesting that Bill O’Reilly was wrong? In a word, no.

Bill O’Reilly, as you reenacted him, tossed off questions asking whether the Book of Revelation was written 5,000 years ago. But odd and off-base as this number is, we technically cannot call O’Reilly wrong.

Why? As its resident star-scientist Carl Sagan could have explained to you when you attended Cornell, lowest vine of the Ivy League (which, as a privileged loony-left kid from Westchester, you probably chose because it is known as “Big Red”), simple questions may imply but rarely assert factuality. Therefore simple statements in the interrogative mode — questions — are almost never “wrong.” E.g., “Could it be that this footprint is evidence that Bigfoot exists?”

It’s like Sen. Hillary Clinton avoiding direct answers in debates.

But, Keith, Bill O’Reilly’s inflection made clear that he himself was asking questions about whether the Book of Revelation “was written, what? 5,000 years ago?”

Yes...that's how far they will go. Fuck the “Chewbacca” defense—these sillingtons have brought it millions of light years home with the good, old American “Bigfoot” defense.

For them, O'Reilly was right because in the middle of his religious bloviating, where he authoritatively speaks of how “interesting a read” Revelations is (See, he's read it and whatnot.) and cites passages predicting this and that, he states in “Who doesn't know this?” question form when the book may have been written, thus making it okay to muff the date by thirty fucking centuries!!! Brilliant!!!

That kind of neener-neener cognitive dissonance is the sort that leads fools the way to dusty, head-bagged, and freshly-Nike-ed death.

You kind of know the rest of it...

“Out! Out, brief truth!
Thou art a walking annoyance,
A poor substitute,
Who struts and frets his hour 'pon the stage
And is paid attention to no more.
T'is a tale, told by a reality-spouter,
Full of sound and fury,
Signifying uh...nothing they want to hear.

And with that, I reluctantly await Sean Hannity's splitting the uprights later this season at a Jets game and having it all explained away as an unfortunate “metatarsal-to-infant malfunction.”

I can only hope that the netting behind those ever-moving goalposts breaks the tot's fall somewhat.

There's more...

JE REGRETTE PLUS QUE JE PEUX DIRE

Joan of Arc by Janeen Banko, Toronto Art Expo


Regret and longing
can draw and quarter me
I wish I could take it back
I wish you had loved me more
I didn't notice, or I noticed but
I didn't know what to say
I ran through my chances like
M and Ms in a bowl while I
watched TV too much

It's amazing how little people
can get by on

I read that Jeanne wrote letters
in prearranged code: Any sentence
followed by a carefully inked cross
was a lie, her friends knew.

She recanted, then
found a second wind. I can only
imagine the Cardinals' fury.

I saw an old man who had been young
in the Battle of the Bulge, saying
in one pocket was an extra pair of socks
In the other some K-rations
He rolled his blanket with string and
hung it over his back; all else was
bullets. He didn't change clothes
for six months.
What kind of a father did he become?
When his child wept because the
mashed potatoes had lumps, was he
understanding?


© Maggie Jochild, 20 October 2007, 11:20 p.m.



(I struggled what to say about this poem. Finally, the simplest way to say what I mean, was just to copy (lightly edited) the personal letter I wrote Maggie asking reproduction permission.)


Dear Maggie,

Your beautiful poem,

JE REGRETTE PLUS QUE JE PEUX DIRE ...*sighs*

May I have your permission to post the whole of your poem to the Group News Blog?

I'd link back to you, commenting, putting a specific Copyright notice on the poem, and so forth. I suspect much of what I write below, would find its way into my comments.

(The art [the painting of Joan] of course I'll attribute to Janeen Banko.)

You're a full grown-up, so I doubt I need mention that Declining is always an acceptable answer to a Request (one of only four possible moves in the conversational dance of a Conversation for Action (requests & promises), other than bullshitting and speculating, both of which stop committed action. Again, because you're you I suspect I need not explain that there's no need to justify or explain a decline if you don't want to; one simply says "No" and that is sufficient with grown-ups, although hopefully the "no" comes attached with a smile and an offer to make requests on other issues in the future.

I do hope however you say yes, Maggie, and allow me to show your poem to a much larger audience. I want to lead folks back to your blog and your other work. *smiles*

It's a stunningly beautiful poem, my personal favorite of everything you've shown us so far. For me, it speaks right to the heart of all those late nights I'm home at 3 in the morning, still working away in boxers on my bed. Kyle (daughter #3, my seventeen year-old) gets up from her room across the hall from me to go the bathroom. I hear her door open, she stumbles down the hall, pee, flush, and then perhaps through the door, "Dad... go to bed!" The children don't understand, can't possibly understand how it is I work 18, 20 hours a day to keep them fed, keep a roof over their heads, keep the heat on and the water flowing. They don't get how while I love what I do, how I love them and wouldn't trade being their Dad for anything, how truly being their father is the best ever, simply the best... shit, I don't even know how to say it without turning it into a "thing."

It isn't a "thing." It isn't the best "thing" that has ever happened to me. They and taking care of them is not some "thing." Being the Dad of my children IS my life. Ask me who I am, and yeah, there's all this other stuff I say, but strip all that way, and under it all, who I am is I'm Dad. It is the privilege of my life to be their father.

So at 3 in the morning when I'm posting, or working on work-work stuff, or reading on something who the hell knows how it might relate to whatever someday, or when I've put in a 90-100 hour week (or four 110 hour weeks as I did in September, I don't expect my children to get it at all. I have a full-time job AND a start-up company. WTF am I thinking? Oh, and I'm a father. *cracks up* Not to mention being a great friend to a number of people, which takes a certain amount of time to do in a responsible manner.

Each of us has had to suck it up, carry our own lumps of potatoes back from our wars. All the death I saw. The ones I saved. The ones I didn't. And the ones I caused. All that is right there in the fucking lumps of potatoes, the clothes I went without changing for months and months, the years spent in my room alone with the television.

For years, after the suicide attempt, as my doctors and I didn't even know enough to try different drugs -- didn't know I was missing -- my children, brave and alone in our home sat in their room or played with their friends, just across the hall from mine, as I sat quietly in my room, all alone, not even home.

They are so glad I'm home now.

JE REGRETTE PLUS QUE JE PEUX DIRE

"I didn't notice, or I noticed but
I didn't know what to say

* * * *

It's amazing how little people
can get by on"

You speak directly to my heart. I want to share you with the world.

*hugs* to an old dear friend, whose history I'm only beginning to know.
Jesse


Note: Maggie's poem, the photo of the painting of Joan of Arc, and my letter are copyrighted © 2007 to their creators: Maggie Jochild, Janeen Banko, and myself, respectively.

There's more...