Bush at the U.N.: The Old Hustler's Lost His Moves:
Look over there at the bar. You see that old guy, the one with just a bit of botox in his cheeks, the one wearing a t-shirt two sizes too small to hold in his gut and stop his man-boobs from bouncing under his Zegna button down and DKNY jacket. Let's call him Clyde. Yeah, check Clyde out, chatting up that woman. She's about twenty-five, and you can see her looking around here, wondering if this is the best that this trendy little place has to offer. Watch. Give her about two minutes before she has to use the little girl's room. Wait for it. 3, 2, 1. Oh, poor fuckin' Clyde. Now he's gotta pay for another drink for another woman.

It's always sad when the long-term cocksmith gets old and is still trying to conjure some of the magic. Guys like Clyde, see, they had a good run. Go back to the 1980s, 1990s, hell, even the early part of this decade, and places like this were just a pussy smorgasbord for Clyde. He'd walk in, check out the scene, and think, "I'd like a piece of that and a piece of that and, if I'm still hungry, maybe a slice of that for dessert," and chances are that he would leave satisfied. God, when Clyde looks back at his life, he can think that he was one of those guys, the stud, thrusting his cock into some of the best 'tang this town has to offer.

But there's a law of diminishing returns when the walking dick doesn't settle down, or at least change the scene. The pickings have become slimmer for Clyde. Now, Clyde's gotta settle. It's less a buffet and more of a hot dog stand for him. The pathetic decline has been something. Once he could take the hottest Sex and the City-watching babe here and convince her to get her Samantha on in the men's room after a little coke and a lot of cosmos. Now that show's off the air, and Clyde can't hide the wrinkles in his neck and hands, and he's left with the late night pickings, the emotional wrecks, the puking-themselves drunks, the closet meth users, the women so filled with self-loathing that they look at Clyde and think, "What the hell?" Clyde goes with it. He's lowered his expectations. He's gotta recognize that the women aren't grabbing at his johnson as soon as he walks in a room. Everyone knows his tricks - they haven't changed since the mid-1990s - and, frankly, Clyde just seems kind of sad. He's eating the leftovers, and he's gotta pretend that keeps him satisfied.

When George Bush went in front of the United Nations yesterday, the cockiest man Vicente Fox ever met barely mentioned Iraq. In the entire speech, one paragraph was dedicated to "The people of Lebanon and Afghanistan and Iraq." In fact, both mentions of Iraq were confined to being part of that trio. In other words, in the fifth year of a war that was started with the ostensible goal of enforcing United Nations sanctions, Bush talked more about Zimbabwe than Iraq. And, of course, Myanmar/Burma. And Iran, against whom the drumbeats for war are being banged out like a Neil Peart solo, rated only a single mention, in a list of "brutal regimes": "Belarus, North Korea, Syria, and Iran."

Last year, Bush gave long shout-outs to the people of Iraq and Iran. In 2005, he was all about the terrorists. Now, terrorism was also barely mentioned, but it was the same words, same tune: "terrorists and extremists who kill the innocent with the aim of imposing their hateful vision on humanity."

But you read the speech and you think, "Fuckin' Burma?" Sure, sure, the United States oughta be encouraging bald uprisings in Myanmar against the ridiculously repressive regime there, but beyond continuing a Clinton-era executive order regarding the country's financial relationship with Myanmar, what the fuck has Bush done for the Burmese people?

So you can read the address as the pathetic last bleated whines of an irrelevant, despised administration in front of the international body that Bush holds in contempt and that feels nothing but contempt for the man. Or perhaps it's something else. A diversion, if you will.

See, Clyde keeps a bottle of roofies in his pocket. You never know when a man might become too desperate. You never know what he'll do when that hottie at the bar is looking the other way.