Getting Dicked by the Supreme Court (Part of the "Motherfuckering of America" Series):
A few observations about the Supreme Court's recent set of decisions:
1. Fuck you, Sandra Day O'Connor. Fuck you, fuck you, and, uh, oh, fuck you. Fuck you for stepping down, yet still being able to do work like for the Iraq Study Group. Fuck you for putting yourself and your family above the good of the country. And fuck you because, even though you're a conservative who allowed George W. Bush to take office, we have to wish you were still on the court. Fuck you because you probably would have voted differently than Justice Alito on both desegregation and late-term abortion, maybe even on the "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" case. Fuck you, and, hey, by the way, fuck you, Senate Democrats, for not having the balls to filibuster John Roberts or Samuel Alito. Don't fuckin' crow about how you voted against them. You could have stopped them.
2. Clarence Thomas is a total dick, a thuggish asshole who has sucked Antonin Scalia's dong for so long, he may as well be an honorary Italian. In the Morse v. Frederick case (aka "Bong Hits..."), Thomas wrote a concurring opinion just to make sure that everyone knows how much of a dick he is: "In light of the history of American public education, it cannot seriously be suggested that the First Amendment 'freedom of speech' encompasses a student’s right to speak in public schools." In fact, Thomas would have overturned an earlier decision that had long-established students' First Amendment rights. So, for Clarence Thomas, not only no bong hits, but no free student press, and, since this is what the 1969 Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District was about, no black armbands to silently protest war.
And the miasma of self-loathing throughout Thomas's concurrence on the school integration case decision is just pathetic. In fact, the whole decision there is bizarro, in which the Roberts court's majority says that Brown v. Board of Education somehow is about making sure that white kids go to the right school and that America is so much more equal now. Well, sure, perhaps, but, hey, take a trip to Jena, Louisiana before you start singin' "We Are the World." The majority's decision treats whites as an oppressed people, and if that ain't racist, then we've really gone through the looking glass on what that word even means.
3. As long as we're all talking about impeaching people, shit, let's gear up for a post-2008 impeachment of Roberts and Alito for lying to the Senate Judiciary Committee by saying, without any hint of hedging, that they believed in the principle of stare decisis, or respecting precedent. Shit, the tortured way in which Roberts attempts to wedge a respect for precedent into the integration case is a genius turn of Rovean rhetoric: "If I just say I'm upholding Brown, then no one can accuse me of not upholding it." Or, in other words, they won't say they're overturning precedent - they'll just make it impossible to enforce the precedent.
4. One of the disturbing things about the court's sharp right turn is how much power it removes from citizens. This week, we learned that: unless there's a court order, school districts shouldn't try to integrate the schools; citizens don't have standing to sue the government; and students need to be seen and not heard. In other words, the impression is that unless you are a corporation, shut the fuck up and don't start trouble. But if you are a corporation? Then you can fuck with the electoral process and make sure that no one can buy your products at a discount. The Roberts court: Money talks...and that's about it.
5. Well, fuck, at least we still don't execute crazy people.
6. And if Clarence Thomas is a total dick, Anthony Kennedy is a total pussy.
Update: The inmates at Gitmo are so fucked.
The Obvious Irrelevancy of George W. Bush (Part of the "Motherfuckering of America" series):
Here some of the things President Bush has done in the last dozen days or so, according to the White House website:
The President of the United States, the Leader of the Free World, the Commander-in-Chief, the Chief Executive rededicated the Islamic Center of Washington, attended the annual White House Tee Ball Game, congratulated the Presidential Scholars, celebrated Black Music Month, met with the NCAA championship teams, attended the National Hispanic Prayer breakfast, and visited the Boys and Girls Club of Wichita, Kansas. This is not to mention the policy speeches and leader-greeting ceremonies, which seem a bit more useful. And it's not unusual or summertime fun. Choose any random month - say October 2005, and you'll find much the same schedule, although, of late, it's seemed a bit more hectic.
In other words, all the kinds of functions that one might expect a Vice President to take care of - making token appearances on behalf of the President - are now done by a man who ought not have that much free time in his schedule. It's not that a President shouldn't occasionally make the appearance at the Little League game. But roughly once every other day? Sometimes twice in a day? That seems, well, perhaps disproportionate to the position of the Presidency. George Bush seems less like our fearless leader and more like a bored, rich housewife trying to fill her time between doses of Xanax. Another Laura, pretty much.
Now, perhaps they weren't the completists that today's White House webmasters are, but a gander at, say, two and a half months of Bill Clinton's 1998 list of events and talks reveals something quite different. Lessee: on November 24, 1998, Clinton commemorated National Adoption Month. On October 21, 1998, he spoke at a Breast Cancer Awareness event. Beyond that, nothing listed about Clinton speaking at anything that wasn't directed related to a government entity or bill.
As Bruce Fein points out in his very cogent and convincing call for Vice President Dick Cheney's impeachment in Slate, this week's Washington Post series, among other sources, makes it clear that the President has ceded most of his duties as a leader to his Vice President, without following the Constitutional process for such a transfer as laid out in the 25th Amendment. The relevant section reads, "Whenever the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that he is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, and until he transmits to them a written declaration to the contrary, such powers and duties shall be discharged by the Vice President as Acting President." In other words, the President's gotta inform the Congress if he ain't gonna do the shit he oughta be doing as President. Not that the Constitution was ever an impediment to anything the White House has wanted to do. (One can imagine an argument that goes something like this: "In his role as Commander-in-Chief, if the President decides that the safety of Americans demands that he let Dick Cheney do the job of President..." You get the picture.)
Of course, one reason for vesting so much power in the Vice President's office is that, until now, Cheney's been able to operate under the radar, except when us wacked-out left-wing paranoiacs pointed it out. And, as has been revealed, Cheney's office has made the case that it is not subject to the same kind of scrutiny and oversight, and perhaps that works because, up until this administration, the focus of oversight has been the office of the President, not the office of the guy who's supposed to sit on the bench until he's needed to bat. The guy who should be sent out to attend tee ball games and celebrate Black Music Month. Although, really, the image of Cheney talking to children or listening to black music is more than chilling.
What this also means is that when world leaders and others make a show of talking to the President, the man who campaigned and was, more or less (less than more), elected, they're really not talking to the power in the administration. And that's another way in which this country's become a joke, another way we've been motherfuckered by them.
Sure, Bush could, in theory, say no to Cheney, but there's precious few examples of that. It's easier just to stumblefuck through to the end of his administration, knowing that, once again, he's the guy who has his job only because of who his Dad is, and, like the son who's forced to work in his father's hardware store for the summer, Dad just wants him to sit there and not break everything.
Here some of the things President Bush has done in the last dozen days or so, according to the White House website:
The President of the United States, the Leader of the Free World, the Commander-in-Chief, the Chief Executive rededicated the Islamic Center of Washington, attended the annual White House Tee Ball Game, congratulated the Presidential Scholars, celebrated Black Music Month, met with the NCAA championship teams, attended the National Hispanic Prayer breakfast, and visited the Boys and Girls Club of Wichita, Kansas. This is not to mention the policy speeches and leader-greeting ceremonies, which seem a bit more useful. And it's not unusual or summertime fun. Choose any random month - say October 2005, and you'll find much the same schedule, although, of late, it's seemed a bit more hectic.
In other words, all the kinds of functions that one might expect a Vice President to take care of - making token appearances on behalf of the President - are now done by a man who ought not have that much free time in his schedule. It's not that a President shouldn't occasionally make the appearance at the Little League game. But roughly once every other day? Sometimes twice in a day? That seems, well, perhaps disproportionate to the position of the Presidency. George Bush seems less like our fearless leader and more like a bored, rich housewife trying to fill her time between doses of Xanax. Another Laura, pretty much.
Now, perhaps they weren't the completists that today's White House webmasters are, but a gander at, say, two and a half months of Bill Clinton's 1998 list of events and talks reveals something quite different. Lessee: on November 24, 1998, Clinton commemorated National Adoption Month. On October 21, 1998, he spoke at a Breast Cancer Awareness event. Beyond that, nothing listed about Clinton speaking at anything that wasn't directed related to a government entity or bill.
As Bruce Fein points out in his very cogent and convincing call for Vice President Dick Cheney's impeachment in Slate, this week's Washington Post series, among other sources, makes it clear that the President has ceded most of his duties as a leader to his Vice President, without following the Constitutional process for such a transfer as laid out in the 25th Amendment. The relevant section reads, "Whenever the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that he is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, and until he transmits to them a written declaration to the contrary, such powers and duties shall be discharged by the Vice President as Acting President." In other words, the President's gotta inform the Congress if he ain't gonna do the shit he oughta be doing as President. Not that the Constitution was ever an impediment to anything the White House has wanted to do. (One can imagine an argument that goes something like this: "In his role as Commander-in-Chief, if the President decides that the safety of Americans demands that he let Dick Cheney do the job of President..." You get the picture.)
Of course, one reason for vesting so much power in the Vice President's office is that, until now, Cheney's been able to operate under the radar, except when us wacked-out left-wing paranoiacs pointed it out. And, as has been revealed, Cheney's office has made the case that it is not subject to the same kind of scrutiny and oversight, and perhaps that works because, up until this administration, the focus of oversight has been the office of the President, not the office of the guy who's supposed to sit on the bench until he's needed to bat. The guy who should be sent out to attend tee ball games and celebrate Black Music Month. Although, really, the image of Cheney talking to children or listening to black music is more than chilling.
What this also means is that when world leaders and others make a show of talking to the President, the man who campaigned and was, more or less (less than more), elected, they're really not talking to the power in the administration. And that's another way in which this country's become a joke, another way we've been motherfuckered by them.
Sure, Bush could, in theory, say no to Cheney, but there's precious few examples of that. It's easier just to stumblefuck through to the end of his administration, knowing that, once again, he's the guy who has his job only because of who his Dad is, and, like the son who's forced to work in his father's hardware store for the summer, Dad just wants him to sit there and not break everything.
Why Ann Coulter Is a Cunt (Assassination Edition):
The great thing about attacking Ann Coulter is that you're free to say anything you want about her, no matter how dark, twisted, or violent. Because, you know, if you've constantly called on public figures to be murdered, well, shit, you kind of don't have a twiggy long leg to stand on. So the Rude Pundit can say that he wouldn't care if Ann Coulter was sliced from kooz to sternum and then fucked simultaneously in her bleeding, viscera-spilling gut by three raging rhinos until the force of their cum popped her eyeballs out. He can say that and still respect himself in the morning.
'Cause, see, the Rude Pundit still has the moral high ground, even if we discover Ann Coulter was killed by raping rhinos with stiletto horns. You could be standing neck deep in a shit filled sewer, covered with syphilis sores and shoving a crucifix up your ass, and you'd still have the moral high ground over Ann Coulter.
Here, in context (because she whines like a golden retriever hit by a car whenever she perceives she's being decontextualized), is what Coulter said Monday on Good Morning America about presidential candidate John Edwards, after bland automaton Chris Cuomo brought up her inference that Edwards was a "faggot" a couple of months ago: "[A]bout the same time, you know, Bill Maher was not joking and saying he wished Dick Cheney had been killed in a terrorist attack. So I've learned my lesson. If I'm gonna say anything about John Edwards in the future, I'll just wish he had been killed in a terrorist assassination plot."
Taking Maher out of context, Coulter misses that he had asked if the world would be a better place if Cheney had been killed, not that he "wished" it had happened - a fine line that Coulter is more than willing to ask everyone to apply to her constant hopes for violence against Edwards, the New York Times, Justice Stevens, etc.
Then, deliciously, while Coulter was devouring the entire hour live on My Balls Are Hard with Chris "Where's Your Fucking Lips?" Matthews, with a fairly sympathetic crowd behind her in Herald Square, Manhattan, Elizabeth Edwards called in. Edwards was asking that Coulter stop the personal attacks on her husband, which is a little like asking a crack whore to stop blowing hobos for quarters. Coulter's tell, when you know she's been cornered, which is just about any time she's interviewed by someone who's not Sean Hannity (who must fingerfuck her under the desk), is that she pushes her long bottle-blonde hair to one side then the other, which she did almost constantly while Edwards was on the phone.
Edwards was not only confronting Coulter on her assassination wish, but because, as Edwards said, "You had a column a couple of years ago which -- which made fun of the moment of Charlie Dean's death, and suggested that my husband had a bumper sticker on the back of his car that said, 'Ask me about my dead son.'" Responding to a mother who had lost a son like Joan Crawford to wire hangers, Coulter attacked John Edwards' manhood ("Why isn't John Edwards making this call?") and instead accused Elizabeth Edwards of impinging on her freedom to speak. Then, since there's no hominem like an ad hominem, Coulter didn't answer Edwards (or Matthews) on the issue of personal attacks, using the opportunity to call John Edwards a "shyster" lawyer who ripped off doctors.
Another point here is not just that Coulter is a nasty, savage cunt-beast. It's that she's just fucking stupid. Here she is talking about killing civilians in our current war(s): "[Y]ou are destroying the society that has produced these monsters. And you win by killing the other side and not allowing your side to be killed. Withdrawal would be the worst thing we could do. We could definitely fight it a little bit harder. I mean, I understand why Rumsfeld wanted to have a small footprint. It is a little bit different since it wasn't a country attacking us, it is this ideology that has spread throughout the Middle East. Yes, that makes it a lot trickier. But the small footprint didn't really work. Americans are getting fed up. Democracies don't like to go to war, so we're going to have to wrap it up quickly and destroy the fighting spirit of the fanatics." Can you understand a goddamn thing in there? The Rude Pundit's argued with drunks at bars who've been more coherent just before they passed out.
But, hey, chances are Ann Coulter's anorexic or, at the very least, bulimic, considering the number of times she referred to Monica Lewinsky and Hillary Clinton as "chubby." And in that case, we can expect a peaking of madness as her weight drops, followed, perhaps, by a brain hemorrhage that keeps her in a coma until she finally dies under the burden of her own rot.
The one good line Chris Matthews got in: Referring to the cheering pro-Coulter crowd, he said, "My God, is this Deliverance?" No, but there was ass-fucking going on.
(Back to the motherfuckering tomorrow.)
The great thing about attacking Ann Coulter is that you're free to say anything you want about her, no matter how dark, twisted, or violent. Because, you know, if you've constantly called on public figures to be murdered, well, shit, you kind of don't have a twiggy long leg to stand on. So the Rude Pundit can say that he wouldn't care if Ann Coulter was sliced from kooz to sternum and then fucked simultaneously in her bleeding, viscera-spilling gut by three raging rhinos until the force of their cum popped her eyeballs out. He can say that and still respect himself in the morning.
'Cause, see, the Rude Pundit still has the moral high ground, even if we discover Ann Coulter was killed by raping rhinos with stiletto horns. You could be standing neck deep in a shit filled sewer, covered with syphilis sores and shoving a crucifix up your ass, and you'd still have the moral high ground over Ann Coulter.
Here, in context (because she whines like a golden retriever hit by a car whenever she perceives she's being decontextualized), is what Coulter said Monday on Good Morning America about presidential candidate John Edwards, after bland automaton Chris Cuomo brought up her inference that Edwards was a "faggot" a couple of months ago: "[A]bout the same time, you know, Bill Maher was not joking and saying he wished Dick Cheney had been killed in a terrorist attack. So I've learned my lesson. If I'm gonna say anything about John Edwards in the future, I'll just wish he had been killed in a terrorist assassination plot."
Taking Maher out of context, Coulter misses that he had asked if the world would be a better place if Cheney had been killed, not that he "wished" it had happened - a fine line that Coulter is more than willing to ask everyone to apply to her constant hopes for violence against Edwards, the New York Times, Justice Stevens, etc.
Then, deliciously, while Coulter was devouring the entire hour live on My Balls Are Hard with Chris "Where's Your Fucking Lips?" Matthews, with a fairly sympathetic crowd behind her in Herald Square, Manhattan, Elizabeth Edwards called in. Edwards was asking that Coulter stop the personal attacks on her husband, which is a little like asking a crack whore to stop blowing hobos for quarters. Coulter's tell, when you know she's been cornered, which is just about any time she's interviewed by someone who's not Sean Hannity (who must fingerfuck her under the desk), is that she pushes her long bottle-blonde hair to one side then the other, which she did almost constantly while Edwards was on the phone.
Edwards was not only confronting Coulter on her assassination wish, but because, as Edwards said, "You had a column a couple of years ago which -- which made fun of the moment of Charlie Dean's death, and suggested that my husband had a bumper sticker on the back of his car that said, 'Ask me about my dead son.'" Responding to a mother who had lost a son like Joan Crawford to wire hangers, Coulter attacked John Edwards' manhood ("Why isn't John Edwards making this call?") and instead accused Elizabeth Edwards of impinging on her freedom to speak. Then, since there's no hominem like an ad hominem, Coulter didn't answer Edwards (or Matthews) on the issue of personal attacks, using the opportunity to call John Edwards a "shyster" lawyer who ripped off doctors.
Another point here is not just that Coulter is a nasty, savage cunt-beast. It's that she's just fucking stupid. Here she is talking about killing civilians in our current war(s): "[Y]ou are destroying the society that has produced these monsters. And you win by killing the other side and not allowing your side to be killed. Withdrawal would be the worst thing we could do. We could definitely fight it a little bit harder. I mean, I understand why Rumsfeld wanted to have a small footprint. It is a little bit different since it wasn't a country attacking us, it is this ideology that has spread throughout the Middle East. Yes, that makes it a lot trickier. But the small footprint didn't really work. Americans are getting fed up. Democracies don't like to go to war, so we're going to have to wrap it up quickly and destroy the fighting spirit of the fanatics." Can you understand a goddamn thing in there? The Rude Pundit's argued with drunks at bars who've been more coherent just before they passed out.
But, hey, chances are Ann Coulter's anorexic or, at the very least, bulimic, considering the number of times she referred to Monica Lewinsky and Hillary Clinton as "chubby." And in that case, we can expect a peaking of madness as her weight drops, followed, perhaps, by a brain hemorrhage that keeps her in a coma until she finally dies under the burden of her own rot.
The one good line Chris Matthews got in: Referring to the cheering pro-Coulter crowd, he said, "My God, is this Deliverance?" No, but there was ass-fucking going on.
(Back to the motherfuckering tomorrow.)
The Motherfuckering of America, Part 2: Keep Your Mothers Away From Christine Todd Whitman:
Democracy is like sex - the messier it is, the better. There's few things as blandly dissatisfying as crisp, clean boinking, a nipple twist, a few martial thrusts, a finish with a towel handy. Sure, you got off, but it was meaningless. Now, if you start with warm massage oil and, eight sweaty positions later, you end up exhausted in a puddle of all kinds of sticky or slick fluids, celebrating the possible combinations of cocks, cunts, assholes, mouths, and fingers, well, you might have experienced something close to enlightenment. Or vicious cramping. Either way, you're gonna know you've been fucking.
Real democracy is about challenging the powerful, calling out the liars, and encouraging dissent, knowing that these are things that strengthen the nation. As The Daily Show pointed out, when Trent Lott sardonically suggested that some lawmakers wanted a British-type parliamentary system where the President was forced to come to the Senate and answer questions, well, fuck, that's not such a bad idea.
So it was that a group of high school seniors, one from each state, Presidential Scholars, were honored by President Bush. The President used the occasion to talk about the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind, which had nothing to do with the success of the kids behind him. The teens used the occasion to give the President a letter they had all signed. The letter, handwritten, but thankfully without smiley faces and hearts dotting the i's, called on Bush to end U.S. policies that encourage torture, including, specifically, extraordinary rendition, and "to apply the Geneva Convention to all detainees, including those designated enemy combatants." This morning, CNN took time out of covering the release of parole violator Paris Hilton to talk to three of the scholars, who spoke eloquently about feeling that they needed to take their opportunity to express something to the President, that they would have regretted not doing it.
So it was that former EPA chair Christine Todd Whitman finally appeared before a congressional committee to answer questions about whether or not, or, really, to what degree Whitman and the Bush administration lied about the amount of poison in the air of Ground Zero and the rest of Lower Manhattan in the time after 9/11. It was one helluva lively committee meeting, with five and a half years of pent-up anger occasionally brimming over, with 9/11 responders in the room booing Whitman, with House members visibly and audibly outraged at Whitman, with Jerrold Nadler of New York outright saying that the Bush administration has been "covering up its misstatements and misdeeds in the early days after the attacks." Goddamn, for a little while, it was beautiful, if delayed, like finally getting to nail that guy you had a crush on in high school.
Yes, if these stories ended here, it might appear as if it was time to change the sheets on the bed of democracy. But, ah, the motherfuckering. See, it's not just that we're dealing with motherfuckers in this government of ours. It's that they're motherfuckerers. It's not enough for them to fuck your mothers. They wanna turn you into a motherfucker by association.
It seemed a day before that Whitman was gonna throw Rudy Giuliani under the bus, having said in an interview that Giuliani didn't want responders wearing haz-mat suits, for instance, because "They didn't want this image of a city falling apart." In the hearing room, Whitman had this thrown back at her, as well as all the contradictions in her previous statements on the safety of the air at the former World Trade Center. But Whitman wasn't there to be cowed. She belted on the ten-inch black strap on, the kind that's so heavy it needs suspenders to be held straight, and told the members of Congress, "Line up your mothers. There's fuckin' to be done." And, oh, how she went to work.
According to Whitman, whose testimony sounded like it came directly from a phone call with Karl Rove, don't blame her or the Bush administration. Blame "the terrorists who attacked the United States, not the men and women at all levels of government who worked heroically to protect and defend this country," which is a little like saying to blame smoking-related deaths on the existence of tobacco, not on the corporations who lied for years about its addictive nature. Osama bin Laden didn't make Whitman tell everyone the air was fine to suck down into your lungs.
Whitman, no noble Richard Clarke even out of office, responded to the anger against her with anger of her own. "Was it wrong to try to get the city back on its feet as quickly as possible in the safest way possible? Absolutely not," she said, not acknowledging that often "quick" and "safe" do not go together. "We weren't going to let the terrorists win." She even admitted that President Bush wanted the Financial District open on Friday, after the Tuesday attack, while Lower Manhattan was still hot from the melted buildings. One presumes it was for when Bush was doing his bullhorn-licious visit. Strong leader that she was, she convinced Bush to wait until Monday.
Backing away from her criticism of Giuliani (who must be Rove's chosen candidate), Whitman told the committee, "I don't think the mayor is blaming me, and I'm certainly not blaming the mayor," even though, just a day before, she had blamed the mayor. "I think the city of New York did absolutely everything in its power to do what was right by the citizens of New York." No, no, Christine Todd Whitman was not gonna back down, not gonna admit error, not gonna say that the Bush White House wanted the veil of normalcy in Manhattan, safety be damned. Nope, Whitman said that dissent was not proper because "In times of crisis you need to speak with one voice."
Done with her fucking of mothers, Whitman wiped down her dildo, put it away, and walked out of the hearing room, dragging the rest of us down the motherfucker road with her.
Oh, and those brave students who asked Bush to stop torturing? Instead of just thanking them for their opinions and leaving it at that, Bush had to do some motherfuckering, lying to the students' faces. Hoping to transform the teens into junior motherfuckers, he told them that "the United States does not torture and that we value human rights."
Democracy can't even get a reacharound these days.
Democracy is like sex - the messier it is, the better. There's few things as blandly dissatisfying as crisp, clean boinking, a nipple twist, a few martial thrusts, a finish with a towel handy. Sure, you got off, but it was meaningless. Now, if you start with warm massage oil and, eight sweaty positions later, you end up exhausted in a puddle of all kinds of sticky or slick fluids, celebrating the possible combinations of cocks, cunts, assholes, mouths, and fingers, well, you might have experienced something close to enlightenment. Or vicious cramping. Either way, you're gonna know you've been fucking.
Real democracy is about challenging the powerful, calling out the liars, and encouraging dissent, knowing that these are things that strengthen the nation. As The Daily Show pointed out, when Trent Lott sardonically suggested that some lawmakers wanted a British-type parliamentary system where the President was forced to come to the Senate and answer questions, well, fuck, that's not such a bad idea.
So it was that a group of high school seniors, one from each state, Presidential Scholars, were honored by President Bush. The President used the occasion to talk about the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind, which had nothing to do with the success of the kids behind him. The teens used the occasion to give the President a letter they had all signed. The letter, handwritten, but thankfully without smiley faces and hearts dotting the i's, called on Bush to end U.S. policies that encourage torture, including, specifically, extraordinary rendition, and "to apply the Geneva Convention to all detainees, including those designated enemy combatants." This morning, CNN took time out of covering the release of parole violator Paris Hilton to talk to three of the scholars, who spoke eloquently about feeling that they needed to take their opportunity to express something to the President, that they would have regretted not doing it.
So it was that former EPA chair Christine Todd Whitman finally appeared before a congressional committee to answer questions about whether or not, or, really, to what degree Whitman and the Bush administration lied about the amount of poison in the air of Ground Zero and the rest of Lower Manhattan in the time after 9/11. It was one helluva lively committee meeting, with five and a half years of pent-up anger occasionally brimming over, with 9/11 responders in the room booing Whitman, with House members visibly and audibly outraged at Whitman, with Jerrold Nadler of New York outright saying that the Bush administration has been "covering up its misstatements and misdeeds in the early days after the attacks." Goddamn, for a little while, it was beautiful, if delayed, like finally getting to nail that guy you had a crush on in high school.
Yes, if these stories ended here, it might appear as if it was time to change the sheets on the bed of democracy. But, ah, the motherfuckering. See, it's not just that we're dealing with motherfuckers in this government of ours. It's that they're motherfuckerers. It's not enough for them to fuck your mothers. They wanna turn you into a motherfucker by association.
It seemed a day before that Whitman was gonna throw Rudy Giuliani under the bus, having said in an interview that Giuliani didn't want responders wearing haz-mat suits, for instance, because "They didn't want this image of a city falling apart." In the hearing room, Whitman had this thrown back at her, as well as all the contradictions in her previous statements on the safety of the air at the former World Trade Center. But Whitman wasn't there to be cowed. She belted on the ten-inch black strap on, the kind that's so heavy it needs suspenders to be held straight, and told the members of Congress, "Line up your mothers. There's fuckin' to be done." And, oh, how she went to work.
According to Whitman, whose testimony sounded like it came directly from a phone call with Karl Rove, don't blame her or the Bush administration. Blame "the terrorists who attacked the United States, not the men and women at all levels of government who worked heroically to protect and defend this country," which is a little like saying to blame smoking-related deaths on the existence of tobacco, not on the corporations who lied for years about its addictive nature. Osama bin Laden didn't make Whitman tell everyone the air was fine to suck down into your lungs.
Whitman, no noble Richard Clarke even out of office, responded to the anger against her with anger of her own. "Was it wrong to try to get the city back on its feet as quickly as possible in the safest way possible? Absolutely not," she said, not acknowledging that often "quick" and "safe" do not go together. "We weren't going to let the terrorists win." She even admitted that President Bush wanted the Financial District open on Friday, after the Tuesday attack, while Lower Manhattan was still hot from the melted buildings. One presumes it was for when Bush was doing his bullhorn-licious visit. Strong leader that she was, she convinced Bush to wait until Monday.
Backing away from her criticism of Giuliani (who must be Rove's chosen candidate), Whitman told the committee, "I don't think the mayor is blaming me, and I'm certainly not blaming the mayor," even though, just a day before, she had blamed the mayor. "I think the city of New York did absolutely everything in its power to do what was right by the citizens of New York." No, no, Christine Todd Whitman was not gonna back down, not gonna admit error, not gonna say that the Bush White House wanted the veil of normalcy in Manhattan, safety be damned. Nope, Whitman said that dissent was not proper because "In times of crisis you need to speak with one voice."
Done with her fucking of mothers, Whitman wiped down her dildo, put it away, and walked out of the hearing room, dragging the rest of us down the motherfucker road with her.
Oh, and those brave students who asked Bush to stop torturing? Instead of just thanking them for their opinions and leaving it at that, Bush had to do some motherfuckering, lying to the students' faces. Hoping to transform the teens into junior motherfuckers, he told them that "the United States does not torture and that we value human rights."
Democracy can't even get a reacharound these days.
The Motherfuckering of America, Part 1: Keep Your Mothers Away From Dick Cheney:
That new Rufus Wainwright song, "Going to a Town," has the refrain "I'm so tired of America," which, if you can ignore Wainwright's usual nasal whine, bespeaks a general exhaustion permeating this land. But it's not so much being tired of America as much as it's utterly soul-sapping to meet people from other countries and feel as if you have to apologize for your country for being such motherfuckers. On every path, on every issue, on every turn of events or crisis, the government (and fuck dividing it here between "the Bush administration" and "Congress" - we're only half a year distant from the previous four years of Republican hegemony) has jumped in the motherfucker truck and dragged us all with it.
When the Rude Pundit was in Canada in January, even though it was pretty clear that he was not one of the idiot Americans, 41% of whom still fucking think that Saddam Hussein told those Saudis to fly into those buildings on 9/11, even though there was some hope in the just-inaugurated shiny new Congress, he felt as if he had to personally apologize on behalf of all like-minded Americans, something like, "Hey, I'm really sorry we're such motherfuckers right now. But, you know, gee, things can change. Now let's get a LaBatt's and watch us some hockey."
We have been motherfuckered, forced through association to be considered motherfuckers, motherfuckered over again and again. Over the next few days, or until he gets bored with the idea, the Rude Pundit's gonna look at this motherfuckering of the US, beginning with the chiefest motherfuckerer of them all.
Our grandchildren are going to visit us at our shit-bestrewn nursing homes decades from now and ask us how, back in Aught-Seven, after everything we knew and were still discovering, why we didn't do anything about Dick Cheney. And all we'll be able to do is shake our heads in disgrace, beg them for more morphine, hoping the sweet kiss of death will finally end our pain and rage at our impotence in the face of Cheney (with the occasional muttering of "Lieberman, it was all Lieberman," as if that excuses it, but all it does is make the grandkids think that we've gone anti-Semite in our senility).
After reading the first two parts of the Washington Post's series this week on just how many mothers Dick Cheney has fucked, the Rude Pundit wonders how anyone who deigns to call him or herself human can stand to be near Dick Cheney, or anyone in his office. (And let's put aside that bean fart of a man, Alberto Gonzales, for the time being.) What the fuck? In his spare time, does he feed stray kittens from his milky nipples? Is that how anyone can stand near him without feeling the need to vomit or fake a stroke to get away from him?
Read the whole articles, read long excerpts on other blogs, but know that the series begins with Colin Powell and Condi Rice getting fucked like particularly supple house niggers back in the old days and with Cheney smirking evilly to a stupefied Dan Quayle. And know that David Addington, Cheney's butt boy, is one of the most vicious, sinister shits ever to be allowed to walk unimpeded into the Oval Office. And know that John Yoo, the sick fuck who gave the torture policies the shiny stamp of legalistic approval, teaches students how to become sick fucks just like him.
What we get so far is that Cheney's whole modus operandi is the accretion of power for the executive branch, not, ultimately, for the good of anything but of himself and, by default, President Bush. And the seeming reasoning behind this expansion of presidential power is just because he can. Seriously. Read about the way that Cheney's office orchestrated the complete degradation of American moral authority: "Cheney and his allies, according to more than two dozen current and former officials, pioneered a novel distinction between forbidden 'torture' and permitted use of 'cruel, inhuman or degrading' methods of questioning." It's chilling and telling that the Post article never says why exactly these methods were needed, only leaving it to the vague "different kind of war" reason, as if there was ever a time when wars were simply a homogeneous bunch of actions. For shits and giggles, do a Lexis-Nexis search of "Vietnam war" and "different kind of war." It was a constant refrain throughout that nightmare.
The truly hilarious part of this whole debate on how much cruelty is legal is how weaselly it all is - how to find the one space in the cave to wriggle through to the caverns of depravity. Christ, at least Saddam Hussein just fuckin' ripped people to shreds and then said they were "enemies" after tossing their pieces to dogs. Cheney and his crew actually spent time figuring out how much savagery they could inflict before someone might say, "Whoa, whoa, one more broken finger and we may have to stop."
Finally, the use of the war powers of the Commander-in-Chief as legal approval for anything the Chief Executive (with Cheney's hand in his sphincter) wants to do, any law he wants to ignore, is a frightening masterstroke. If you feel that war gives you the right to unconstrained power, then what motivation do you have for ending a war? Or perhaps you create a war paradigm that allows it to never end, like a war on a concept or vaguely aligned group of individuals instead of a nation.
Motherfuckers should be in jail for motherfuckering us so badly.
That new Rufus Wainwright song, "Going to a Town," has the refrain "I'm so tired of America," which, if you can ignore Wainwright's usual nasal whine, bespeaks a general exhaustion permeating this land. But it's not so much being tired of America as much as it's utterly soul-sapping to meet people from other countries and feel as if you have to apologize for your country for being such motherfuckers. On every path, on every issue, on every turn of events or crisis, the government (and fuck dividing it here between "the Bush administration" and "Congress" - we're only half a year distant from the previous four years of Republican hegemony) has jumped in the motherfucker truck and dragged us all with it.
When the Rude Pundit was in Canada in January, even though it was pretty clear that he was not one of the idiot Americans, 41% of whom still fucking think that Saddam Hussein told those Saudis to fly into those buildings on 9/11, even though there was some hope in the just-inaugurated shiny new Congress, he felt as if he had to personally apologize on behalf of all like-minded Americans, something like, "Hey, I'm really sorry we're such motherfuckers right now. But, you know, gee, things can change. Now let's get a LaBatt's and watch us some hockey."
We have been motherfuckered, forced through association to be considered motherfuckers, motherfuckered over again and again. Over the next few days, or until he gets bored with the idea, the Rude Pundit's gonna look at this motherfuckering of the US, beginning with the chiefest motherfuckerer of them all.
Our grandchildren are going to visit us at our shit-bestrewn nursing homes decades from now and ask us how, back in Aught-Seven, after everything we knew and were still discovering, why we didn't do anything about Dick Cheney. And all we'll be able to do is shake our heads in disgrace, beg them for more morphine, hoping the sweet kiss of death will finally end our pain and rage at our impotence in the face of Cheney (with the occasional muttering of "Lieberman, it was all Lieberman," as if that excuses it, but all it does is make the grandkids think that we've gone anti-Semite in our senility).
After reading the first two parts of the Washington Post's series this week on just how many mothers Dick Cheney has fucked, the Rude Pundit wonders how anyone who deigns to call him or herself human can stand to be near Dick Cheney, or anyone in his office. (And let's put aside that bean fart of a man, Alberto Gonzales, for the time being.) What the fuck? In his spare time, does he feed stray kittens from his milky nipples? Is that how anyone can stand near him without feeling the need to vomit or fake a stroke to get away from him?
Read the whole articles, read long excerpts on other blogs, but know that the series begins with Colin Powell and Condi Rice getting fucked like particularly supple house niggers back in the old days and with Cheney smirking evilly to a stupefied Dan Quayle. And know that David Addington, Cheney's butt boy, is one of the most vicious, sinister shits ever to be allowed to walk unimpeded into the Oval Office. And know that John Yoo, the sick fuck who gave the torture policies the shiny stamp of legalistic approval, teaches students how to become sick fucks just like him.
What we get so far is that Cheney's whole modus operandi is the accretion of power for the executive branch, not, ultimately, for the good of anything but of himself and, by default, President Bush. And the seeming reasoning behind this expansion of presidential power is just because he can. Seriously. Read about the way that Cheney's office orchestrated the complete degradation of American moral authority: "Cheney and his allies, according to more than two dozen current and former officials, pioneered a novel distinction between forbidden 'torture' and permitted use of 'cruel, inhuman or degrading' methods of questioning." It's chilling and telling that the Post article never says why exactly these methods were needed, only leaving it to the vague "different kind of war" reason, as if there was ever a time when wars were simply a homogeneous bunch of actions. For shits and giggles, do a Lexis-Nexis search of "Vietnam war" and "different kind of war." It was a constant refrain throughout that nightmare.
The truly hilarious part of this whole debate on how much cruelty is legal is how weaselly it all is - how to find the one space in the cave to wriggle through to the caverns of depravity. Christ, at least Saddam Hussein just fuckin' ripped people to shreds and then said they were "enemies" after tossing their pieces to dogs. Cheney and his crew actually spent time figuring out how much savagery they could inflict before someone might say, "Whoa, whoa, one more broken finger and we may have to stop."
Finally, the use of the war powers of the Commander-in-Chief as legal approval for anything the Chief Executive (with Cheney's hand in his sphincter) wants to do, any law he wants to ignore, is a frightening masterstroke. If you feel that war gives you the right to unconstrained power, then what motivation do you have for ending a war? Or perhaps you create a war paradigm that allows it to never end, like a war on a concept or vaguely aligned group of individuals instead of a nation.
Motherfuckers should be in jail for motherfuckering us so badly.
Palate Cleanser Saturday:
The Rude Pundit dragged himself out of an amazing whiskey dream where he was some kind of crazy killer avenging...well, let's leave that there...and he got to read this: "President Bush's office is not allowing an independent federal watchdog to oversee its handling of classified national security information." Goddamn, these guys are such motherfuckers. More on the motherfuckering of the government on Monday.
Instead, cleanse your brain with the mockumentary of Troy the Tornado. The Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest - one more reason they must have to hate us so.
The Rude Pundit dragged himself out of an amazing whiskey dream where he was some kind of crazy killer avenging...well, let's leave that there...and he got to read this: "President Bush's office is not allowing an independent federal watchdog to oversee its handling of classified national security information." Goddamn, these guys are such motherfuckers. More on the motherfuckering of the government on Monday.
Instead, cleanse your brain with the mockumentary of Troy the Tornado. The Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest - one more reason they must have to hate us so.
Six Other Things the Office of the Vice President Actually Is:
Dick Cheney has decided that his office is a free-floating radical in DC, not quite an executive entity, not truly a legislative one, but some unholy Reese's cup of evil. Here's some other ways the Veep has untethered himself from mortal binds.
1. Because his office is not an entity in the executive branch, but actually a Native American religion, Cheney and his staff are free to smoke peyote at the start of every morning meeting.
2. Because his office is not an entity in the executive branch, but actually a breach in the space/time continuum, Cheney is free to enter at will his own dimension, the realm of Cthulhu and the slime beasts.
3. Because his office is not an entity in the executive branch, but actually a motorcycle gang, Cheney is free to beat Senators with chains and blackjacks.
4. Because his office is not an entity in the executive branch, but technically an executive bathroom, Cheney is free to wipe his ass with whatever documents are handy, memos, executive orders, Constitutions.
5. Because his office is not an entity in the executive branch, but actually a freak show, Cheney is free to bite the heads off chickens. And nosy members of Congress.
6. Because his office is not an entity in the executive branch, but actually an insane asylum, Cheney is free to rain bedlam down on the whole of government.
Dick Cheney has decided that his office is a free-floating radical in DC, not quite an executive entity, not truly a legislative one, but some unholy Reese's cup of evil. Here's some other ways the Veep has untethered himself from mortal binds.
1. Because his office is not an entity in the executive branch, but actually a Native American religion, Cheney and his staff are free to smoke peyote at the start of every morning meeting.
2. Because his office is not an entity in the executive branch, but actually a breach in the space/time continuum, Cheney is free to enter at will his own dimension, the realm of Cthulhu and the slime beasts.
3. Because his office is not an entity in the executive branch, but actually a motorcycle gang, Cheney is free to beat Senators with chains and blackjacks.
4. Because his office is not an entity in the executive branch, but technically an executive bathroom, Cheney is free to wipe his ass with whatever documents are handy, memos, executive orders, Constitutions.
5. Because his office is not an entity in the executive branch, but actually a freak show, Cheney is free to bite the heads off chickens. And nosy members of Congress.
6. Because his office is not an entity in the executive branch, but actually an insane asylum, Cheney is free to rain bedlam down on the whole of government.
Why Does Conservative Spooge Bucket Kevin McCullough Fear Women?:
Here's a line from conservative columnist Kevin McCullough that just screams, "I need cock, lots of cock, now," from a piece from last week: "Feminists cower in fear at the picture, the symbol, and the meaning of a strong father today." It's in McCullough's charming Father's Day celebration titled "Why Feminists Fear Fathers," and this little bitch, who had to publish a book called The MuscleHead Revolution to appear masculine, uses as "evidence" his own powers of observation.
McCullough, one of those so obviously closeted Christian-spouting queens that you just wanna buy him a half-shirt, drop him onto a Fire Island dance party, and ask him, "Where is your God now?" just before he drops to his knees to worship what will really fill his soul or, at least, his mouth, says that fathers are part of God's plan, endowed by their creator with their manly manliness that makes them protectors over weaker women and children.
No, seriously, he writes, "Opening doors, allowing women to proceed in front of them, assisting a woman up a flight of stairs, across a busy street, or escorting them to their side of an automobile are also simple symbolic gestures of manly protection." In just about any other context, that would be called "camp" or at least "ironic" writing. But not with McCullough, who likes his fathers to be rough and tough, especially on him. One can imagine McCullough weeping for his Daddy to beat his ass, hard, because he intentionally did something wrong and he loves the smacks from Daddy's calloused hands so, so much, as well as the slap-worthy hard-ons he gets from it.
But it doesn't end with feminists preferring to open their own doors, those whores. Oh, no. See, rebellion against fathers has a larger meaning, and why wouldn't it? "It is rebellion against God - the ultimate father," McCullough says, because...oh, who the fuck cares, but "Feminists wish to subvert God's plan, order, and instruction in order to create a world that they see as the ultimate reality. A reality that is made in their own image. Scripture refers to that as idolatry." Man, you gotta love it when the line is crossed from fervor to fanaticism.
It doesn't actually matter that the National Organization of Women routinely praises men who take on the role of strong fathers (maybe not door-opening ass spankers, but still, you know, fathers), saying things like "The good news as Father's Day approaches is that more and more men are sharing duties on the home front." That might require McCullough to go to the NOW website and type the word "fathers" into the Search space, maybe even clicking on a link or two.
Why bother when you can base your column on something that some Fox "news" reporter told you (which is what McCullough did) about research into creating sperm cells so that men might not be needed in the conception process. Especially if it allows you to write, "What a strong father represents to this time, life, and world has never been more underestimated and modern feminists have taken it upon themselves to attempt to eliminate the need for them all together."
Of course, McCullough is all about figuring out why liberals do things. Yesterday's column was about "Why Liberals Loathe 'the People,'" which apparently has something to do with gay marriage and some idea of Michael Bloomberg's. And motherfucker has figured out "Why Rudy Is Striking Out" (hint: it rhymes with "schmabortion").
McCullough, though, hates him some feminists, in that vicious way that only latent, lying-to-themselves homosexual men can. In April, in his column, "Why Feminist Mommies Are Like Pimps," he used as his models Kim Basinger and Keira Knightley's mother to conclude, "For some time the modern feminists of our society have done all they can to minimize the influence of men, assuage their own conscience for the break-up of their homes, and have turned to sexualizing their children." And, in the explains-it-all-to-you titled, "Why Feminists Fear Men," he opines, "It has to be obvious to the angry feminists today that in fact the happiest women in America are those who have a caring, life giving, spiritual, emotional, and physical relationship with a man they are married to."
And what comes through most strongly in McCullough's writing is that that's what would make him happy, too.
Here's a line from conservative columnist Kevin McCullough that just screams, "I need cock, lots of cock, now," from a piece from last week: "Feminists cower in fear at the picture, the symbol, and the meaning of a strong father today." It's in McCullough's charming Father's Day celebration titled "Why Feminists Fear Fathers," and this little bitch, who had to publish a book called The MuscleHead Revolution to appear masculine, uses as "evidence" his own powers of observation.
McCullough, one of those so obviously closeted Christian-spouting queens that you just wanna buy him a half-shirt, drop him onto a Fire Island dance party, and ask him, "Where is your God now?" just before he drops to his knees to worship what will really fill his soul or, at least, his mouth, says that fathers are part of God's plan, endowed by their creator with their manly manliness that makes them protectors over weaker women and children.
No, seriously, he writes, "Opening doors, allowing women to proceed in front of them, assisting a woman up a flight of stairs, across a busy street, or escorting them to their side of an automobile are also simple symbolic gestures of manly protection." In just about any other context, that would be called "camp" or at least "ironic" writing. But not with McCullough, who likes his fathers to be rough and tough, especially on him. One can imagine McCullough weeping for his Daddy to beat his ass, hard, because he intentionally did something wrong and he loves the smacks from Daddy's calloused hands so, so much, as well as the slap-worthy hard-ons he gets from it.
But it doesn't end with feminists preferring to open their own doors, those whores. Oh, no. See, rebellion against fathers has a larger meaning, and why wouldn't it? "It is rebellion against God - the ultimate father," McCullough says, because...oh, who the fuck cares, but "Feminists wish to subvert God's plan, order, and instruction in order to create a world that they see as the ultimate reality. A reality that is made in their own image. Scripture refers to that as idolatry." Man, you gotta love it when the line is crossed from fervor to fanaticism.
It doesn't actually matter that the National Organization of Women routinely praises men who take on the role of strong fathers (maybe not door-opening ass spankers, but still, you know, fathers), saying things like "The good news as Father's Day approaches is that more and more men are sharing duties on the home front." That might require McCullough to go to the NOW website and type the word "fathers" into the Search space, maybe even clicking on a link or two.
Why bother when you can base your column on something that some Fox "news" reporter told you (which is what McCullough did) about research into creating sperm cells so that men might not be needed in the conception process. Especially if it allows you to write, "What a strong father represents to this time, life, and world has never been more underestimated and modern feminists have taken it upon themselves to attempt to eliminate the need for them all together."
Of course, McCullough is all about figuring out why liberals do things. Yesterday's column was about "Why Liberals Loathe 'the People,'" which apparently has something to do with gay marriage and some idea of Michael Bloomberg's. And motherfucker has figured out "Why Rudy Is Striking Out" (hint: it rhymes with "schmabortion").
McCullough, though, hates him some feminists, in that vicious way that only latent, lying-to-themselves homosexual men can. In April, in his column, "Why Feminist Mommies Are Like Pimps," he used as his models Kim Basinger and Keira Knightley's mother to conclude, "For some time the modern feminists of our society have done all they can to minimize the influence of men, assuage their own conscience for the break-up of their homes, and have turned to sexualizing their children." And, in the explains-it-all-to-you titled, "Why Feminists Fear Men," he opines, "It has to be obvious to the angry feminists today that in fact the happiest women in America are those who have a caring, life giving, spiritual, emotional, and physical relationship with a man they are married to."
And what comes through most strongly in McCullough's writing is that that's what would make him happy, too.
America the Cruel: Missing Soldier's Wife May Be Deported:
So one of the American soldiers missing in Iraq for over a month is Alex Jimenez of Lawrence, Massachusetts. Back in May, conservative attack dragon Michelle Malkin wanted to make sure "the rest of the country" was not taking the soldiers "for granted." For the most part, Malkin's blog is a document of her journey across the fenced border that separates the mad from the sane over illegal immigration, with Malkin coming down firmly on the bugfuck crazy side, especially if an illegal drinks and drives.
One wonders what Malkin and all the other taint-licking nutzoids that comprise the right-wing punditry are thinking about prospect that Alex Jimenez's wife, Yaderlin Hiraldo, faces deportation because, yup, she's illegal. The woman pictured cuddling with her Army hubby may be sent back to the Dominican Republic, where she would have to stay for ten years before she could apply to come back. Her status as an illegal immigrant was discovered because, yup, Alex applied to get her a green card and legal status. The cruelest irony, if there isn't enough here, is that because Alex Jimenez is missing, a judge has put a hold on a hearing over her status. So now Yaderlin Hiraldo gets to wait for the inevitable news that Alex was treated like a beef cow in the slaughterhouse and whether or not she's allowed to continue to live in the country that her husband suffered and probably died for.
And what if Yaderlin is granted a green card? Is her situation any less extreme than a parent whose child was born here, those abstract "anchor babies" Neil Boortz, Rush Limbaugh, and others are fond of deriding? Someone give Lou Dobbs a call. "Amnesty," as he orgasmically spews about any immigration legislation less than disembowelment, means something concrete to actual people, not a darker-skinned, bean-smelling amorphous blob.
The Rude Pundit would like to see Malkin and Dobbs and Tom Tancredo standing at an airport, watching Yaderlin led to a plane to take her back to Santo Domingo. Maybe they could manipulate the corpse of her husband, an all-American puppet hero, so it waves good-bye and good riddance, that no sacrifice is enough to get into their special club of citizenship.
So one of the American soldiers missing in Iraq for over a month is Alex Jimenez of Lawrence, Massachusetts. Back in May, conservative attack dragon Michelle Malkin wanted to make sure "the rest of the country" was not taking the soldiers "for granted." For the most part, Malkin's blog is a document of her journey across the fenced border that separates the mad from the sane over illegal immigration, with Malkin coming down firmly on the bugfuck crazy side, especially if an illegal drinks and drives.
One wonders what Malkin and all the other taint-licking nutzoids that comprise the right-wing punditry are thinking about prospect that Alex Jimenez's wife, Yaderlin Hiraldo, faces deportation because, yup, she's illegal. The woman pictured cuddling with her Army hubby may be sent back to the Dominican Republic, where she would have to stay for ten years before she could apply to come back. Her status as an illegal immigrant was discovered because, yup, Alex applied to get her a green card and legal status. The cruelest irony, if there isn't enough here, is that because Alex Jimenez is missing, a judge has put a hold on a hearing over her status. So now Yaderlin Hiraldo gets to wait for the inevitable news that Alex was treated like a beef cow in the slaughterhouse and whether or not she's allowed to continue to live in the country that her husband suffered and probably died for.
And what if Yaderlin is granted a green card? Is her situation any less extreme than a parent whose child was born here, those abstract "anchor babies" Neil Boortz, Rush Limbaugh, and others are fond of deriding? Someone give Lou Dobbs a call. "Amnesty," as he orgasmically spews about any immigration legislation less than disembowelment, means something concrete to actual people, not a darker-skinned, bean-smelling amorphous blob.
The Rude Pundit would like to see Malkin and Dobbs and Tom Tancredo standing at an airport, watching Yaderlin led to a plane to take her back to Santo Domingo. Maybe they could manipulate the corpse of her husband, an all-American puppet hero, so it waves good-bye and good riddance, that no sacrifice is enough to get into their special club of citizenship.
Rude at Bonnaroo Concluded:
The Rude Pundit's adventures at the Bonnaroo Music Festival are concluded over at Rude at Bonnaroo.
The Rude Pundit's adventures at the Bonnaroo Music Festival are concluded over at Rude at Bonnaroo.
General Antonio Taguba Gets Reamed By Abu Ghraib Politics:
One of the more interesting aspects of Seymour Hersh's New Yorker article on the Defense Department's ass reaming of Army Major General Antonio Taguba for daring to try to tell the truth about Abu Ghraib is that all the officials opposed to Taguba's diligence were such dicks to him. They didn't just want to stop Taguba; they wanted to humiliate him.
Look at what Taguba says about his first meeting with Donald Rumsfeld and various generals: "'Here . . . comes . . . that famous General Taguba—of the Taguba report!' Rumsfeld declared, in a mocking voice." Man, you get the gut-wrenching paranoia in that remark? See, you don't have to be a dick when you're assured in what you're doing. In poker, the worst kind of bluffing is to puff yourself up when all you're holdin' is jack-high. Then, in the amazing realm of plausible deniability, Rumsfeld kicks out the dick jams again, flat out lying to Taguba in order for them to get their stories straight, like any bunch of gang bangers: "Rumsfeld also complained about not being given the information he needed. 'Here I am,' Taguba recalled Rumsfeld saying, 'just a Secretary of Defense, and we have not seen a copy of your report.'" Goddamnit, even though he's like 900-years old, don't you just wanna kick Rumsfeld's ass on principle, like he's a date-raping frat boy, not feeling bad at all that those bones'll never fully heal?
All Taguba was telling Rumsfeld and his bootlickers, including Paul Wolfowitz, is that the United States had been torturing prisoners: "In the meeting, the officials professed ignorance about Abu Ghraib. 'Could you tell us what happened?' Wolfowitz asked. Someone else asked, 'Is it abuse or torture?' At that point, Taguba recalled, 'I described a naked detainee lying on the wet floor, handcuffed, with an interrogator shoving things up his rectum, and said, "That’s not abuse. That’s torture." There was quiet.'"
Even in the gym, Rumsfeld's lackeys couldn't help but try to bitchify Taguba. "Later in 2004, Taguba encountered Rumsfeld and one of his senior press aides, Lawrence Di Rita, in the Pentagon Athletic Center. Taguba was getting dressed after a workout. 'I was tying my shoes,' Taguba recalled. 'I looked up, and there they were.' Rumsfeld, who was putting his clothes into a locker, recognized Taguba and said, 'Hello, General.' Di Rita, who was standing beside Rumsfeld, said sarcastically, 'See what you started, General? See what you started?'" Beyond the cold sweat-inducing image of a nude Donald Rumsfeld, these assholes couldn't miss an opportunity to treat Taguba like shit.
And isn't that the whole key to what happened at that Hussein-era hellhole remade into an American-controlled hellhole? It wasn't enough to imprison the people there; they had to be made to regret ever having dared to think about opposing America. What Hersh's article tells us is not just that the decisions about the treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib came from the highest levels of the Defense Department (and the Bush administration). It's that the very nature of the men who were creating the policy led naturally to the abuses. It's what they know. It's what they do. It's who they are. For if they can treat an American two-star general like a syphilitic camp follower, what chance did Iraqis have?
One of the more interesting aspects of Seymour Hersh's New Yorker article on the Defense Department's ass reaming of Army Major General Antonio Taguba for daring to try to tell the truth about Abu Ghraib is that all the officials opposed to Taguba's diligence were such dicks to him. They didn't just want to stop Taguba; they wanted to humiliate him.
Look at what Taguba says about his first meeting with Donald Rumsfeld and various generals: "'Here . . . comes . . . that famous General Taguba—of the Taguba report!' Rumsfeld declared, in a mocking voice." Man, you get the gut-wrenching paranoia in that remark? See, you don't have to be a dick when you're assured in what you're doing. In poker, the worst kind of bluffing is to puff yourself up when all you're holdin' is jack-high. Then, in the amazing realm of plausible deniability, Rumsfeld kicks out the dick jams again, flat out lying to Taguba in order for them to get their stories straight, like any bunch of gang bangers: "Rumsfeld also complained about not being given the information he needed. 'Here I am,' Taguba recalled Rumsfeld saying, 'just a Secretary of Defense, and we have not seen a copy of your report.'" Goddamnit, even though he's like 900-years old, don't you just wanna kick Rumsfeld's ass on principle, like he's a date-raping frat boy, not feeling bad at all that those bones'll never fully heal?
All Taguba was telling Rumsfeld and his bootlickers, including Paul Wolfowitz, is that the United States had been torturing prisoners: "In the meeting, the officials professed ignorance about Abu Ghraib. 'Could you tell us what happened?' Wolfowitz asked. Someone else asked, 'Is it abuse or torture?' At that point, Taguba recalled, 'I described a naked detainee lying on the wet floor, handcuffed, with an interrogator shoving things up his rectum, and said, "That’s not abuse. That’s torture." There was quiet.'"
Even in the gym, Rumsfeld's lackeys couldn't help but try to bitchify Taguba. "Later in 2004, Taguba encountered Rumsfeld and one of his senior press aides, Lawrence Di Rita, in the Pentagon Athletic Center. Taguba was getting dressed after a workout. 'I was tying my shoes,' Taguba recalled. 'I looked up, and there they were.' Rumsfeld, who was putting his clothes into a locker, recognized Taguba and said, 'Hello, General.' Di Rita, who was standing beside Rumsfeld, said sarcastically, 'See what you started, General? See what you started?'" Beyond the cold sweat-inducing image of a nude Donald Rumsfeld, these assholes couldn't miss an opportunity to treat Taguba like shit.
And isn't that the whole key to what happened at that Hussein-era hellhole remade into an American-controlled hellhole? It wasn't enough to imprison the people there; they had to be made to regret ever having dared to think about opposing America. What Hersh's article tells us is not just that the decisions about the treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib came from the highest levels of the Defense Department (and the Bush administration). It's that the very nature of the men who were creating the policy led naturally to the abuses. It's what they know. It's what they do. It's who they are. For if they can treat an American two-star general like a syphilitic camp follower, what chance did Iraqis have?
Photos That Make the Rude Pundit Want To Smash His Head on an Air Hockey Table:
This is President Bush playing foosball at the Boys and Girls Club in Wichita, Kansas. He said of the place, "I like the idea of mentors reaching out to children to set good examples and to encourage them to achieve big goals in life." It's really not unlike saying, "I like pie" or "I like my nipples twisted during cunnilingus," just one of those charmingly self-obvious things Bush says as if they're amazing revelations of hidden truths.
One assumes that those girls, like the rest of us, realize now that Bush as goalie is not the best idea.
This is President Bush playing foosball at the Boys and Girls Club in Wichita, Kansas. He said of the place, "I like the idea of mentors reaching out to children to set good examples and to encourage them to achieve big goals in life." It's really not unlike saying, "I like pie" or "I like my nipples twisted during cunnilingus," just one of those charmingly self-obvious things Bush says as if they're amazing revelations of hidden truths.
One assumes that those girls, like the rest of us, realize now that Bush as goalie is not the best idea.
The Rude Pundit Returns:
The Rude Pundit is in the Nashville airport, about to board his plane to leave the state of Bonnaroo and return to the states of blue. The Police rocked better than they had any right to, the Flaming Lips fucked with everyone, the Black Keys kicked ass, and Gogol Bordello's just goddamn insane. All that, plus excellent weed, bare breasts, and real honest-to-god activism with the Rude Pundit's guerilla theatre workshops.
More later - back to rudeness.
The Rude Pundit is in the Nashville airport, about to board his plane to leave the state of Bonnaroo and return to the states of blue. The Police rocked better than they had any right to, the Flaming Lips fucked with everyone, the Black Keys kicked ass, and Gogol Bordello's just goddamn insane. All that, plus excellent weed, bare breasts, and real honest-to-god activism with the Rude Pundit's guerilla theatre workshops.
More later - back to rudeness.
More Rude at Bonnaroo:
Head over to the Rude Pundit's other blog for details on his nightmare experience at the Bonnaroo Music Festival.
Head over to the Rude Pundit's other blog for details on his nightmare experience at the Bonnaroo Music Festival.
True Confessions: How Political Enragement Led To Disengagement...and Back Again.
(By special guest pinch-blogger,Manny Mota John King.)
This writer is no Rude Pundit, but he knows a thing or two about Republican asshattery. In fact, that might be why the erstwhile Rude One left the keys to the blog before heading off for a weekend amid the damn dirty hippies: a weekend of billboard-sized sheets of acid, dancing to "Roxanne," singing those high notes like Eddie Murphy in 48 Hours, and then -- ah, yes, then -- engaging in anonymous, sticky, pleasurable activities in the sea of tents and grilled cheese sammiches, and not remembering shit. Here's hoping.
However, in terms of political engagement, this writer has been off the radar for a while. Like a lot of people, this writer turned off the television after the 2004 election, watched as the United States of Canada separated from Jesusland, and he said (while shaking his fists at the heavens -- you know, for effect), "Ah....motherfuckermotherfuckermotherfuckermotherfucker!"
Let's back up a bit.
In grad school, this writer took a job at the college paper and got all politically engaged and shit, like a lot of people, post-9/11, suddenly awake and aware and keen to issues, real issues -- not just the war, but other shit, too.
He wrote columns, and he swung hard. One of the highlights: He wrote a column defending homosexuals, and it might be the best thing he'll ever write.
Then he voted for Kerry, and we all know how that shit turned out.
Since then, this writer had to tune out, or face ulcers and ruined relationships and sleepless nights and pretty much everything else lefties have dealt with daily since, oh, November 2000-ish. And maybe this writer is a big pussy for not hanging tough, but that's how he ended up rolling.
He stopped reading the damn paper and getting pissed off every morning, and he thought this was good. He stopped allowing obtuse Republican views to enrage him on a daily basis, and he stopped having "spirited political discussions," which basically became code for "dealing with fucking douchebags who think all brown people are eeeeevil."
Once in a while, yes, while among like-minded people, the John of Old would surface, but only among friends who pretty much saw things the way he saw them, and if there was a conservative in our midst, well, we just laughed away our differences. Haha, motherfucker, let's agree to disagree. Hardeharhar.
But this mingling was rare. This writer knew the dangers of too much engagement when the 2008 election was so far away. This writer had made himself fucking miserable, playing pundit, and had to knock that shit off.
Miserable? Man, that's no fucking way to live. This writer didn't want to be the guy who woke up every morning and cussed the newspaper, bashed the television, kicked the dog. For others, this is normal and fine. For this writer, lacking such iron constitution, not so much.
But ya know, that was then. This writer can't just ignore shit now. Barack Obama and/or Hillary Clinton might be the real deal. A woman or a black dude for president? Holy fucking shit.
And maybe this writer is on crack, and maybe the left's best bet is neither of the above, but maybe someone else.
Whatever the case, it's worth risking enragement to watch. It's something different.
It's hope, and that's a way to live.
If you dug the pinch-blogging, pop over to King's Eye Land. If you're one of those who just wants to argue, don't bother. I'm like Stalin with people who disagree. You'll be disappeared in the night and end up in my basement, ball-gagged and ready for the badgers.
Your regularly scheduled rudeness will return next week. 'Til then, check out Rude at Bonnaroo and prepare for the zombie holocaust.
(By special guest pinch-blogger,
This writer is no Rude Pundit, but he knows a thing or two about Republican asshattery. In fact, that might be why the erstwhile Rude One left the keys to the blog before heading off for a weekend amid the damn dirty hippies: a weekend of billboard-sized sheets of acid, dancing to "Roxanne," singing those high notes like Eddie Murphy in 48 Hours, and then -- ah, yes, then -- engaging in anonymous, sticky, pleasurable activities in the sea of tents and grilled cheese sammiches, and not remembering shit. Here's hoping.
However, in terms of political engagement, this writer has been off the radar for a while. Like a lot of people, this writer turned off the television after the 2004 election, watched as the United States of Canada separated from Jesusland, and he said (while shaking his fists at the heavens -- you know, for effect), "Ah....motherfuckermotherfuckermotherfuckermotherfucker!"
Let's back up a bit.
In grad school, this writer took a job at the college paper and got all politically engaged and shit, like a lot of people, post-9/11, suddenly awake and aware and keen to issues, real issues -- not just the war, but other shit, too.
He wrote columns, and he swung hard. One of the highlights: He wrote a column defending homosexuals, and it might be the best thing he'll ever write.
Then he voted for Kerry, and we all know how that shit turned out.
Since then, this writer had to tune out, or face ulcers and ruined relationships and sleepless nights and pretty much everything else lefties have dealt with daily since, oh, November 2000-ish. And maybe this writer is a big pussy for not hanging tough, but that's how he ended up rolling.
He stopped reading the damn paper and getting pissed off every morning, and he thought this was good. He stopped allowing obtuse Republican views to enrage him on a daily basis, and he stopped having "spirited political discussions," which basically became code for "dealing with fucking douchebags who think all brown people are eeeeevil."
Once in a while, yes, while among like-minded people, the John of Old would surface, but only among friends who pretty much saw things the way he saw them, and if there was a conservative in our midst, well, we just laughed away our differences. Haha, motherfucker, let's agree to disagree. Hardeharhar.
But this mingling was rare. This writer knew the dangers of too much engagement when the 2008 election was so far away. This writer had made himself fucking miserable, playing pundit, and had to knock that shit off.
Miserable? Man, that's no fucking way to live. This writer didn't want to be the guy who woke up every morning and cussed the newspaper, bashed the television, kicked the dog. For others, this is normal and fine. For this writer, lacking such iron constitution, not so much.
But ya know, that was then. This writer can't just ignore shit now. Barack Obama and/or Hillary Clinton might be the real deal. A woman or a black dude for president? Holy fucking shit.
And maybe this writer is on crack, and maybe the left's best bet is neither of the above, but maybe someone else.
Whatever the case, it's worth risking enragement to watch. It's something different.
It's hope, and that's a way to live.
If you dug the pinch-blogging, pop over to King's Eye Land. If you're one of those who just wants to argue, don't bother. I'm like Stalin with people who disagree. You'll be disappeared in the night and end up in my basement, ball-gagged and ready for the badgers.
Your regularly scheduled rudeness will return next week. 'Til then, check out Rude at Bonnaroo and prepare for the zombie holocaust.
Rude at Bonnaroo Blog:
Check out the Rude Pundit's hellish journey through the concentration camp that is the Bonnaroo Music Festival at the Rude at Bonnaroo blog. Stay here for the bloggy stylings of John King 'till Monday.
Check out the Rude Pundit's hellish journey through the concentration camp that is the Bonnaroo Music Festival at the Rude at Bonnaroo blog. Stay here for the bloggy stylings of John King 'till Monday.
Dennis Miller: Shit-Tossing Monkey of Cultural Detritus
(By pinch blogger John King)
Listening to Dennis Miller is a lot like [unfunny reference four people get, perhaps mentioning Spiro Agnew, John Sununu, or Keith Richards] at a [moderately related and/or comical scenario, possibly mentioning a pie-eating contest with Carol Channing, Bob Barker, or Telly Savalas]. I'm telling you, he's like [unfunny reference four people get, possibly mentioning Joan Crawford, Kate Chopin, or Henry Kissinger] at a [moderately related and/or comical scenario, possibly mentioning a Klan rally, Star Wars convention, or Wally Lamb booksigning].
You get the idea.
People on the left sometimes bemoan the loss of Dennis Miller, remembering some bygone version of him that was once rebellious and funny, questioning authority -- a precursor to your modern day Jon Stewart, if you will, skewering Reagan and Bush on Saturday Night Live's "Weekend Update," blah blah fuckin' blah. Yes, they mourn quietly -- there's not much left to say once someone is lost -- as this modern version of Dennis Miller goes on, a pale shadow, a right-wing bootlick, a parrot of neocon talking points, all couched in his mamby-pamby, oh-shit-the-brown-people-gonna-get-me, post-9/11 admission of fear, and talking right-wing smack for Bill O'Reilly, who (yep, stealing the joke) really should be sodomized with a microphone. Fucking jackass.
But y'know, kudos to the guy for finding a job post-SNL, because there's a lot of former SNL castmembers who ain't doing shit these days. Even A. Whitney Brown has trouble finding and keeping work. So where can a guy make a buck when his biggest career move since SNL was Bordello of Blood? Hey, there are plenty of rebels on the left...but there's a dearth of creativity and hilarity in neocon political punditry, post-9/11. Enter Dennis Miller.
Is this not transparent? Should we be at all surprised? Did you not see this coming? He was bright, he was insightful, he was ascerbic, but he wasn't alone or even a standout on the left. He was just Dennis Miller, another rebel in the rabble.
But on the right...this dumbass is an erudite motherfucker, heads above any other entertainers the right can claim. So Bill O'Reilly co-opted him.
Here's Miller, bag of douche that he is, on "The O'Reilly Factor," June 6, 2007:
"To me the left is like Margaret Dumond, the old Groucho Marx films used to be, vis-à-vis terrorism? It's like, 'Oh, I never!' You know, and at some point we got to go out and we've just got to engage these people. And we have to — it's like 'Cool Hand Luke.' Somebody's got to force their will on the other person. They've got to get their mind through it."
Mind you, if the left is Margaret Dumond, is Miller implying the right is like the Marx Brothers? Taking that a bit further, didn't Duck Soup satirize fascism, and didn't Dumond play a character who was seduced by Rufus T. Firefly, who later declared war for comical reasons? Ah, the parallels, the easy parallels, and the mayhem, the hijinks, the mirror scene, wakawakawaka. Whither thee, Zeppo?
Ah, but sensing the clunkitude of the Marx Brothers comparison, Miller switches gears before anyone calls him on his shit (not that anyone would on Fox "News"), and jumps to a Cool Hand Luke reference -- you know, the Paul Newman film in which George Kennedy nearly ejaculates in his pants while watching a woman wash her car. Take it off, boss?
And fuck, even that reference contradicts Miller's point, because Cool Hand Luke ends not with Newman's character succumbing to the will of his oppressors, but smiling as they drove him away, all bloody and fucked up, but smiling. Motherfucker never caved to fear and control. Unlike, y'know, Dennis Miller.
Then, dumbshit goes on:
"To me, Gitmo is like Vegas. What happens in Gitmo should stay in Gitmo. You know? I mean, there are simple things that we should know in this war."
WTF? Doesn't this guy pretty much defy scrutiny because his ignorance is self-evident? Can I do something else with my day now besides listen to this fucker? No, wait:
"Here's my feeling on these interrogation techniques. If you know that somebody knows something about something — and they always tell you it never happens. But I saw Tenet on your show, said it happens. Said they give information.
"If you don't waterboard him, to me that's evil. If you know this guy knows something about innocents being killed within the next couple of days and you don't do that, that seems evil to me."
So if you torture them, it's evil, but if you don't torture them, it's...evil-er? What fucking Orwellian shit is this?
Miller's clunky quips of faux intelligence barely made me chuckle when I was 14, and they sure as shit don't now, especially because they're formulaic, panicked, and barely stand up under the slightest scrutiny. Shit, anybody can fake cultural literacy with a few minutes spent on the Internet or reading tabloids or watching old movies, and anyone can draw nonsensical, unfunny comparisons using names and titles conjured at random.
Hell, put a monkey in a room with the walls covered in photos of famous people, and the monkey's bound to throw his shit and hit two faces -- say, Walter Mondale and Cheech Marin. It doesn't make the fuckin' monkey some kind of genius laugh riot. A lot like the aforementioned monkey of yore, he's just throwing shit.
(By pinch blogger John King)
Listening to Dennis Miller is a lot like [unfunny reference four people get, perhaps mentioning Spiro Agnew, John Sununu, or Keith Richards] at a [moderately related and/or comical scenario, possibly mentioning a pie-eating contest with Carol Channing, Bob Barker, or Telly Savalas]. I'm telling you, he's like [unfunny reference four people get, possibly mentioning Joan Crawford, Kate Chopin, or Henry Kissinger] at a [moderately related and/or comical scenario, possibly mentioning a Klan rally, Star Wars convention, or Wally Lamb booksigning].
You get the idea.
People on the left sometimes bemoan the loss of Dennis Miller, remembering some bygone version of him that was once rebellious and funny, questioning authority -- a precursor to your modern day Jon Stewart, if you will, skewering Reagan and Bush on Saturday Night Live's "Weekend Update," blah blah fuckin' blah. Yes, they mourn quietly -- there's not much left to say once someone is lost -- as this modern version of Dennis Miller goes on, a pale shadow, a right-wing bootlick, a parrot of neocon talking points, all couched in his mamby-pamby, oh-shit-the-brown-people-gonna-get-me, post-9/11 admission of fear, and talking right-wing smack for Bill O'Reilly, who (yep, stealing the joke) really should be sodomized with a microphone. Fucking jackass.
But y'know, kudos to the guy for finding a job post-SNL, because there's a lot of former SNL castmembers who ain't doing shit these days. Even A. Whitney Brown has trouble finding and keeping work. So where can a guy make a buck when his biggest career move since SNL was Bordello of Blood? Hey, there are plenty of rebels on the left...but there's a dearth of creativity and hilarity in neocon political punditry, post-9/11. Enter Dennis Miller.
Is this not transparent? Should we be at all surprised? Did you not see this coming? He was bright, he was insightful, he was ascerbic, but he wasn't alone or even a standout on the left. He was just Dennis Miller, another rebel in the rabble.
But on the right...this dumbass is an erudite motherfucker, heads above any other entertainers the right can claim. So Bill O'Reilly co-opted him.
Here's Miller, bag of douche that he is, on "The O'Reilly Factor," June 6, 2007:
"To me the left is like Margaret Dumond, the old Groucho Marx films used to be, vis-à-vis terrorism? It's like, 'Oh, I never!' You know, and at some point we got to go out and we've just got to engage these people. And we have to — it's like 'Cool Hand Luke.' Somebody's got to force their will on the other person. They've got to get their mind through it."
Mind you, if the left is Margaret Dumond, is Miller implying the right is like the Marx Brothers? Taking that a bit further, didn't Duck Soup satirize fascism, and didn't Dumond play a character who was seduced by Rufus T. Firefly, who later declared war for comical reasons? Ah, the parallels, the easy parallels, and the mayhem, the hijinks, the mirror scene, wakawakawaka. Whither thee, Zeppo?
Ah, but sensing the clunkitude of the Marx Brothers comparison, Miller switches gears before anyone calls him on his shit (not that anyone would on Fox "News"), and jumps to a Cool Hand Luke reference -- you know, the Paul Newman film in which George Kennedy nearly ejaculates in his pants while watching a woman wash her car. Take it off, boss?
And fuck, even that reference contradicts Miller's point, because Cool Hand Luke ends not with Newman's character succumbing to the will of his oppressors, but smiling as they drove him away, all bloody and fucked up, but smiling. Motherfucker never caved to fear and control. Unlike, y'know, Dennis Miller.
Then, dumbshit goes on:
"To me, Gitmo is like Vegas. What happens in Gitmo should stay in Gitmo. You know? I mean, there are simple things that we should know in this war."
WTF? Doesn't this guy pretty much defy scrutiny because his ignorance is self-evident? Can I do something else with my day now besides listen to this fucker? No, wait:
"Here's my feeling on these interrogation techniques. If you know that somebody knows something about something — and they always tell you it never happens. But I saw Tenet on your show, said it happens. Said they give information.
"If you don't waterboard him, to me that's evil. If you know this guy knows something about innocents being killed within the next couple of days and you don't do that, that seems evil to me."
So if you torture them, it's evil, but if you don't torture them, it's...evil-er? What fucking Orwellian shit is this?
Miller's clunky quips of faux intelligence barely made me chuckle when I was 14, and they sure as shit don't now, especially because they're formulaic, panicked, and barely stand up under the slightest scrutiny. Shit, anybody can fake cultural literacy with a few minutes spent on the Internet or reading tabloids or watching old movies, and anyone can draw nonsensical, unfunny comparisons using names and titles conjured at random.
Hell, put a monkey in a room with the walls covered in photos of famous people, and the monkey's bound to throw his shit and hit two faces -- say, Walter Mondale and Cheech Marin. It doesn't make the fuckin' monkey some kind of genius laugh riot. A lot like the aforementioned monkey of yore, he's just throwing shit.
Photos That Make the Rude Pundit Want to Snort Coke Off a Dead Man's Balls:
Why is it that we constantly have to be shown that Bush reads? Besides, just 'cause he's lookin' at words doesn 't mean that he's reading. If a baboon were holding this report, we wouldn't assume the baboon is giving it serious consideration. The baboon probably would do the same thing Bush did with it: put it in his mouth and then scratch his ass with it.
Why is it that we constantly have to be shown that Bush reads? Besides, just 'cause he's lookin' at words doesn 't mean that he's reading. If a baboon were holding this report, we wouldn't assume the baboon is giving it serious consideration. The baboon probably would do the same thing Bush did with it: put it in his mouth and then scratch his ass with it.
To the Festival, Onward and Dirtward:
The Rude Pundit arrives in Manchester, Tennessee today to commune with dirty fucking hippies and watch the Roots, as well as perform some rudeness and teach others how to be rude. A splendid time is guaranteed for all. He will attempt to post while there, as well as keep another blog, Rude at Bonnaroo, to record his interactions, interviews, and 'shroom-inspired observations.
So while he's putting up his tent and listening to the guy who's already playing his goddamn bongo, you will be entertained and delighted by the ramblings of John King, pinch rude-ing for a couple of days.
The wi-fi is strong here, so more, perhaps, later.
The Rude Pundit arrives in Manchester, Tennessee today to commune with dirty fucking hippies and watch the Roots, as well as perform some rudeness and teach others how to be rude. A splendid time is guaranteed for all. He will attempt to post while there, as well as keep another blog, Rude at Bonnaroo, to record his interactions, interviews, and 'shroom-inspired observations.
So while he's putting up his tent and listening to the guy who's already playing his goddamn bongo, you will be entertained and delighted by the ramblings of John King, pinch rude-ing for a couple of days.
The wi-fi is strong here, so more, perhaps, later.
The Rude Pundit to Perform at the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival (Bumped):
This just in: The Rude Pundit will perform at the Academy Tent at 8:30 p.m. on Friday, June 15 at the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival in Manchester, TN. It'll be called, through no input on the part of the Rude Pundit, "Late Night at the Academy," which calls to mind Catholic school girls, bobby socks, and spanking.
He'll be competing with Tool. Tool will be louder. But not by much. And do they have a blow-up doll with Ann Coulter's face glued to it?
Also, a reminder: the Rude Pundit with his director, Mark H. Creter, will be holding guerilla theatre workshops on Friday-Sunday mornings at 10:30 in the Academy Tent, to be followed by a performance by the workshop group.
If you're a rude reader and are gonna be at Bonnaroo, drop the Rude Pundit a message. Maybe we'll try a meeting type thing-deal. Or we'll just shoot tequila together.
This just in: The Rude Pundit will perform at the Academy Tent at 8:30 p.m. on Friday, June 15 at the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival in Manchester, TN. It'll be called, through no input on the part of the Rude Pundit, "Late Night at the Academy," which calls to mind Catholic school girls, bobby socks, and spanking.
He'll be competing with Tool. Tool will be louder. But not by much. And do they have a blow-up doll with Ann Coulter's face glued to it?
Also, a reminder: the Rude Pundit with his director, Mark H. Creter, will be holding guerilla theatre workshops on Friday-Sunday mornings at 10:30 in the Academy Tent, to be followed by a performance by the workshop group.
If you're a rude reader and are gonna be at Bonnaroo, drop the Rude Pundit a message. Maybe we'll try a meeting type thing-deal. Or we'll just shoot tequila together.
In Brief: The Al-Marri Decision Tells Bush To Show His Dick:
Here's one of those things that the Rude Pundit can't wrap his head around: say you're a guy at a small, friendly gay bar, say Mona's in Fort Lauderdale, one that's got a cozy, Cheers-like quality to it, except if, you know, Sam was bangin' Woody in his office. And there's this other dude, call him "Norm," to go with the whole analogy. Now, Norm has told everyone that he's got a monster cock. The kind of cock that'd make a stallion say, "Not bad, not bad at all." Thing is, there's a whole lot of guys in the bar who, while perhaps doubting, perhaps believing Norm, are willing to give Norm the benefit of the doubt. Hey, dude wants to say he's got a big cock, fine - it ain't like he's fucking your ass. But at some point, someone's going to say to Norm, "Okay, buddy, it's time. Take that bad boy out and blow a load in my face." Norm's gotta put up or shut up. Whether or not Norm's actually got the ginormous meat stick ain't the point. It's that finally, at the end of the day, the truth will be revealed, and Norm can either go back to his usual seat, confident in the knowledge that his dick's like a Louisville slugger for midgets, or it's time for him to slink off to another bar, maybe Bill's Filling Station.
What the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals said to the Bush administration yesterday was "Drop your drawers, motherfuckers." In ruling that mullet-rific detainee Ali al-Marri had to be charged with something or let go, the majority was letting the White House know that judicial process and adherence to the Constitution cannot be sustained on rumor, innuendo, and "because I say so."
Here's the part that just boggles the Rude Pundit: the Fifth Amendment's pretty fuckin' clear on this whole issue of detaining someone who is legally in the United States: "No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger." Yet Judge Henry Hudson, a Bush appointee, seemed to think that this just didn't matter in his dissent. And neither, of course, does the Bush administration, which sees the Constitution as just another asshole who'd dare question how big they say their cock is.
Here's one of those things that the Rude Pundit can't wrap his head around: say you're a guy at a small, friendly gay bar, say Mona's in Fort Lauderdale, one that's got a cozy, Cheers-like quality to it, except if, you know, Sam was bangin' Woody in his office. And there's this other dude, call him "Norm," to go with the whole analogy. Now, Norm has told everyone that he's got a monster cock. The kind of cock that'd make a stallion say, "Not bad, not bad at all." Thing is, there's a whole lot of guys in the bar who, while perhaps doubting, perhaps believing Norm, are willing to give Norm the benefit of the doubt. Hey, dude wants to say he's got a big cock, fine - it ain't like he's fucking your ass. But at some point, someone's going to say to Norm, "Okay, buddy, it's time. Take that bad boy out and blow a load in my face." Norm's gotta put up or shut up. Whether or not Norm's actually got the ginormous meat stick ain't the point. It's that finally, at the end of the day, the truth will be revealed, and Norm can either go back to his usual seat, confident in the knowledge that his dick's like a Louisville slugger for midgets, or it's time for him to slink off to another bar, maybe Bill's Filling Station.
What the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals said to the Bush administration yesterday was "Drop your drawers, motherfuckers." In ruling that mullet-rific detainee Ali al-Marri had to be charged with something or let go, the majority was letting the White House know that judicial process and adherence to the Constitution cannot be sustained on rumor, innuendo, and "because I say so."
Here's the part that just boggles the Rude Pundit: the Fifth Amendment's pretty fuckin' clear on this whole issue of detaining someone who is legally in the United States: "No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger." Yet Judge Henry Hudson, a Bush appointee, seemed to think that this just didn't matter in his dissent. And neither, of course, does the Bush administration, which sees the Constitution as just another asshole who'd dare question how big they say their cock is.
Regarding The Sopranos and American Evil:
The uproar over the final episode of The Sopranos is on that idiotic side of hilarious, the place where you look around at all the goobs and no-brain fucks and wonder why you all get to say you're members of the same species. The Rude Pundit's one-line review of it: a brilliant "Fuck you, America." Don't worry - this ain't gonna be some jerk-off fanboy parsing of every goddamn clue and every character's final scenes, looking for where a movie might be made. Series creator David Chase would think you're a tool for doing that, anyway.
Here's one of the things we got: A.J., Tony Soprano's son, has been a whiny little bitch since his girlfriend dumped him, and he had all of a sudden discovered there's bad shit going on in the world, even attempting suicide over it all. After a period of getting into watching Frontline and checking out political websites, the hot teenage girl he's been hanging out with turns him on to Bob Dylan while sitting in his SUV. The SUV catches fire as he's about to bang the girl, with Dylan singing in the background. They escape, the SUV blows up, Dylan melts, and the explosion and thrill of the violence is just really cool to A.J. He announces he wants to join the military to go to Afghanistan, become an Arabic translator, and fight terrorists. The most telling part of his conversation with his parents about it is they don't want A.J. to go fight in Iraq, as if it's understood without saying so that that war is a useless waste of life. At the end of the talk, Carmela and Tony tell A.J. that they've gotten him a job working on a movie about a detective who has to solve virtual murders inside the Internet. And A.J., distracted from his noble calling by the stupidity of the movie business, takes the job, and he ends up laughing at YouTube videos with the girl, driving around in a studio-owned BMW, the American dream, man.
So why should you give a shit, you who may not have watched The Sopranos all these years? The other things that the Rude Pundit looked at this weekend include the Council of Europe Report on CIA Secret Prisons in Eastern European countries, where you got to learn that America kept men who had never been convicted of or officially charged with any crimes in squalid cells, nude, with freezing cold or burning hot air blown in, with loudspeakers that would blare the sounds of screaming women and children as punishment if the men didn't show their hands fast enough when the guards demanded to know if they were alive, where they were hung on the wall by shackles and forced into stress positions. No, no, dear right wingers, they were not being skinned alive or boiled in oil, but is that really the standard by which we want to measure our humanity?
And the Rude Pundit also read the report by several human rights groups about the 39 "ghost detainees" kept by the United States in the secret prisons. Here's the Rude Pundit's favorite little bit: "In September 2002, Yusuf al-Khalid (then nine years old) and Abed al-Khalid (then seven years old) were reportedly apprehended by Pakistani security forces during an attempted capture of their father, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed...After Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s arrest in March 2003, Yusuf and Abed Al Khalid were reportedly transferred out of Pakistan in U.S. custody. The children were allegedly being sent for questioning about their father’s activities and to be used by the United States as leverage to force their father to co-operate with the United States." But don't worry. An American official says, "We are handling them with kid gloves. After all, they are only little children...but we need to know as much about their father's recent activities as possible. We have child psychologists on hand at all times and they are given the best of care."
The reason that people are so upset about the finale of The Sopranos is that the show just ends in a quick blackout as Tony's family gathers for dinner in an all-American diner, ominous people walking by, constant threats in the air, the aura of impending doom never abating. And then that's it. Silence. Sure, we could argue about whether or not what it "really" means is that Tony was shot dead. But that doesn't matter. And it misses the point.
The Fuck-You of the episode is to deny you catharsis. You want it all tidy, all the moralistic good and bad so neatly bundled into a final grand gesture, Tony dead, maybe his family dead, nice Shakespearean and unified. You wanted blood. But what the series told us is that, at the end of the day, we are all tainted by the immorality we're willing to endure, even "benefit" from, and that, no matter what the culture around us tries to force on us, most of the time we simply go on living with the evil that we do or are willing to overlook. The war won't just "end." It'll be this thing that haunts us, this thing that reconfigures how we exist in the world, re-creates what we believed to be our identity and morality. And, no, this ain't about some goddamn TV show or books or movies that explore the same thing.
A writer once posed this question to a young Rude Pundit, after reading an early draft of one of his plays: "Do you believe that evil people are always punished?" That was when the Rude Pundit still held out the possibility of that kind of retribution. But he had to admit to the old writer: no, no, so often evil just maunders on, even after we've stopped looking.
The uproar over the final episode of The Sopranos is on that idiotic side of hilarious, the place where you look around at all the goobs and no-brain fucks and wonder why you all get to say you're members of the same species. The Rude Pundit's one-line review of it: a brilliant "Fuck you, America." Don't worry - this ain't gonna be some jerk-off fanboy parsing of every goddamn clue and every character's final scenes, looking for where a movie might be made. Series creator David Chase would think you're a tool for doing that, anyway.
Here's one of the things we got: A.J., Tony Soprano's son, has been a whiny little bitch since his girlfriend dumped him, and he had all of a sudden discovered there's bad shit going on in the world, even attempting suicide over it all. After a period of getting into watching Frontline and checking out political websites, the hot teenage girl he's been hanging out with turns him on to Bob Dylan while sitting in his SUV. The SUV catches fire as he's about to bang the girl, with Dylan singing in the background. They escape, the SUV blows up, Dylan melts, and the explosion and thrill of the violence is just really cool to A.J. He announces he wants to join the military to go to Afghanistan, become an Arabic translator, and fight terrorists. The most telling part of his conversation with his parents about it is they don't want A.J. to go fight in Iraq, as if it's understood without saying so that that war is a useless waste of life. At the end of the talk, Carmela and Tony tell A.J. that they've gotten him a job working on a movie about a detective who has to solve virtual murders inside the Internet. And A.J., distracted from his noble calling by the stupidity of the movie business, takes the job, and he ends up laughing at YouTube videos with the girl, driving around in a studio-owned BMW, the American dream, man.
So why should you give a shit, you who may not have watched The Sopranos all these years? The other things that the Rude Pundit looked at this weekend include the Council of Europe Report on CIA Secret Prisons in Eastern European countries, where you got to learn that America kept men who had never been convicted of or officially charged with any crimes in squalid cells, nude, with freezing cold or burning hot air blown in, with loudspeakers that would blare the sounds of screaming women and children as punishment if the men didn't show their hands fast enough when the guards demanded to know if they were alive, where they were hung on the wall by shackles and forced into stress positions. No, no, dear right wingers, they were not being skinned alive or boiled in oil, but is that really the standard by which we want to measure our humanity?
And the Rude Pundit also read the report by several human rights groups about the 39 "ghost detainees" kept by the United States in the secret prisons. Here's the Rude Pundit's favorite little bit: "In September 2002, Yusuf al-Khalid (then nine years old) and Abed al-Khalid (then seven years old) were reportedly apprehended by Pakistani security forces during an attempted capture of their father, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed...After Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s arrest in March 2003, Yusuf and Abed Al Khalid were reportedly transferred out of Pakistan in U.S. custody. The children were allegedly being sent for questioning about their father’s activities and to be used by the United States as leverage to force their father to co-operate with the United States." But don't worry. An American official says, "We are handling them with kid gloves. After all, they are only little children...but we need to know as much about their father's recent activities as possible. We have child psychologists on hand at all times and they are given the best of care."
The reason that people are so upset about the finale of The Sopranos is that the show just ends in a quick blackout as Tony's family gathers for dinner in an all-American diner, ominous people walking by, constant threats in the air, the aura of impending doom never abating. And then that's it. Silence. Sure, we could argue about whether or not what it "really" means is that Tony was shot dead. But that doesn't matter. And it misses the point.
The Fuck-You of the episode is to deny you catharsis. You want it all tidy, all the moralistic good and bad so neatly bundled into a final grand gesture, Tony dead, maybe his family dead, nice Shakespearean and unified. You wanted blood. But what the series told us is that, at the end of the day, we are all tainted by the immorality we're willing to endure, even "benefit" from, and that, no matter what the culture around us tries to force on us, most of the time we simply go on living with the evil that we do or are willing to overlook. The war won't just "end." It'll be this thing that haunts us, this thing that reconfigures how we exist in the world, re-creates what we believed to be our identity and morality. And, no, this ain't about some goddamn TV show or books or movies that explore the same thing.
A writer once posed this question to a young Rude Pundit, after reading an early draft of one of his plays: "Do you believe that evil people are always punished?" That was when the Rude Pundit still held out the possibility of that kind of retribution. But he had to admit to the old writer: no, no, so often evil just maunders on, even after we've stopped looking.
The Agony of the Political Blogger Who Wishes to Remain Pure Amidst a Pop Culture Tsunami:
So...badly...want...to say...something...about Paris Hilton...Must...resist...clarion call...Just...leave it...to Brendon...
So...badly...want...to say...something...about Paris Hilton...Must...resist...clarion call...Just...leave it...to Brendon...
Thomas Sowell: Just Another Backwards-Ass Cracker:
Let us say, and why not, that you're a white guy. And you've penned an editorial where you rant against how depraved the world has become since the 1960s, mocking the very notions of liberation and social upheaval. Now let's say you have a black friend read it. Do you think there's a chance that that black friend is gonna think you've gone all Trent Lott on him? Would it be wrong for him to think that you're essentially writing in your little editorial, "Let's go back to that time when the Negroes who didn't know their place got taught where the back of the bus was"? Would it be wrong for you to be called "racist" by implication?
What's just rankly pathetic about Thomas Sowell's column this week is that it was written by a black man, subconsciously plumbing depths of self-loathing that usually end up in a years-long alcohol and coke binge or in a repression that eventually turns one into a serial killer. Sowell writes, "Some of the painful consequences of various 'liberations' that began in the 1960s have included the disintegration of families, skyrocketing crime rates, falling test scores in school, and record-breaking rates of teenage suicide." By about fifth grade, every child in this country knows that the "liberations" of the 1960s include the civil rights movement, you know, Martin Luther King, voting rights, shit like that. But Sowell doesn't bring this up, for to do so would be to validate, in a major way, the fact that liberals might just have the good of the majority of people at heart.
No, no, Sowell, who, once again, it must be pointed out, is black, just goes on the offensive against the 1960s, engaging in a one-man jihad, if you will: "Murder rates, for example, were much lower during the Great Depression of the 1930s and during World War II than they became after various 'liberating' changes in the 1960s." Leaving aside the obvious, which is that to say that murders declined during World War II because so many soldiers were fucking overseas, leaving aside things like the post-war jump in population, and leaving aside the facts that reporting of crimes, inclusion of a broader swath of society in crime stats, and statistical methodologies all underwent a shift in the 1950s and 1960s, look at the delusional nature of the statement: in other words, because women and African Americans had greater guarantees of rights, more people got murdered.
What else have the evil 1960s wrought, according to Sowell, who is, as mentioned, a black man? He writes, "A long downward trend in teenage pregnancy and venereal diseases sharply reversed during the 1960s, starting a new trend of escalating teenage pregnancy and venereal diseases, climaxed later by the AIDS epidemic." Goddamn, Sowell would have been right there in Chicago in 1968, waving his UC economics doctorate, smashing hippie heads. Oh, wait, no, he wouldn't have. Because if the Chicago cops had seen a black man threatening people with a billy club, they'd've beaten the shit out of him, maybe even broken Sowell's glasses.
Sowell doesn't dare try to discuss what actually caused any of this or why the revolutions of the 1960s occurred. That would have to get into the racist, misogynistic, homophobic, sexually repressive underpinnings of American society. Instead, Sowell tries to rewrite history: "For example, the quest for those elusive 'root causes' of crime, so dear to the political left, has been put aside in favor of locking up more criminals -- and the crime rate has declined." Well, yeah, it declined in the 1990s when the economy was strong because a smoothly whirring economy actually addresses the root causes. And crime's kinda been going up the last coupla years when we haven't been locking up less people.
What Sowell is really getting at, though, seems to be that he's worried about his stuff, his shit, his property: "The left has never understood why property rights are a big deal, except to fat cats who own a lot of property. Through legislation and judicial rulings, property rights have been eroded with rent control laws, expansive concepts of eminent domain, and all sorts of environmental restrictions." Again, one might think that changes in laws that allowed minorities more access to ownership in America might seem to bespeak a respect for "property rights," but that's not what Sowell is concerned with. "Politicians in cities around the country violate property rights regularly," he says, "by seizing homes in working-class neighborhoods and demolishing whole sectors of the city, in order to turn the land over to people who will build shopping malls, gambling casinos, and other things that will pay more taxes than the homeowners are paying."
And that statement should make you understand that Sowell has no fucking clue what he's scribbling about. Apparently because the environmental movement, just another inconvenience for Sowell, wanted toxic waste shitholes cleaned in the 1970s, Donald Trump can wreck Grandma's house to build a giant gold building that looks like his cock. And it's all Abbie Hoffman's fault. Or Betty Friedan's. Or Malcolm X's.
Sowell's too busy mocking liberals to bother with logic, calling us "adolescents" who don't really understand shit like the grown-ups, like Sowell, the black man who wishes things would go back to how they were prior to the "post-1960s social disasters." When Thomas Sowell would be lucky if three people on a street corner listened to him go on about how good he and all the people in his neighborhood have it.
Let us say, and why not, that you're a white guy. And you've penned an editorial where you rant against how depraved the world has become since the 1960s, mocking the very notions of liberation and social upheaval. Now let's say you have a black friend read it. Do you think there's a chance that that black friend is gonna think you've gone all Trent Lott on him? Would it be wrong for him to think that you're essentially writing in your little editorial, "Let's go back to that time when the Negroes who didn't know their place got taught where the back of the bus was"? Would it be wrong for you to be called "racist" by implication?
What's just rankly pathetic about Thomas Sowell's column this week is that it was written by a black man, subconsciously plumbing depths of self-loathing that usually end up in a years-long alcohol and coke binge or in a repression that eventually turns one into a serial killer. Sowell writes, "Some of the painful consequences of various 'liberations' that began in the 1960s have included the disintegration of families, skyrocketing crime rates, falling test scores in school, and record-breaking rates of teenage suicide." By about fifth grade, every child in this country knows that the "liberations" of the 1960s include the civil rights movement, you know, Martin Luther King, voting rights, shit like that. But Sowell doesn't bring this up, for to do so would be to validate, in a major way, the fact that liberals might just have the good of the majority of people at heart.
No, no, Sowell, who, once again, it must be pointed out, is black, just goes on the offensive against the 1960s, engaging in a one-man jihad, if you will: "Murder rates, for example, were much lower during the Great Depression of the 1930s and during World War II than they became after various 'liberating' changes in the 1960s." Leaving aside the obvious, which is that to say that murders declined during World War II because so many soldiers were fucking overseas, leaving aside things like the post-war jump in population, and leaving aside the facts that reporting of crimes, inclusion of a broader swath of society in crime stats, and statistical methodologies all underwent a shift in the 1950s and 1960s, look at the delusional nature of the statement: in other words, because women and African Americans had greater guarantees of rights, more people got murdered.
What else have the evil 1960s wrought, according to Sowell, who is, as mentioned, a black man? He writes, "A long downward trend in teenage pregnancy and venereal diseases sharply reversed during the 1960s, starting a new trend of escalating teenage pregnancy and venereal diseases, climaxed later by the AIDS epidemic." Goddamn, Sowell would have been right there in Chicago in 1968, waving his UC economics doctorate, smashing hippie heads. Oh, wait, no, he wouldn't have. Because if the Chicago cops had seen a black man threatening people with a billy club, they'd've beaten the shit out of him, maybe even broken Sowell's glasses.
Sowell doesn't dare try to discuss what actually caused any of this or why the revolutions of the 1960s occurred. That would have to get into the racist, misogynistic, homophobic, sexually repressive underpinnings of American society. Instead, Sowell tries to rewrite history: "For example, the quest for those elusive 'root causes' of crime, so dear to the political left, has been put aside in favor of locking up more criminals -- and the crime rate has declined." Well, yeah, it declined in the 1990s when the economy was strong because a smoothly whirring economy actually addresses the root causes. And crime's kinda been going up the last coupla years when we haven't been locking up less people.
What Sowell is really getting at, though, seems to be that he's worried about his stuff, his shit, his property: "The left has never understood why property rights are a big deal, except to fat cats who own a lot of property. Through legislation and judicial rulings, property rights have been eroded with rent control laws, expansive concepts of eminent domain, and all sorts of environmental restrictions." Again, one might think that changes in laws that allowed minorities more access to ownership in America might seem to bespeak a respect for "property rights," but that's not what Sowell is concerned with. "Politicians in cities around the country violate property rights regularly," he says, "by seizing homes in working-class neighborhoods and demolishing whole sectors of the city, in order to turn the land over to people who will build shopping malls, gambling casinos, and other things that will pay more taxes than the homeowners are paying."
And that statement should make you understand that Sowell has no fucking clue what he's scribbling about. Apparently because the environmental movement, just another inconvenience for Sowell, wanted toxic waste shitholes cleaned in the 1970s, Donald Trump can wreck Grandma's house to build a giant gold building that looks like his cock. And it's all Abbie Hoffman's fault. Or Betty Friedan's. Or Malcolm X's.
Sowell's too busy mocking liberals to bother with logic, calling us "adolescents" who don't really understand shit like the grown-ups, like Sowell, the black man who wishes things would go back to how they were prior to the "post-1960s social disasters." When Thomas Sowell would be lucky if three people on a street corner listened to him go on about how good he and all the people in his neighborhood have it.
Why Bill O'Reilly Ought To Be Sodomized With a Stripper Pole, Part 2:
Surely, yes, there are weightier matters in this world than just about anything Bill O'Reilly expels from his body. There's the bizarro statement of the President that we're not at war with Russia (which, hopefully, is not news to anyone, although it could have been worse - Bush could then just listed all the countries we're not at war with); there's the sentencing of Scooter Libby, all ready for his new nickname: Scrotum Licky; there's Lindsay Graham's bitchy little hissy fit on the floor of the Senate because Barack Obama dared to offer an amendment to the increasingly subhuman and more or less dead immigration bill; and, of course, of course, there's the G8 Summit and, you know, the war. But let us pause in the muck and mire for a moment, for a palate cleanser, if you will.
For, indeed, if there's one thing Fox "news" host and a man who once mistook a guy in Spongebob suit for a loofah, Bill O'Reilly, loves more than the pungent odor of his own armpits moist with outrage and bluster, it's strippers. One can be sure that, every few months, strippers will somehow make it onto his show. Sure, sure, sometimes it's in a "newsworthy" story like the Duke lacrosse team not raping a stripper, but often it's just an out-of-nowhere interview that makes one pause to ask, "What the fuck does this have to do with, well, fuck, anything?"
Such a moment occurred on last night's episode of the ongoing soap opera The O'Reilly Factor. There was no apparent reason that O'Reilly should interview just graduated University of Nebraska student Jenny Heineman about her senior thesis other than the fact that Heineman wrote about strippers. And she's a stripper. In Omaha. Which sounds sad, except when you realize that she could be a stripper across the river in Council Bluffs, Iowa.
So O'Reilly had Heineman on his show to ask her such scintillating questions as, "What is it that makes it fun for you?" and saying things like, "Come on. Be honest. You like it," which is roughly the same conversation that O'Reilly had with a Des Moines hooker while she was blowing him behind the Cow's Patty bar, with the hooker not able to answer because she was concentrating on putting O'Reilly's tiny, demi-hard wiggle worm in her mouth.
And the whole "interview" was an opportunity for O'Reilly's producers to show, repeatedly, file footage of half-dressed dancing women pouting in a mirror and parading on stage. Yet O'Reilly still found it in him to lecture Heineman: "You're getting naked in front of guys. That's not what most job descriptions are. But anyway, congratulations on graduating," followed by "And we appreciate you coming on," which is exactly what O'Reilly told that Des Moines prostitute when he finally dribbled a bit of seed in her hair.
Heineman got a B for her thesis. And a helluva lot of publicity from news producers looking for something to allow them to avoid talking about the real, depressing shit. Just like, well, you know, certain bloggers in need of a brain washing.
Surely, yes, there are weightier matters in this world than just about anything Bill O'Reilly expels from his body. There's the bizarro statement of the President that we're not at war with Russia (which, hopefully, is not news to anyone, although it could have been worse - Bush could then just listed all the countries we're not at war with); there's the sentencing of Scooter Libby, all ready for his new nickname: Scrotum Licky; there's Lindsay Graham's bitchy little hissy fit on the floor of the Senate because Barack Obama dared to offer an amendment to the increasingly subhuman and more or less dead immigration bill; and, of course, of course, there's the G8 Summit and, you know, the war. But let us pause in the muck and mire for a moment, for a palate cleanser, if you will.
For, indeed, if there's one thing Fox "news" host and a man who once mistook a guy in Spongebob suit for a loofah, Bill O'Reilly, loves more than the pungent odor of his own armpits moist with outrage and bluster, it's strippers. One can be sure that, every few months, strippers will somehow make it onto his show. Sure, sure, sometimes it's in a "newsworthy" story like the Duke lacrosse team not raping a stripper, but often it's just an out-of-nowhere interview that makes one pause to ask, "What the fuck does this have to do with, well, fuck, anything?"
Such a moment occurred on last night's episode of the ongoing soap opera The O'Reilly Factor. There was no apparent reason that O'Reilly should interview just graduated University of Nebraska student Jenny Heineman about her senior thesis other than the fact that Heineman wrote about strippers. And she's a stripper. In Omaha. Which sounds sad, except when you realize that she could be a stripper across the river in Council Bluffs, Iowa.
So O'Reilly had Heineman on his show to ask her such scintillating questions as, "What is it that makes it fun for you?" and saying things like, "Come on. Be honest. You like it," which is roughly the same conversation that O'Reilly had with a Des Moines hooker while she was blowing him behind the Cow's Patty bar, with the hooker not able to answer because she was concentrating on putting O'Reilly's tiny, demi-hard wiggle worm in her mouth.
And the whole "interview" was an opportunity for O'Reilly's producers to show, repeatedly, file footage of half-dressed dancing women pouting in a mirror and parading on stage. Yet O'Reilly still found it in him to lecture Heineman: "You're getting naked in front of guys. That's not what most job descriptions are. But anyway, congratulations on graduating," followed by "And we appreciate you coming on," which is exactly what O'Reilly told that Des Moines prostitute when he finally dribbled a bit of seed in her hair.
Heineman got a B for her thesis. And a helluva lot of publicity from news producers looking for something to allow them to avoid talking about the real, depressing shit. Just like, well, you know, certain bloggers in need of a brain washing.
Photos That Make the Rude Pundit Want to Down a Handful of Quaaludes with a Budweiser:
Mitt Romney looks like a man who enjoys a double-handed jerk-off. Rudy Giuliani and Sam Brownback look like men who enjoy providing it. And, thus, in a single image, we see the significance of last night's debate.
Clark Kent duties call. More later?
Mitt Romney looks like a man who enjoys a double-handed jerk-off. Rudy Giuliani and Sam Brownback look like men who enjoy providing it. And, thus, in a single image, we see the significance of last night's debate.
Clark Kent duties call. More later?
The Courts to the Bush Administration: "Could You Guys Stop Being Such Dicks?":
When the history of this depraved era is written in years and eras to come, one can look forward to scholarly and popular books, CSPAN-ready conferences and college courses all devoted to answering a single important question: Back at the beginning of the 21st century, was the United States government run by dicks or assholes? Truly, those will be the only choices. It may seem a fine distinction, but actually there's a wide gap, a taint, if you will, between the two.
While this space is far too small to suss out all the differences, let's just put it this way: Saddam Hussein was a dick. The Hutu in Rwanda were assholes. The guy who cuts you off on the road is an asshole. The guy who cuts you off and then deliberately slows down is a dick. Hitler was a dick. Mussolini was an asshole. Khrushchev was a dick. Stalin was an asshole. One might say that a dick is merely an asshole with balls, but, no, for many reasons rhetorically and anatomically, that does not work. Perhaps it's best to put this in crude terms: you can't aim the shit that comes out of your asshole with the pinpoint accuracy a man has when he's pissing. It a matter of context, too. One who might have been considered an asshole at one time can now be fully seen as a dick. Hence the reason we have historians.
When it comes to the Bush administration, the label is shifting and unstable. But yesterday, a couple of decisions by very different courts came squarely down on the "dick" side.
The Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals said the FCC needs to stop being such dicks when it comes to "fleeting" use of spontaneously spoken bad words, like at awards shows or sports events. Ya gotta love any court decision that cites "President Bush’s remark to British Prime Minister Tony Blair that the United Nations needed to 'get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit' and Vice President Cheney’s widely-reported 'Fuck yourself' comment to Senator Patrick Leahy on the floor of the U.S. Senate" as evidence supporting the television networks fighting the FCC. But the gist of the decision is this line, late in its text: "The FCC is free to regulate indecency, but its regulatory powers are bounded by the Constitution." Or, in other words, the Bush administration needs to stop being such dicks.
More importantly, military courts in Guantanamo Bay tossed out cases against two long-term detainees because of the fucktardery of the entire system. Follow the bouncing ball of legal nut-gnarls: the Military Commissions Act of 2006, passed after the Supreme Court called bullshit on the military tribunals in the Hamdan case, says, pretty fuckin' clearly, "A military commission under this chapter shall have jurisdiction to try any offense made punishable by this chapter or the law of war when committed by an alien unlawful enemy combatant before, on, or after September 11, 2001." See, a plain ol' enemy combatant gets Geneva Conventions protections, and the act's clear about the distinction. And how does one determine if a detainee is lawful or not? Why, through another hearing by the "Combatant Status Review Tribunal or another competent tribunal." Problem is, the Bush administration hasn't proved jackshit about the detainees. Problem is, no one's been officially designated as "unlawful." And without that standing, well, shit, the court's got no standing to hear the case. Thus the clusterfuck of justice continues with two military tribunals asking the government if, just for a little a while, they could stop being such dicks and maybe follow even the barest fig leaf of a law.
Of course, these cases may be appealed to the Supreme Court, where, as we are learning, the delicate combination of dicks and assholes enables them to demonstrate how we're all fucked.
When the history of this depraved era is written in years and eras to come, one can look forward to scholarly and popular books, CSPAN-ready conferences and college courses all devoted to answering a single important question: Back at the beginning of the 21st century, was the United States government run by dicks or assholes? Truly, those will be the only choices. It may seem a fine distinction, but actually there's a wide gap, a taint, if you will, between the two.
While this space is far too small to suss out all the differences, let's just put it this way: Saddam Hussein was a dick. The Hutu in Rwanda were assholes. The guy who cuts you off on the road is an asshole. The guy who cuts you off and then deliberately slows down is a dick. Hitler was a dick. Mussolini was an asshole. Khrushchev was a dick. Stalin was an asshole. One might say that a dick is merely an asshole with balls, but, no, for many reasons rhetorically and anatomically, that does not work. Perhaps it's best to put this in crude terms: you can't aim the shit that comes out of your asshole with the pinpoint accuracy a man has when he's pissing. It a matter of context, too. One who might have been considered an asshole at one time can now be fully seen as a dick. Hence the reason we have historians.
When it comes to the Bush administration, the label is shifting and unstable. But yesterday, a couple of decisions by very different courts came squarely down on the "dick" side.
The Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals said the FCC needs to stop being such dicks when it comes to "fleeting" use of spontaneously spoken bad words, like at awards shows or sports events. Ya gotta love any court decision that cites "President Bush’s remark to British Prime Minister Tony Blair that the United Nations needed to 'get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit' and Vice President Cheney’s widely-reported 'Fuck yourself' comment to Senator Patrick Leahy on the floor of the U.S. Senate" as evidence supporting the television networks fighting the FCC. But the gist of the decision is this line, late in its text: "The FCC is free to regulate indecency, but its regulatory powers are bounded by the Constitution." Or, in other words, the Bush administration needs to stop being such dicks.
More importantly, military courts in Guantanamo Bay tossed out cases against two long-term detainees because of the fucktardery of the entire system. Follow the bouncing ball of legal nut-gnarls: the Military Commissions Act of 2006, passed after the Supreme Court called bullshit on the military tribunals in the Hamdan case, says, pretty fuckin' clearly, "A military commission under this chapter shall have jurisdiction to try any offense made punishable by this chapter or the law of war when committed by an alien unlawful enemy combatant before, on, or after September 11, 2001." See, a plain ol' enemy combatant gets Geneva Conventions protections, and the act's clear about the distinction. And how does one determine if a detainee is lawful or not? Why, through another hearing by the "Combatant Status Review Tribunal or another competent tribunal." Problem is, the Bush administration hasn't proved jackshit about the detainees. Problem is, no one's been officially designated as "unlawful." And without that standing, well, shit, the court's got no standing to hear the case. Thus the clusterfuck of justice continues with two military tribunals asking the government if, just for a little a while, they could stop being such dicks and maybe follow even the barest fig leaf of a law.
Of course, these cases may be appealed to the Supreme Court, where, as we are learning, the delicate combination of dicks and assholes enables them to demonstrate how we're all fucked.
When Dick Cheney Visited the Boys at Boys State:
When he entered the space of boys, the gathered children felt the air temperature drop precipitously and each of them shivered in their pubescent balls, not so much from the encroaching cold, but from the approaching presence of unmitigated evil, Baal-like in his power and mastery of the dark arts. The smaller ones wept, the older ones attempted to stand there bravely, but they felt, in their guts, the nauseating desire to cry out, to warn, to run. However, the doors were blocked by armed members of the Secret Service, and, even though the corrupt stench of his slime trail permeated the fibers of their clothes and their very pores, even though his pustulant sight tore wide open the repressed nightmares of their psyches, the male children of Wyoming were forced to listen to Vice President Dick Cheney speak to them at their Boys State Conference.
When Cheney speaks, everything is framed by the demonic circle of events that surrounds him, so that even the most mundane pronouncements sound like threats. The boys gasped in horror, wondering what Cheney expected of them when he said, "Getting involved in public affairs, whether it's local, state, or national, takes hard work, it takes discipline, and occasionally it takes sacrifice." They pissed themselves, thinking of Cheney showing up at their homes when he said, "If you work hard, follow through on your commitments, and show yourself to be honest and trustworthy, people are going to notice and they're going to want associate with you." And, bizarrely, he said that he had to be forced, drafted, detained, if you will, into being a heartbeat away from the Presidency: "Running for my current job as Vice President in 2000 was a notion that came out of the blue, and, obviously, it was somebody else's idea. I was not a volunteer."
Even the hardened patriotic boys of the American Legion-run Boys State had to swallow acrid bile and vomit in order to stand up and ask Dick Cheney questions. And, Christ, those kids were tough, putting reporters to shame, asking things like, "How do you reconcile your administration's stand on gay partnerships with your devotion to your lesbian daughters?" and "How do you think your longstanding personal and financial ties to the oil industry have affected the construction of American energy and defense policies?" and "How many of us are you going to bleed for an aperitif later on?" No, not really, but, goddamn, that would have been cool. But here's what Cheney was asked and how he did not answer:
"Given 40 years experience, what kind of values or philosophy did you develop and operate by that you might share with us?" Deciding to go with a visual, Cheney pulled out the horribly maimed head of an Iraqi woman and proceeded to fuck its eyehole. After a moment or two, a grunt or two, he zipped back up and said, "There's my philosophy. Any questions?" before tossing the head into the audience. Perhaps not unexpectedly, Cheney gave the same answer to "I was wondering what you think a good deed is."
"What was Boys State like when you were our age?" The Vice President talked about the savage orgies they would have while worshiping mad gods, sacrificing the most virginal among them and rubbing themselves to ecstasy with the child's viscera. Kind of like parties at the VP residence in DC.
One especially brave boy actually asked Dick Cheney, "Do you still think that the Iraq war can be won? And do you think we need to institute a draft to get the job done?" Cheney actually responded with a thumbnail version of every talking point the administration has, adding, ominously, "This is a struggle we're going to be involved in certainly as long as I'm alive, and probably as long as you're alive." And then the boy was taken away. Some say they've found pieces of him in Saskatchewan.
When he entered the space of boys, the gathered children felt the air temperature drop precipitously and each of them shivered in their pubescent balls, not so much from the encroaching cold, but from the approaching presence of unmitigated evil, Baal-like in his power and mastery of the dark arts. The smaller ones wept, the older ones attempted to stand there bravely, but they felt, in their guts, the nauseating desire to cry out, to warn, to run. However, the doors were blocked by armed members of the Secret Service, and, even though the corrupt stench of his slime trail permeated the fibers of their clothes and their very pores, even though his pustulant sight tore wide open the repressed nightmares of their psyches, the male children of Wyoming were forced to listen to Vice President Dick Cheney speak to them at their Boys State Conference.
When Cheney speaks, everything is framed by the demonic circle of events that surrounds him, so that even the most mundane pronouncements sound like threats. The boys gasped in horror, wondering what Cheney expected of them when he said, "Getting involved in public affairs, whether it's local, state, or national, takes hard work, it takes discipline, and occasionally it takes sacrifice." They pissed themselves, thinking of Cheney showing up at their homes when he said, "If you work hard, follow through on your commitments, and show yourself to be honest and trustworthy, people are going to notice and they're going to want associate with you." And, bizarrely, he said that he had to be forced, drafted, detained, if you will, into being a heartbeat away from the Presidency: "Running for my current job as Vice President in 2000 was a notion that came out of the blue, and, obviously, it was somebody else's idea. I was not a volunteer."
Even the hardened patriotic boys of the American Legion-run Boys State had to swallow acrid bile and vomit in order to stand up and ask Dick Cheney questions. And, Christ, those kids were tough, putting reporters to shame, asking things like, "How do you reconcile your administration's stand on gay partnerships with your devotion to your lesbian daughters?" and "How do you think your longstanding personal and financial ties to the oil industry have affected the construction of American energy and defense policies?" and "How many of us are you going to bleed for an aperitif later on?" No, not really, but, goddamn, that would have been cool. But here's what Cheney was asked and how he did not answer:
"Given 40 years experience, what kind of values or philosophy did you develop and operate by that you might share with us?" Deciding to go with a visual, Cheney pulled out the horribly maimed head of an Iraqi woman and proceeded to fuck its eyehole. After a moment or two, a grunt or two, he zipped back up and said, "There's my philosophy. Any questions?" before tossing the head into the audience. Perhaps not unexpectedly, Cheney gave the same answer to "I was wondering what you think a good deed is."
"What was Boys State like when you were our age?" The Vice President talked about the savage orgies they would have while worshiping mad gods, sacrificing the most virginal among them and rubbing themselves to ecstasy with the child's viscera. Kind of like parties at the VP residence in DC.
One especially brave boy actually asked Dick Cheney, "Do you still think that the Iraq war can be won? And do you think we need to institute a draft to get the job done?" Cheney actually responded with a thumbnail version of every talking point the administration has, adding, ominously, "This is a struggle we're going to be involved in certainly as long as I'm alive, and probably as long as you're alive." And then the boy was taken away. Some say they've found pieces of him in Saskatchewan.
Ah, Shit, Steve Gilliard:
After an extended hospital stay, Steve Gilliard, one of the granddaddies of the blog world, died this morning at 41. His voice on the News Blog was a genuine combination of fury and hope, a cynic but an asskicker, someone who intelligently raged against the bullshit and, especially, racism of national and New York City politics and culture. He could boot you in the nuts and make you understand why he had to do it. And, in person, that big motherfucker was a kind, soft-spoken, and humane presence. He was an inspiration to and a great supporter of the efforts of the Rude Pundit and many other bloggers. His passing leaves a big goddamn hole in the heart of Left Blogsylvania.
You can check out his archives at his old URL. The News Blog itself is understandably dark.
After an extended hospital stay, Steve Gilliard, one of the granddaddies of the blog world, died this morning at 41. His voice on the News Blog was a genuine combination of fury and hope, a cynic but an asskicker, someone who intelligently raged against the bullshit and, especially, racism of national and New York City politics and culture. He could boot you in the nuts and make you understand why he had to do it. And, in person, that big motherfucker was a kind, soft-spoken, and humane presence. He was an inspiration to and a great supporter of the efforts of the Rude Pundit and many other bloggers. His passing leaves a big goddamn hole in the heart of Left Blogsylvania.
You can check out his archives at his old URL. The News Blog itself is understandably dark.
Within You Without You - What the Fuck Do Fundamentalists Want to Fuck? (Newly Updated With More Fisting):
So the Rude Pundit was a-perusin' his e-mail under his nom de rude, the one he uses to sign up for conservative and fundamentalist "news" or "action" updates. And one of the latest e-mails he received from Tony Perkins and his Family Research Council (motto: "We don't hate you - we just wanna melt your eyes with the fiery pokers of God's love") pointed the Rude Pundit to the blog for the Iraq Prayer Surge. The Prayer Surge "is dedicated to calling forth prayer warriors to make up the hedge and stand in the gap on behalf of our military, especially, during the next 100 days" between Memorial and Labor Days. So, fine and fuckin' dandy, who the hell cares, you know?
As he was scanning the page, he passed picture after picture of single soldiers and groups of soldiers, well, you know, praying. 'Cause what else would you show them doing on such a blog? Shooting civilian children in front of their parents? Bleeding out from IED wounds? Engaged in hot girl on girl action? Ah. Funny you should ask.
Because near the bottom of the page is this photo:
Now, it's one of those photos that's like vanilla ice cream spiked with chili peppers: hot and sweet. But they don't seem to be praying. At all. They're just a pair of attractive female soldiers sleeping on each other. It's a Reuters photo that had been part of an image bank for some kind of natural hunting site. And, at the Prayer Surge blog, there's not a damn thing around it to indicate, "Blessed are the hot chicks in camo for they shall inherit my jizz."
This ain't to criticize the weary women in the picture - you know, we always gotta say, "Support the troops, rah-rah, motherfuckers" or some such shit. No, it's a "what the fuck?" kind of thing. Like what does an image filled with latent lesbianism have to do with surging your prayers? What exactly is the organizing group, Men for Nations, wanting to surge? What's in their prayers? "Please, Jesus, Lord God, you're a dude, look at these two babes. Please let 'em strip me naked and force me to jack off while they lie on top of each other."
It's just so, so often the bullshit of the fundamentalist right is put in terms or by people that are so creepy it makes you wonder if Jesus's handholes ache whenever he hears these guys talking. Like Stephen Bennett, of the pridefully named "Stephen Bennett Ministries." A cockmonger of such enormous appetites in his 20s that it's a wonder he didn't walk around with rubbers and sheets stuck to his ass, now Bennett has gone apeshit over the White House calling Mary Cheney's partner a "parent" to Mary's daughter in a photo of the Vice President and his wife cradling a baby they won't bleed for its youth-maintaining fluids. Bennett crazes, "[B]oth the White House and Bush Administration have officially recognized the sinful sexual unions of homosexuals, as well as recognized and embraced the tragedy of the social experiment of homosexual parenting."
Bennett, a drug-addicted alcoholic back in the bone-smoking days, says someone telling him God doesn't want him to be gay just fucked up his relationship with his partner: "Over the next year and a half, anytime something would happen between my partner and I sexually, I found myself praying for forgiveness to God I didn’t know, on my bathroom floor." One would like to think that his partner was in that bathroom, saying, "As long as you're down there..."
Creepy shit, "cured" homosexuals who you know are craving the cock, pages for prayer that have images that are at best non-sequiturs on them.
By the way, to round up this increasingly random look at prayer and fucking, the FRC and other groups have declared for today, "[W]e urgently call American youth, and especially those who profess Biblical faith, to pursue lives of sexual purity and to urgently pray for their generation and for our nation." One might imagine that mostly teens are praying that there's no draft, but, sure, sexual purity, the last refuge of those who can't get laid.
Do circle jerks count? They better not, or the whole "pray for X" movement is damned.
Note: The title was the Rude Pundit's lame attempt to use today's 40th anniversary of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in here. He could have gone with "Fixing a Hole" or "A Hogshead of Real Fire," but the effect would have been the same.
Update: Rude reader JA sends in a link to Americans For Truth's utter outrage over the hosting of the International Mr. Leather convention (competition?) at the Palmer House Hotel in Chicago. Americans For Truth is "devoted exclusively to exposing and countering the homosexual activist agenda," which, if you think about it, ought to make you sad.
Except when thinking about AFT founder Peter LaBarbera, upper lip sweaty, walking past exhibits about fisting videos and pig sex and watersports and, oh, hey, "The man at left is being fitted for a leather doggie hood."
So the Rude Pundit was a-perusin' his e-mail under his nom de rude, the one he uses to sign up for conservative and fundamentalist "news" or "action" updates. And one of the latest e-mails he received from Tony Perkins and his Family Research Council (motto: "We don't hate you - we just wanna melt your eyes with the fiery pokers of God's love") pointed the Rude Pundit to the blog for the Iraq Prayer Surge. The Prayer Surge "is dedicated to calling forth prayer warriors to make up the hedge and stand in the gap on behalf of our military, especially, during the next 100 days" between Memorial and Labor Days. So, fine and fuckin' dandy, who the hell cares, you know?
As he was scanning the page, he passed picture after picture of single soldiers and groups of soldiers, well, you know, praying. 'Cause what else would you show them doing on such a blog? Shooting civilian children in front of their parents? Bleeding out from IED wounds? Engaged in hot girl on girl action? Ah. Funny you should ask.
Because near the bottom of the page is this photo:
Now, it's one of those photos that's like vanilla ice cream spiked with chili peppers: hot and sweet. But they don't seem to be praying. At all. They're just a pair of attractive female soldiers sleeping on each other. It's a Reuters photo that had been part of an image bank for some kind of natural hunting site. And, at the Prayer Surge blog, there's not a damn thing around it to indicate, "Blessed are the hot chicks in camo for they shall inherit my jizz."
This ain't to criticize the weary women in the picture - you know, we always gotta say, "Support the troops, rah-rah, motherfuckers" or some such shit. No, it's a "what the fuck?" kind of thing. Like what does an image filled with latent lesbianism have to do with surging your prayers? What exactly is the organizing group, Men for Nations, wanting to surge? What's in their prayers? "Please, Jesus, Lord God, you're a dude, look at these two babes. Please let 'em strip me naked and force me to jack off while they lie on top of each other."
It's just so, so often the bullshit of the fundamentalist right is put in terms or by people that are so creepy it makes you wonder if Jesus's handholes ache whenever he hears these guys talking. Like Stephen Bennett, of the pridefully named "Stephen Bennett Ministries." A cockmonger of such enormous appetites in his 20s that it's a wonder he didn't walk around with rubbers and sheets stuck to his ass, now Bennett has gone apeshit over the White House calling Mary Cheney's partner a "parent" to Mary's daughter in a photo of the Vice President and his wife cradling a baby they won't bleed for its youth-maintaining fluids. Bennett crazes, "[B]oth the White House and Bush Administration have officially recognized the sinful sexual unions of homosexuals, as well as recognized and embraced the tragedy of the social experiment of homosexual parenting."
Bennett, a drug-addicted alcoholic back in the bone-smoking days, says someone telling him God doesn't want him to be gay just fucked up his relationship with his partner: "Over the next year and a half, anytime something would happen between my partner and I sexually, I found myself praying for forgiveness to God I didn’t know, on my bathroom floor." One would like to think that his partner was in that bathroom, saying, "As long as you're down there..."
Creepy shit, "cured" homosexuals who you know are craving the cock, pages for prayer that have images that are at best non-sequiturs on them.
By the way, to round up this increasingly random look at prayer and fucking, the FRC and other groups have declared for today, "[W]e urgently call American youth, and especially those who profess Biblical faith, to pursue lives of sexual purity and to urgently pray for their generation and for our nation." One might imagine that mostly teens are praying that there's no draft, but, sure, sexual purity, the last refuge of those who can't get laid.
Do circle jerks count? They better not, or the whole "pray for X" movement is damned.
Note: The title was the Rude Pundit's lame attempt to use today's 40th anniversary of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in here. He could have gone with "Fixing a Hole" or "A Hogshead of Real Fire," but the effect would have been the same.
Update: Rude reader JA sends in a link to Americans For Truth's utter outrage over the hosting of the International Mr. Leather convention (competition?) at the Palmer House Hotel in Chicago. Americans For Truth is "devoted exclusively to exposing and countering the homosexual activist agenda," which, if you think about it, ought to make you sad.
Except when thinking about AFT founder Peter LaBarbera, upper lip sweaty, walking past exhibits about fisting videos and pig sex and watersports and, oh, hey, "The man at left is being fitted for a leather doggie hood."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
