Mar
13
Posted at 9:46 by Sadly, No!
The Wall Street Journal’s “Opinion Journal” has another editorial claiming that poor, old Bob Novak has done nothing wrong, and that trying to get him to reveal his sources will destroy the First Amendment. After all, does it really matter which senior White House Official revealed the name and CIA affiliation of deep-cover agent? Of course not! After all, the bitch deserved it. Oh, and we just love the word “kerfuffle.”
There’s a method to this political madness. For one thing, it has succeeded in distracting attention from the substance of the Novak charge. A few papers, including this one, early on reported the existence of a classified Bureau of Intelligence and Research document describing a meeting at which Ms. Plame is said to have suggested her husband for the Niger yellowcake investigation. The CIA has said that the document had it wrong, but thus far the press corps has been decidedly uninquisitive about whether the CIA itself is trying to deflect attention from a case of nepotism.
Yeah, this whole Plame investigation is really just the CIA’s way of trying to keep the press from finding out that Plame might have suggested her husband for the Niger mission. Which wouldn’t be illegal or even a violation of hiring policies — nobody has said she had the authority to select him for the assignment. And it wouldn’t even be immoral — she happened to have a husband who had the contacts and expertise for the job (and who was known to the CIA already — he was a former ambassador, after all). She mentioned his name, and somebody in CIA management chose Wilson for a one-shot, unpaid, unclassified assignment. Geez, no wonder the CIA (and its accomplice, the DOJ) is trying to keep everyone from focusing on the potentially devastating NepotismGate matter.
Oh, but I do think that somebody (presumably the FBI) should be focusing on that State Dept. document — either somebody gave the WSJ a classified document regarding a case under criminal investigation, or, which seems more likely, somebody a fabricated a document in order to smear the victim of a crime. I would like to know which it is, and who did it. Seeing them punished would be nice too.
What especially troubles us is that if the Justice Department investigators do not find who leaked Ms. Plame’s name, Mr. Novak may be slapped with a subpoena and held in contempt if he sticks to journalistic principle and refuses to give up his sources.
Yes, it troubles the WSJ almost as much as it troubles the person or persons who leaked her name. Interesting how their interests should intersect here.
Oh, and since Novak has given up a source before and the WSJ didn’t seem to care, what does that say about their deep concern for journalistic principle?
And it’s not just Mr. Novak: Earlier this week Newsday reported that prosecutors are seeking all records of any Administration contacts with two dozen other newsmen, including Journal reporter Greg Hitt and Editorial Page Editor Paul Gigot.
WSJ reporters are on cozy terms with Senior Administration Officials who might have leaked Valerie Plame’s name in order to discredit Joseph Wilson? I’m shocked, SHOCKED to learn this.
And I’m also shocked to learn that DOJ is subpoenaing records of Administration media contacts in a case that involves the Administration giving the name of a CIA officer to the media. Gosh, WSJ, what did you think an investigation of this kind would involve — the declaration that the media was off limits, and the investigators should focus on Valerie Plame and nepotism?
If the legal push in these cases does come to shove, we may well end up with a Supreme Court pronouncing even more definitively that the First Amendment includes no privilege covering the protection of confidential sources. And the road to that blow to a free press will be paved by all the liberal writers who thought they could discard Bob Novak with no effect on their own journalism.
And Bob could prevent it all by voluntarily coming forward and telling the prosecutors which Senior Administration Official(s) apparently committed a felony by leaking the Plame information to him. Or is the WSJ saying that revealing the names of covert intelligence officers, destroying cover mechanisms, and potentially endangering CIA sources are just fine, as long as nothing interferes with that cozy relationship the WSJ has with Senior Administration Officials?
*Here are some other suggested replacements for “kerfuffle,” which is just plain annoying now: balderdash, blatherskite, bosh, bushwa, claptrap, codswallop, eyewash, flapdoodle, jiggery-pokery, pishposh, tosh, and wangdoodle.
Yeah, why doesn’t the WSJ drop the “kerfuffle” and try making “wangdoodle” synonymous with their fine newspaper?
Permalink
Mar
12
Posted at 13:24 by Sadly, No!
Ho’ward Kurtz asks, is Kerry’s muttered aside the new Dean Scream? I don’t know, is Kurtz the new Annoying Rectal Itch?
Even a fungi like Kurtz occasionally contributes to the noble craft of curation by existing for the sole purpose of being treated, and he displays exactly this usefulness for authentic media criticism at the CJR Campaign Desk:
Is John Kerry’s muttered aside the new Dean Scream? Despite the low volume of the remarks, they’re getting constantly replayed on television. …
[Mark] Meehan [Kerry campaign] mentioned some Web sites and Vietnam vets who oppose Kerry, saying, “Every day John Kerry gets attacked.” Meehan also cited the “below the belt stuff” used against former Sen. Max Cleland (D-Ga.), but that was in 2002. …
Bush campaign spokesman Terry Holt didn’t do much piling on, apparently having calculated that the story was building nicely on its own. “These words are over the line,” he said, and “probably out of bounds.” There’s so much “anger” on the Democratic side, Holt said. … (Howard Kurtz’s Media Backtalk, Mar 11/04)
Is it surprising to see GOP locker room equipment manager Kurtz collecting Holt’s sweaty jock this way? Sadly, No! It’s a stretch to to slap the Dem-Rage label on an event consisting of Kerry coolly standing by his remarks followed by a cavalcade of outraged Republicans fogging up camera lenses with demands for an apology. (In passing, is the Bush/Cheney campaign’s strategy to alternate egregious arrogance, like the recent Mohammed Horton ads abusing 9-11 and Brown People, with implausible, perfunctory outrage? Fuck you! Now apologize. Fuck you! &c)
The CJR Campaign Desk, which does actual media analysis, looks at Ho’s musings in the context of the news cycle:
Between 2:00 p.m. Wednesday and 4:30 p.m. Thursday, CNN and Fox News C[h]annel each showed their audiences the Kerry remark, complete with audio and video, 16 separate times. This averages to about one viewing per every hour and forty-two minutes, which, given that these are 24-hour news operations, isn’t all that egregious.
But, then we checked in on MSNBC. In the same time period, that struggling operation (in terms of viewers) ran the clip 29 separate times, almost as often as CNN and Fox News put together. That’s more than once every hour; at one point this morning MSNBC aired the clip at 9:00 a.m., 9:10 a.m., and 9:20 a.m. … In 2003 Fox led prime-time ratings with 1,706,00 viewers, CNN scored second with 1,095,000 viewers, and MSNBC finished in a distant third with 443,000 viewers.
Is John Kerry’s muttered aside the new Dean Scream? Sadly, No!
Permalink
Mar
12
Posted at 5:35 by Sadly, No!
Rough sweaty brute John Kerry isn’t apologizing for referring to GOP attack dogs as “the most crooked, you know, lying group I’ve ever seen.”
I have no intention whatsoever of apologizing for my remarks. I think the Republicans need to start talking about the real issues before the country. John Kerry March 11, 2004
Refusing to be silent about friendly GOP tactics like giving doctored photos of him to the media and smearing his distinguished military service is just what you’d expect from those beastly ‘04 Democrats. Crushed petal Tom DeLay managed to tell the press in a frail whisper:
To call people liars and crooks and particularly thinking you were off mike just shows you who the real person is, not the person that is set up and coiffed for a town meeting or a speech but the real person and I think America got a little glimpse of the real John Kerry.
Clearly the extent of the emotional wound rendered him incomprehensible. French-descended DeLay* does crucial Frenchy Hatin’ Hair Oppo for the campaign to reelect Bush and French-descended Dick Cheney* to the White House. Working closely with French-descended Marc Racicot*, DeLay has not only exposed the French ancestry of Kerry, but has repeatedly publicly bitched in the media about the exploding scandal that Democrats groom their hair.
DeLay has accused General Wesley Clark and John Kerry of having their hair cut and possibly blown dry by professional barbers instead of an overall-wearing relative in a wooden shack using scissors and the family slop-bucket as a template. (DeLay has yet to review the military haircuts worn by Clark and Kerry during active service. DeLay isn’t familiar with that coif, having successfully avoided actually fighting in a war himself, like Bush, Cheney and much of this administration.)
The Kerry bombshell rocked Washington today.
A group of GOP leaders in the House and Senate called on Kerry to stop negative campaigning even while describing him as “Ted Kennedy on a South Beach diet.” [Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga] They scolded Kerry for the offhand remark he made Wednesday in Chicago, contending it was undignified for a presidential candidate.
“If you ask me, he’s getting off on the wrong foot in this campaign by name-calling,” House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., told reporters as he and other GOP leaders met in his office Thursday. “We’re not lying when we start saying that Senator Kerry is the old-time Democrat of tax and spend.”
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., said Kerry was “not in synch with the American people.” Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said, “This concerted effort to convince the American economy is in the tank is simply not accurate.” …
Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., said Kerry should apologize for a comment “outside the bounds of where [sic] people who want to hold the highest office in this country should be making. [sic]“
Santorum [sick] then returned his attention to his primary concern of speculating about man on dog sex.
The GOP faithful in the media were also in force, showing their stigmata like so many paper cuts one had to squint really really hard to see. On today’s Crossfire Tucker Carlson gave a great, emotional reading of the day’s script pages, even, DeNiro-like, ad libbing in a new fact:
At an event last night, Kerry described his opponents, all of them, as crooked liars! …
(Actually, Kerry said “this group”, referring to GOP attack dogs like the ones who called Democrat Max Cleland a traitor. Cleland lost three limbs serving his country in wartime.) Like many of us in TV-land, Carlson can’t listen to Carlson for long. This explains his moment by moment vascillation between between histrionic outrage over Kerry’s comments and sneering that complaints about the Cleland targeting was over-sensitive Dem whining.
Martha Zoeller, an attack dog from right wing radio explained the abnormal psychology that compels Democrats to criticize the administration mistrusted by most voters and reviled by much of the world. Apparently, these Democrats, well known by the GOP to be America-hating objectively pro-Saddam Frenchies, burn with resentment because Bush and his supporters are really nice.
MARTHA ZOELLER, WDUN RADIO: … People just want — it is not just Republicans. The American people are tired of this negativity. And they want to see — and that’s the lesson in 2002 was. It didn’t work. Scaring people does not work. And it is going be a positive campaign. You guys can’t stand it that President Bush is running a positive campaign.
BERNIE WARD, KGO RADIO: Where is the positive campaign?
ZOELLER: It is now.
WARD: The president already saying that if a Democrat’s elected, the Republican spokesman saying if the Democrats elected, David Frum saying that the terrorists will be doing dancing in Baghdad.
ZOELLER: There’s a difference. Wait a minute.
WARD: That’s not a negative comment?
ZOELLER: No, the president has not been negative.
WARD: Neither has John Kerry.
ZOELLER: Oh, he called the president a liar and a crook today in front of the AFL-CIO.
WARD: Martha, you know that he said the sleaze machine was crooked and were liars. He never mentioned the president at all.
ZOELLER: The president has been positive and you guys can’t stand it. He’s got a record to run on. Kerry doesn’t want to run on his record.
In a blogosphere exclusive, Quiddity revealed today that lying crooks also objected to Kerry’s remarks.
Henry Belston, president of the Fraternal Association of Crooks and Liars (FAOCAL) said that the statement by the senator was “totally uncalled for and an insult to thousands of Americans.” … “We’re crooks and liars and make no apologies for it. Since 1996 we’ve been running a campaign to define ourselves in the public’s mind.”
“But now Senator Kerry says his political opponents are just like us. That’s outrageous. We may be crooks and liars, but we have a certain amount of respect for our craft. For instance, we think a lie has to be deployed carefully and with restraint in order to maintain its potency. Yet Bush and his political allies lie again and again and again – and that’s just in five minutes time. Also, who the hell lies about WMD in order to start a war that doesn’t even bring political benefits the aggressor? It doesn’t make any sense. Please, don’t associate crooks and liars with the White House. We may not be honorable, but at least we’re competent.”
The organization’s leadership is expected to meet later this week and vote for a resolution calling on Kerry to apologize.
For those keeping score, here are some of today’s headlines detailing GOP lying and crookedness. Is this by any means a complete list? Sadly, No!
*DeLay, Cheney and Racicot are French-derived surnames. While surnames are not always a reliable indication of biological ancestry, I’d sure keep an eye on these guys for signs of Frenchness.
(Note: I had to make several corrections to get all the links working. Apologies if this disrupted your surfing in any way.)
Permalink
Mar
12
Posted at 5:04 by Sadly, No!
If Seb, the regular proprietor of this blog, wasn’t already in the hospital, the latest column by his dream girl, Amber Pawlik, would put him there. For it seems that Amber is in lust — with Elizabeth Taylor.
It all started when Amber was googling for the hot photo of Elizabeth in a white swimming suit from “A Place in the Sun” which Maureen Dowd says that John Kerry (and her brother Michael) “never got over.” Amber apparently wasn’t able to find that photo (possibly because John and Maureen’s brother were actually thinking of this one , which is from “Suddenly, Last Summer’). But Amber did find one that stirred some feelings — this one.
Amber explains:
It is a picture of Elizabeth Taylor sitting on top of the USS Los Angeles CA-135, of which she was made hostess (open up the picture, silly!). The picture is amazing: it undeniably strikes of a time when women were women, and popular actresses were unabashed supporters of our armed forces, which, unfortunately, is no longer the way it is today. [Sigh]
Yes, back then there was a studio system that required popular actresses to be supporters of our armed forces, motherhood, and apple pie, all while being sexually pure teetotalers — at least, for public consumption. Of course, behind the scene most of them were just as self-absorbed, shallow, screwed up, immoral, and addicted as the popular actresses we have today.
Let?s take in the marvel of the picture before getting to the evil, malevolent people who want to destroy such things as femininity, sexuality, and all-around fun.
Those evil, malevolent people known as … John Ashcroft’s Department of Justice! (Just of little joke — of course Amber is referring to feminists who are trying to turn women into lesbians.)
First, notice that although Elizabeth is almost completely covered ? she still undeniably exudes sexuality. In fact, I would venture to say: she exudes more sexuality than the whore ? oops, I mean ?actresses? and ?entertainers? of today. The difference between her and them is striking.
Yes, other than her nylon-clad legs, Elizabeth doesn’t reveal any skin in this photo. But what apparently makes it so hot to Amber is that Elizabeth is sitting on a turret gun, or canon, or whatever you call those 5-foot long, 24-inch diameter phallic symbols. And there are two more at attention in the background! So, I guess it’s not really Elizabeth who is getting Amber hot, it’s that big gun under Liz’s legs. Which would mean that Amber hasn’t really turned to the lure of Lesbos, she just likes really big . . . guns. Seb will be so relieved.
But, um, under the Amber theory that too much cock turns women into lesbians, isn’t Elizabeth in serious danger here?
Another thing that Taylor is oozing with is femininity.
Well, she is sitting demurely, he legs draped over the side of the gun, but you just know that at any minute she could straddle that gun and have the time of her life. I guess that’s what Amber means by femininity.
And that leads us to today’s lesson from Amber: that by encouraging men to get in touch with their feminine sides, feminists are trying to turn them gay so that women will find them unattractive, and will have to turn lesbian in frustration.
Femininity is intimately linked and exclusive to women and masculinity is intimately linked and exclusive to men. Femininity is the woman who embraces, loves and acts in accordance to her nature as a woman, and similarly masculinity is the man who embraces, loves, and acts in accordance to his nature as a man. Women cannot rationally be masculine and men cannot rationally be feminine. In fact, some conservatives will tell you that the word ?feminine? is not an adjective but a noun ? that ?feminine? is just another way to say ?woman,? and ditto but vice versa for ?masculine? ? thus further proving that femininity is exclusive to women and masculine to men.
Well, some stupid conservatives may tell you that, but the dictionary will insist that “feminine” is both a noun and an adjective (the same for “masculine”), thus proving that some conservatives are illiterate. The dictionary also tells us that one meaning of feminine is:
4 a : being an unstressed and usually hypermetric final syllable b : of rhyme : having an unstressed final syllable c : having the final chord occurring on a weak beat
While the dictionary entry for “masculine” includes:
3 a : having or occurring in a stressed final syllable b : having the final chord occurring on a strong beat
4 : of or forming the formal, active, or generative principle of the cosmos
I will leave it to the feminists to explain what this could indicate about deep-seated beliefs about femininity and masculinity, and to Amber to prove that the feminists are just saying this in order to (you guessed it) turn women into lesbians.
Those who insist that gender and sex are divorced; that men can be feminine or women can be masculine are assaulting sexuality ? specifically heterosexuality. Feminine men do not attract women and masculine women do not attract men. Just as they (feminists, socialists, and others) are assaulting masculinity in men, they are assaulting femininity in women. In the process, they are making women unattractive to men and men unattractive to women.
One of the ways that feminists try to turn women from femininity is to tell women that femininity equates to weakness. Not true. A human being?s main ?tool? in negotiating the world is the mind ? and women can still be completely and totally feminine (embrace their bodily nature as women) while remaining rational (embrace the mind).
But didn’t Amber tell us that if a girl “embraces her bodily nature” too much in her twenties, that nobody will marry her?
And, although I?m not one to defend Elizabeth Taylor, who has had like eight husbands, I saw her on TV once in such a way that gave evidence of a strong woman. I was watching a show about old time actors (I wanted to catch a glimpse of a young Paul Newman or a young Sean Connery ? [Sigh]). On the show, it showed someone asking Taylor, essentially, if, in the past two years of her (then) marriage, she felt she had matured any. If someone asked any modern day actress that, the answer would likely be an mind-numbing, emotional fest about their feelings, emotions, and the oh-so-dramatic battles they had faced in two years. But Taylor didn?t say that, she said: ?Of course I did. If I didn?t, that would make me retarded now wouldn?t it?? Ha! I loved it!!
Yes, you should always believe what stars tell us about what they’ve learned from their failed relationships. I’m sure Amber also loved this part of the newspaper story about Elizabeth’s time on the USS California — but since she somehow forgot to include it in her column, let me share it with you:
The popular MGM star, on loan to Paramount, is currently being seen with Montgomery Clift in the decidedly realistic “A Place In The Sun”. Rumors persist about her reconciliation with Nicky Hilton. Her brief, ill-fated marriage to him has given Elizabeth a maturity which should protect her against further romantic mistakes and heartbreak.
Yup, no more romantic mistakes for Elizabeth! Anyway, back to Amber for what we can learn from this dated cheesecake/battleship photo:
This sultry picture of Elizabeth Taylor reminds us of a great time that we can only hope our culture will return to: a time when completely sophisticated and rational women embraced their femininity, and were proud to be ?hostesses? of naval war ships … [Sigh]. It was a time when women were women.
Yes, if only we could return to the time when women could be “hostesses” (which, in the days of the Hayes code, could mean “prostitutes”) of naval war ships; a time when women embraced their femininity by sitting on large phallic symbols, and men embraced their masculinity by not sitting on the gun turrets. That would be so cool! [Swoon]
Permalink
Mar
11
Posted at 6:28 by Sadly, No!
Marc Racicot is trying to cut to the front of the line to the RNC fainting couch again, the latest case of the vapors coming over John Kerry’s description of critics as “the most crooked … lying group I’ve ever seen.” “[U]nbecoming of a candidate for the presidency,” Racicot fumed, and he wants Kerry “to apologize to the American people.”
Will Monsieur Racicot’s manservant discreetly interrupt his gentleman’s crying jag to deliver a heartfelt handwritten apology from that beastly rou? Mr. Kerry? Sadly, Non!
Why Racicot would demand an apology for “the American people” is a mystery, because recent polls show most people think that President Bush is a liar or deliberately misleading people. Demanding one for Great Leader is just plain silly, as the first official lie was when he swore to”protect and defend the Constitution” that he’s now trying to homo-proof.
Mr. Racicot’s own pants spontaneously burst into flame recently when he lied that AWOL
“signed up for dangerous duty. He volunteered to go to Vietnam. He wasn?t selected to go, but nonetheless served his country very well.”
That’s one neat stack of fibs, a club sandwich of mendacity, as documents clearly show the exact opposite. (It bears mentioning that AWOL also apparently lied when he promised on Press the Meat with Tim Russert to release his entire military records.)
So while this RNC slapstick might be the kind of clean, comedic fun conservatives want saturating the airwaves — as entertainment, about on the level of those old Disney films about dizzy pets messing up the house while the owners are out — Racicot should save his outrage for a day the administration wasn’t acting like a pack of shifty double-talking douchebags.
Asked at a recent congressional hearing why costs for Iraq were not included in the administration’s budget, Pentagon comptroller Dov Zakheim replied: “Because we simply cannot predict them.”
Yet many contend the administration at least knows that roughly 100,000 soldiers will remain in Iraq for another year and could have budgeted an estimate or a placeholder request for that. “We know it will not be free,” said Steve Kosiak of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. …
The Pentagon’s refusal to estimate costs is the same stance it took before the war. For months leading up to the invasion, officials said they couldn’t estimate because they didn’t know how long it would take to fight the war. Within days after it started, however, the Pentagon sent Congress a request for $63 billion. “So you know they had it in their back pockets,” all along, said Cindy Williams, a former congressional budget officer…
Meanwhile, the grilling of CIA head George Tenet continued as Ted Kennedy
sought to learn why the administration distorted and manipulated the intelligence, when “the only imminent threat was the November congressional election.” It was, Kennedy said, “pure, unadulterated fear-mongering,” in order to justify Bush’s determined decision to go to war.
This immediately sent White House spokesbot Scott McLellan running to join Mr. Racicot in the lineup for the fainting couch. I really don’t think any apologies are forthcoming. Sorry, Mr. Racicot. DOH!
Permalink
Mar
10
Posted at 14:19 by Sadly, No!
Michelle Malkin
Some posters at Democratic Underground said mean things about John Ashcroft’s pancreatitis, which proves that the typical Democrat is a vicious, hypocritical moron. John has been prosecuting Muslims, most of whom are guilty of something, and these jerks at DU aren’t even grateful. We should kill them.
It is not the incivility of the Ashcroft-haters that galls me. It is the unmitigated insipidity and apathy they display toward what this man and his department have done to protect their right to be free, safe and stupid.
Kathleen Parker
While Martha Stewart was guilty and is a bitch, we shouldn’t single out bitches for prosecution, because otherwise Kathleen could be next.
Moreover, and to her lasting discredit, it isn’t hard to dredge up personal testimonials of Martha abuse. In the history of unsympathetic characters, she has few peers such that whoever invented the word “schadenfreude” – the enjoyment of another’s troubles – must have been privy to the oracle’s predicting her birth.
Maggie Gallagher
We need same-sex schools, to prepare kids for same-sex marriages.
No, wait, what Maggie really means is that we need same-sex schools because feminists hate them. And because boys are not doing as well in school as girls — a phenomenon probably caused by all those African-Americans unwed mothers.
Why the gap? One likely reason is that boys and girls are affected differently by growing up in a fatherless home. The negative effects of fatherlessness on boys’ education achievement can be seen in the relative gender gap in college degrees in different ethnic groups. The gender gap in education tracks perfectly ethnic variations in rates of divorce and unmarried childbearing.
Brent Bozell
Many of the people objecting to Bush’s 9/11 ad don’t like Bush — will the elite media tell you this? No!
The media are at their most hypocritical when they suggest Bush is unfairly benefiting from 9-11 in his ads. But who has piled on the profits with hours and hours of specials, and newspaper and magazine special editions, devoted to 9-11? Because Bush has done a good enough job in preventing attacks on the homeland, the media can go back to profiting from the usual sludge on Martha Stewart and Kobe Bryant and Michael Jackson.
Jonah Goldberg
People are making a big fuss over the “Only Old People Vote” T-shirt, when there are lots of shirts that are much worse. Like this one:
I don’t know what the cool kids say to such self-important nonsense these days, but when I was in college we’d say, “Lighten up, Francis.” The shirt was ironic – just like roughly 90 percent of all humor for people under 35 today. Get over it.
Yeah, right — like the cool kids ever talked to Jonah.
Gary Aldrich
We can’t change Presidents, no matter how bad a job Bush is doing, because he’s the only thing keeping the boogie men from getting us. Besides, Bush is a Republican, and Republicans are basically John Wayne clones, in that they talk tough but never actually in fight wars themselves.
Years after the worst attack ever launched against America, we are without a single new assault on our homeland, because of this president?s leadership. Despite this level of success, some say it?s time for a change.
Why? Are we tired of being safe? Senator Kerry is soft of national defense, soft on intelligence agency funding and harsh on President Bush?s record. And yet, we seem secured from terrorists. It?s ludicrous to suggest we change presidents. Republicans have always distinguished themselves as being tough on crime, tough on foreign despots, and tough on our nation?s enemies. They aren?t exactly John Wayne clones, but close enough.
Kerry, on the other hand, could best be described as an Alan Alda-type.
Ben Shapiro
Kill some anti-Semites for Purim. It will be fun, and it will make God happy.
The real essence of Purim revolves around what happened after Esther changed Ahasuerus’ mind: Ahasuerus issued a decree allowing Jews to kill any anti-Semite seeking to destroy them, and the Jews did so. During a two-day period, Jews killed over 75,000 Jew haters throughout the Persian Empire, 800 in the capital city of Shushan alone.
[snip]
Purim is not about dress up or drinking, noise making or gift giving. It is about recognizing that evil still exists and that God obligates mankind to obliterate it. When men act to stop evil in its tracks, God fights on their side, from the beaches of Normandy to the hills of Judea to the streets of Baghdad.
Thomas Sowell
The failure of affirmative action in Malaysia proves that ethnic Chinese people are just better than ethnic Malays. There is a lesson to America here somewhere. . .
Again, such semantic gymnastics attempt to evade the obvious: Some groups perform a lot better than others, whether in education or the economy and whether in Malaysia or elsewhere around the world.
Sowell has written a book called “Affirmative Action Around the World: An Empirical Study.” It’s about how affirmative action around the world doesn’t work. It lists for $28, but you can get it directly from Thomas for just $19.60 and a kidney.
So, TownHall. Making your town seem a lot saner in comparison.
Permalink
Mar
10
Posted at 6:32 by Sadly, No!
Now that the Martha Stewart verdict has been handed down, news anchors can finally turn their attention to covering more important issues. Namely, what kind of hot, panty-revealing girl-girl action can a prissy Connecticut blonde hope to encounter in prison?
For minor stories like the illegitimate invasion of a sovereign nation or administration ineptitude bringing the country to the brink of economic collapse, simply repeating the day’s talking points will suffice. But in the Stewart case, the public deserves nothing less than the unvarnished truth, the kind one finds after a pleasant autumn afternoon stripping down that rustic flea market footstool to bring out the natural beauty of the fruitwood. Wolf Blitzer rolls up his sleeves and starts rubbing …
[WOLF] BLITZER: [W]ill she have any privacy at all? Will she have her own room? Will she be able to shower by herself? When she goes to the facilities, what’s it like?
Will this hotly anticipated girl-girl prison action be sizzling or merely turbo-hot? Does it help the intensity if the “fresh meat” is particularly affluent and little uptight? Prissy, even? Famous? When, and how, will she encounter women who, you know, can’t wait to jump her?
[KAREN] BOND (ex-prisoner): She will have a room. It won’t be private. She’ll probably share it with one to three other prisoners. The showers have shower stalls, much like in a gym. It’s not an open area where everybody just showers together. Same for the rest rooms. That’s the only place you have any privacy. It’s not a place where you’re going to do much in private; that’s for sure.
But nothing’s really happening yet to cover, so let’s have a little vicarious action.
BLITZER: There’s a sense out there she’ll be serving with other white crime prisoners, that it’s probably not going to be a dangerous environment. But you had a very dangerous experience.
BOND: Well, that’s true. The white-collar criminals only make up about six, seven percent of a whole federal prison population. So the other 90-some percent of the prisoners in the federal prison camps would be probably drug crimes for the most part. …
BLITZER: Who did this to you? One individual or a group?
BOND: It started with one individual, and then she had a couple helpers.
BLITZER: Why did they go after you?
BOND: They don’t like white-collar criminals in prisons. They resent their position in society. They resent their education, and they just in general know that they will never rise to that level. And you know, they want to bring the white-collar person down and make them understand that they are just a prison number. …
At Faux, O’Really O’Reilly shares the insights he learned at the Roger Corman Institute of Psychoanalysis, where he astounded fellow practitioners like Dr. Charles Quackhammer with his pioneering work on the pathology of B-Movie Delinquency in the Adult Female:
[BILL] O’REILLY: … Now you told us that you believe she fell in with the wrong crowd. What’s that? What kind of crowd do you think she fell in with?
[FRANK] KOSTYRA [Stewart's brother]: I don’t think I stated that, did i?
O’REILLY: I have it in the pre-interview with you.
KOSTYRA: Oh, pre-interview. No. I thought that – I think that what the question was is that I believe her defense, her attorneys failed to recognize who her real peers were. …
O’REILLY: But she did live a fairly sophisticated, ran with a pretty sophisticated set in Connecticut and in Eastern Long Island out in the Hamptons.
KOSTYRA: Sure, she worked up to that. And that’s what she wanted to do. And you know, why not go with the people that you want to be with? But that’s not her peers.
O’REILLY: That’s right.
KOSTYRA: The peers are the Norman Rockwell people.
O’REILLY: Well, let me submit this to you. Let me submit this to you, Frank. I think she lost her way because she abandoned her roots. She got rich and famous, started hanging with the swells, got in the with the Waksals and weasels of the world, and this is what happened. That if she had stayed with roots, as you just stated, it never would have happened. Am I wrong?
KOSTYRA: I couldn’t answer that because I don’t know.
O’REILLY: No, you never thought about that?
KOSTYRA: No, that’s a lot of supposition, I believe.
O’REILLY: Yes, I’m good at that. I make suppositions.
KOSTYRA: Do you really?
O’REILLY: But I resist, myself, going with that fast crowd.
I can’t imagine what depraved activities a “fast” Connecticut crowd might get into, so if any visitors can describe them, I’d deeply appreciate it.
UPDATE: Digby has more instances of the media held captive by the chick prison fantasy.
Permalink
Mar
9
Posted at 7:46 by Sadly, No!
Remember last week when Dennis Prager said that the main threats to our civilization were Muslim terrorists and gay marriage?
Well, this week Dennis explains that “while used to being caricatured,” it still hurt his feelings when Andrew Sullivan denounced the column, because of all that he and Andrew have meant to each other. So, Dennis wants to make it clear, one and for all, that anybody who “further insinuates” that Dennis equates gay marriage with terrorism is a big poopie head.
Dennis explains that while people who support Muslim terrorism are “loathesome,” most of those who support same-sex marriage are just really stupid (some are loathsome too, of course). The gay marriage supporters fall into three groups: leftist vandals who want to trash civilization; simple-minded twits who believe that being “tolerant” requires them to assent to the destruction of civilization; and people who need to start their own damned religion, because nothing in Judaism or Christianity supports committed, loving, monogamous same-sex relationships.
In fact, heterosexual marriage is what Judaism and Christianity are all about:
If Judaism and Christianity do not stand for man-woman marriage and the father-mother family, they stand for nothing.
I guess Mel Gibson really missed the boat with his film about the suffering and crucifixion of Christ — he thought THAT was the basis of Christianity, when it’s really procreative intercourse. So, I guess we can expect the film Dennis Prager’s The Passion any time now; 100 minutes of R-rated action, and no need for subtitles.
And nobody caricature Dennis ever again, you hear me!
Permalink
Mar
9
Posted at 3:08 by Sadly, No!
Lately, conservatives are hurling themselves onto the media fainting couch in droves over the smut they encounter daily, apart from their own of course. The FCC is vowing to crack down hard on obscenity and profanity smuttering up the public Republican airwaves, and shame on any of you who visualized buttocks when you read the word crack a second ago.
Naturally, the FCC is moving immediately and hard on a profanity uttered by Bono last year, though a recent f-bomb dropped on conservative Laura Ingraham’s show will skip through the airwaves unfettered by moral constraints long into the afterlife.
Veteran potty mouth Howard Stern suddenly became intolerable to radio network Clear Channel — a huge Bush/Cheney supporter — only after he started criticizing Emperor Preznit Screwup, “forcing” them to drop Stern’s program from several stations. (Stern’s usual trash was considered just fine when he was supporting the Miserable Failure.)
Everyone’s sick of Janet Jackson’s boob except conservatives, who are still debbil-seizing over it. (And hey, if the FCC inquisition also squeegees people’s minds clean of questions like, “Why can an investigation into the Preznit’s $200 billion hunt for non-existent WMDs wait till after the election but tweezing Irish rocker f-bombs out of mass culture need immediate attention?”) Now Disney is “disappearing” a statue of Mickey Mouse because it’s connected to the biggest danger facing society today, the 1/2 second flash of mocha titty that has harmed more retinas than the sloppin’ around culottes Marilyn Musgrave wears on weekends.
You can’t blame conservative sensitivity to breasts appearing outside an appropriate context such as beer sales or the toolbox lids of really good auto mechanics. Because they apparently hatch their young, conservatives might not be aware that a bare breast is the first thing most newborns see, owing to the species-wide practice of laying a newborn beside mama’s own.
This might explain why GOP-types like Attorney General John Ashcroft object when they see a degenerate slut like the Goddess of Justice* shake what her mama** gave her. Liberals like myself see her breast as representing the nurturing, restorative qualities that balance Justice’s harsher, punative side — no doubt that’s why we’re considered elitists and degenerates. Ashcroft of course disagrees. It’s tit-meat. The hooter from Hell. Beelzebub’s fun bag. The boner-maker. Burying the offensive Goddess behind heavy blue drapes not only prevents sleazy thoughts from forming in lawyers’ minds, at a cost of $8000 to the taxpayer, it’s a culture-sanitizing steal. (I think the DOJ covered the wrong boob, but I can barely look at Ashcroft without heaving.)
I have but one small request of conservatives. In the course of your squeegee work to erase all incidental booby, peepee, caca, woo-woo and ding-dong from mass culture, could you clean up your own act?
I speak of of your habit of continually mentioning dog-fucking while on mainstream media to complain that same-sex marriage is unwholesome. I didn’t encounter the bestiality references my entire lifetime as often as during the past few weeks, thanks to some filthy-minded conservative pundit or hypocrite like Marilyn Musgrave reliably befouling the airwaves with it.
Ordinary folks just don’t associate same-sex marriage with extra-species sex because we don’t, as conservatives apparently do, regard the gay members of humankind as sub-human. Please … think of the children! Tender young minds will understand Daddy’s Roommate and Heather Has Two Mommies … Rick Santorum’s Pooch-O-Rama just makes everyone cry until they get some milk and cookies and a hug (myself included).
The FCC moved on Bono and the Jackson tata after being pressured by the Parents Television Council. Though claiming to be nonpartisan, the group seems oddly uninterested in urging the FCC to clean up after filth-spewing conservatives like Laura Ingraham and dog-sex-obsessed Marilyn Musgrave. You can help balance the purge by using the PTC’s very own direct email form to the FCC. You can even insta-file an official complaint with the FCC seconds after you encounter filth on your airwaves with this other handy form. Do it for the children. (Sensing hundreds of new FCC complaints over my use of the phrase do it in the preceding sentence.)
* Picture from Bongo News
**Themis, the wise and graceful Goddess of Justice, is the daughter of Gaia, or Mother Earth.
Permalink
Mar
8
Posted at 11:41 by Sadly, No!
Yes, it’s time once again for that hit sitcom about a “a no-nonsense, God-fearing student of society with a special ability to jerk the slack out of slacking young people,” his wife Mary Margaret, and their two daughters, aged 14 and 12 (we will call the girls “Rebekkah” and “Brandine,” because we have more concerns about their privacy than their father seems to). Dad is a former drug dealer/burglar turned radio pastor who always seems to be having wacky adventure. Or maybe he’s just wacky. Last week he told us something about how Rebekkah’s school forced her watch a student-presentation about how it was okay to be gay; she also seemed to be hanging out with Bornean sailors.
In this week’s episode, a bully threatens to shoot Rebbekah’s ass, and the school doesn’t deport him or execute him or anything, which causes Doug to rail about the grave threat to national security caused by teens, and to devise a flow chart to show who’s responsible for young mass-murderers.
There’s a violent internal menace that has plagued our land since the close of the 20th century. You know who I?m talking about ? that radical and now unpredictable enemy ? our kids!
Yes, kids have only been violent since the late 1990’s –before that we never had a problem with the little dears.
Anyway, Doug blames al Qaeda for distracting us from the teen threat, which is just as serious as the menace posed by international terrorism.
America’s total concern about our nation-threatening external terrorist threat has shifted attention away from this grave and growing danger. It?s time to righteously divide our interests ? and face both crises head-on.
Isn?t it wild how quickly we?ve forgotten about Paducah, Kentucky; Jonesboro, Arkansas; Pearl, Mississippi; Springfield, Oregon and the apocalyptic disaster of Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado?
It?s just five short years ago when Mayberry RFDs, middle Americas, Anytown, USA became killing fields. And the culprits were not named Habib and Mohammed; they were kids with names like Hank and Mikey.
YOU probably thought these kids who shot up the schools were Iraqis working under orders from Saddam, or were in the pay of the commies, like in Ed Wood’s The Violent Years, but Doug is here to reveal the shocking (but little known) truth — these kids were Americans!
And I bet you didn’t know that one of the worst of these incidents took place in Mayberry RFD in 1998, when a freckle-faced lad named Opie (which sounds foreign, but really isn’t) took his Dad’s pistol of his desk drawer, and shot half the town. Gomer, Goober, Floyd, Clara, Howard Sprague: the list of victims goes on an on. When asked why he did it, young Opie said, “Because they were the stupidest people on Earth!” Experts from Mt. Pilot agreed, but Opie was still sentenced to an indeterminate sentence at a youth facility.
Look– I?m not Mr. Zippidy-Do-Dah. It?s clear that the world in which we live is not and will never be free from evil and that we will never live in an idyllic, Cleaver Wonderland. But what ought to be rattling our complacent cage is the boundary-breaking demographic from which evil has emerged.
In the past, the malevolent guy was a demented adult drifters who misinterpreted Beatles? songs, or a gay mailman posing as a clown, or a marginalized freak listening to the commands of black Labradors to kill lovers in their cars and store their body parts in the fridge. Forcibly, we adjusted our psyches to expect these sickos existence, but the tail end of the 20th century shifted that paradigm to include ?nice kids? from suburbia tanked up on Mountain Dew and Nietzsche.
In the past (which only extends back to 1970 or so), bad guys were Charles Manson or creepy serial killers. Sure, they were unpleasant, but we got used to them. And then, circa 1995, suburban kids began doing the killing! Of course, there had been “nice” young murderers before, such as Lizzy Borden, Caril Fugate, Leopold and Loeb, and Brenda Spence (who shot up an elementary school in 1979) — but since they didn’t drink Mountain Dew, they didn’t count. And there haven’t been any school shootings in America for the past few years. But we should still consider young spree killers to be a major danger to our nation — because a kid threatened Rebekkah. (Which may or may not have anything to do with Rebekkah not being okay with gayness, or witnessing the acts which would shame Bornean sailors.)
Anyway, here’s Doug’s “culpability flow chart,” which shows who’s to blame for the “slide into violence of our nation’s youth” (presumably, in order of ascending guilt):
4. “Rogue,” “sleepy,” “scurrilous,” “inept” public school teachers and administrators. They are first on the list because the kid who told Rebekkah he was going “pop a cap” in her “a**” was allowed back to school after a ten-day suspension. Doug said that the kid “has charges pending” against him, so presumably the police are still investigating — when they tell Doug that they don’t feel the case warrants an arrest, I imagine they will be on the flow chart too.
3. The entertainment industry.
The media is clearly blameworthy for our national rise in violent crime.
Of course it is.
2. I Accuse Their Parents
Parents: your obsessions over money, your mistress, your tan, and hanging out with your time-consuming-soap-opera-addicted-Jerry Springer-devotee-friends has helped create a moral black hole in your offspring?s head ? a hole that has been filled by Grand Theft Auto, Snoop Dog, Eminem and Larry Flynt.
1. And at the top of the list: bratty kids who react to mild slights by becoming mass murderers.
Wannabe-big-pimping-young-trouble-maker, your actions are principally your choice and thus your fault. In this postmodern land of Montel, blame is being passed around by the youth and their enabling counselors like a big doobie at a Molly Hatchet concert. Listen up, teenage wasteland. Whether mummy didn?t pay enough attention to you during your 1st grade gymnastics routine or if Simon Cowell just dusted you at the American Idol try-outs, nothing forces you to kill your friends at school during recess.
Yeah, kids frequently become spree killers because rap music and trashy TV makes it sound so cool.
Of course, case studies show that for spree killers in general, “The most significant influence on their outbursts appears to have been some form of mental illness. One-third had histories of violence and half had made threats. Most attacks were the result of a build-up over time of rage and the effects of depression, and more than half were able to purchase guns easily.”
Regarding school killers in specific: “Most preferred (and somehow acquired) semiautomatics. Almost half had shown some evidence of mental disturbance, including delusions and hallucinations.”
So, the combination of mentally ill kids and guns is a dangerous one. I’d suggest the solution to the grave threat posed by killer kids is: get mental health treatment for young people who appear to be having emotional problems, and do something about the ready availability of guns. But Doug has a different idea: Telling kids to “just say no to killing sprees,” and instead practice abstinence and responsibility. Um, okay.
My ClashPoint is this: Hey, rebel youth! You want to rebel? You really want to tick people off? You really want to go against the flow? Stem the tide? Why not rebel by getting a life, and then taking that life seriously? How about raging against the machine by being abstinent, by taking the role of your mind seriously, by taking good care of your body, by taking responsibility, by rejecting passivity and by leading courageously? That?ll hack people off. That?ll make you stand out like Dennis Rodman in a Japanese girls school. Yeah, that?s it. Blow off all goofy parents and bogus authority figures. Blow off bloated teachers. Spit on the entertainment industry and rebel towards character, faith and virtue. And you, my young James Dean, just might keep us from doing a national rewind to Columbine. That?s right: you can do it!
I know that if I were a teen who was planning on rebelling against authority by shooting a couple dozen of my classmates and then killing myself, Doug’s message would have stopped me in my tracks. Thanks, Doug!
Permalink
Mar
7
Posted at 13:45 by Sadly, No!
Could we, as a nation, come together and demand that Republicans at least pretend to be interested in governing for a set minimum after taking office before they set aside massive blocks of time for hobbies like fake ranching or mentoring the buff?
The state of Caulifornia, deemed so fiscally hopeless it cried out for a Recall, has apparently undergone a miraculous and thorough recovery. That can be the only explanation the Gropenfuhrer suddenly has enough spare time to edit two muscle mags.
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has accepted a new role for his busy schedule, that of executive editor of “Muscle & Fitness” and “Flex” magazines … The former Mr. Universe, who took office in November with California engulfed in fiscal crisis, will officially announce his new job on Saturday when he attends the annual Arnold Fitness Weekend in Columbus, Ohio, said spokesman Rob Stutzman. “He has clearly demonstrated that he is fully engaged with the problems facing the state but he is going to continue certain relationships,” Stutzman told reporters in a conference call.
Sorry, Fleischer-like spokesbot, but until the Gropenfuhrer delivers on his election promise to investigate multiple claims he used women for power-squeezing apparatus, he simply does not have the time to throw on his old leopard-print banana sock and hit the bodybuilding circuit again. He did, after all, cite the heavy demands of governing as the main reason he was cancelling delaying an investigation: “right now, I’m focusing on this [solving fiscal problems] and there is no investigation.”
(As we all know, it’s not the raw poundage of humanity one assaults that’ll burn your ass but the reps.) And say, wouldn’t it be nice if the conservative Sex Police diverted resources from their unremitting dragnet on consenting adults in loving, same-sex relationships to an elected leader credibly accused of serial, often violent, assault and harassment of women? (By credibly, I refer to women not coached by and on Boss Scaife’s gargantuan payroll for right wing dirty tricksters.)
As the state faces a multibillion budget shortfall, Stutzman said the governor would only spend a nominal amount of time as executive editor of the publications, where he will attempt to promote healthy lifestyles
I guess it all depends on how many fatties they’re passing around that day. Isn’t it odd that President Butch’s War on Steroids, his latest diversion from his chair-kicking 98-pound weakling of an economy and bogus pre-emptive war has intensified the Barry Bonds witchhunt but left Arnold the Bawd relatively unscathed? I’m sure Rethug apologists will cry out that it’s a stretch to associate steroid use with the pristine sport of bodybuilding, but going by some brutal closeups, if the stories are true that one side effect is the testicles receding into the body, Arnie’s former ‘nads are resting comfortably in his eye sockets.
[T]he magazines have agreed to donate $250,000 (135,500 pounds) annually to the governor’s Council on Physical Fitness.
Is it being sent in coin so the Gropenfuhrer’s counting squad can work their lats?
Permalink
Mar
7
Posted at 11:44 by Sadly, No!
Sadly, No!’s other best friend, young Kyle “Pugsly” Williams, is now channeling the spirit of Criswell (“Remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future”), and making astounding psychic predictions:
I’m predicting that John Kerry is going to lose, and he’s definitely not going to lose by election 2000 margins. There are many reasons why we won’t see a President Kerry:
First, he’s not a very attractive guy.
Well, not attractive to Kyle, who goes more for the Rush Limbaugh type. But arguably more attractive THAN Kyle (and Kerry has at least graduated from high school, which most woman like in a man).
Furthermore, the guy is boring. As Peggy Noonan wrote, “When he speaks ? Mr. Kerry is boring.”
Well, if Peggy says it, it must be true. (We will refrain from mentioning the scientific finding that it takes one to know one.)
Kyle’s second reason that Bush will win is that Kerry has missed a lot of Senate votes this year, and before that, he voted for a lot of stuff over lots of years. Sometimes he even voted for things that, over time, have proven to be not-so-hot, like “No Child But Kyle Left Behind,” and so Kerry speaks out against them. Which to Kyle is a bad thing, because he feels that a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of a great President.
Point three is that Kerry “doesn’t campaign on any real issues” except that Bush sucks. Some may say that’s the only issue he needs, but they aren’t Kyle Williams, who wants a candidate who will outlaw gay marriage while wearing a form-fitting flight suit. Now THAT’s a real issue.
Fourth, the Kerry campaign offers no optimism. Instead of simply saying, “America has been doing well, but I think we can do better,” Kerry continually downplays our achievements and generally lies about the economy and unemployment ? it’s a very pessimistic view of life.
A doom and gloom, “sky is falling” attitude has never been accepted by Americans. We are an optimistic people.
Yes, Americans are an optimistic people who want to look for a pony in the wastes of the Bush Administration for four more years.
We are a cheerful, sunny-tempered, gullible people who walk around with our fingers in our ears signing “la la la, I can’t hear you” when people try to tell us about the economy, unemployment, the deficit, the overextended military, and the fact that we can’t save social security by mining for gold on Mars.
And because Americans don’t want to hear that the sky is falling, even if it fell on some of their fellow citizens and took away their jobs, they will vote for Bush. Well, the ones with that can-do attitude which comes from billions in the bank and a president who gives them tax cuts will vote for him.
Lastly, because of Kerry’s campaign being anti-Bush, they are overflowing with hate-filled rage against the GOP and the current president. The campaign offers no hope, no assurance of getting through these times; rather, they attack the president, blaming him for everything that has gone wrong since he took office.
Well, everything the president has DONE wrong since he took office.
And I’d say that the hope offered to those people overflowing with hate-filled rage is that if Kerry is elected, then Bush won’t be President anymore. And that’s certainly chunky chicken with rice soup for the soul during these trying times.
Permalink
Mar
7
Posted at 10:48 by Sadly, No!
Sadly, No!’s bestest friend Amber has a new column out. It’s about how Martha Stewart was convicted of a crime she didn’t even commit. (Attempted insider trading? Now honesty, what is that? Do they give out a Nobel Prize for attempted chemistry? Do they?)
Well, as you know, Martha was actually convicted of lying to authorities, conspiracy, and obstruction of justice. But Amber considers the whole thing to be a witch hunt, and is outraged that Martha is being burned at the stake when it’s clear that Martha is not made of wood, and does not weigh the same as a duck.
Amber says:
The government has no business regulating ?insider trading? in the first place ? it is something the market itself can regulate on its own. The scandal around her is ridiculous ? more ridiculous that she is going to jail over it.
Hmm, so if Corporate insiders and their friends and family members are allowed to use confidential information about significant corporate developments in order to make profits that aren’t possible for non-insiders (or to avoid losses while the other investors lose their shirts), the market will regulate itself when “regular folks” refuse to invest in the securities market anymore, the stock market crashes, the insiders all jump from skyscraper windows, we have an economic depression, but then there’s a war, the economy picks up, and everybody is happy again. Okay, works for me.
And it is kind of astounding that Martha could do jail time for lying, when so many other people are guilty of the same thing. But maybe she will get her conviction overturned like Oliver North did — I wonder if Sean Hannity would spearhead the effort to pardon Martha if Amber asked him to.
I?ve avoided writing on this topic, because the witch-hunt against Stewart is too unbearable for me to handle. This case is evidence of what Ayn Rand called a hatred of the good for being good. Stewart is not being dragged through this hell because of her vices but because of her virtues.
Aw, poor Amber — I guess seeing an objectivist heroine being brought down this way is terribly traumatic for her, especially since Martha will probably turn to lesbianism while in prison. If only Seb were around to help Amber through this trying time.
Permalink
Mar
6
Posted at 19:05 by Sadly, No!
Yes, we said we’d be around but too busy to post. And we were (and will be going away on Monday) — until this was delivered to Amber Pawlik’s inbox:
From: [@scim.net]
Subject: Amber.pawlik, upgrade your Peni$! Mu
Date: Sat, 06 Mar 2004 18:59:21 +0000
To: Amber.pawlik
Amber, say it ain’t so!
Permalink
Mar
6
Posted at 12:06 by Sadly, No!
It seems the Plame grand jury has requsted all kinds of things, to include Air Force One phone records and the guest list for a party honoring Gerald Ford. How does the White House feel about it all?
White House officials said that neither Bush nor Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. had forbidden aides called by the grand jury from invoking the Fifth Amendment.
Just in case anyone was, you know, guilty, or wanted to take the fall for somebody who was guilty but vital to our War on Terror and John Kerry.
Permalink
Mar
6
Posted at 9:15 by Sadly, No!
Okay, I just spent some time on Google and learned how to do indents with Movable Type (with Radio User, you just push a button and they appear).
I apologize for the earlier, hard-to-read italics used instead of indents, and now that I know the secret, I won’t do it again. Like I said, this will be a learning experience for us all.
And yes, we all miss Seb a lot right now.
Permalink
Mar
6
Posted at 8:12 by Sadly, No!
Spike TV finally comes up with a program for the man who is sick and tired of being demeaned by “SpongeBob SquarePants” and “Dora the Explorer”.
A television producer tired of seeing conservatives portrayed as zealots and “boobs” has helped create a new animated series featuring a journalist “passionate about the right-wing cause.”
“This Just In,” debuting March 14 on Spike TV at 10:30 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, will feature freelance columnist Brian Newport, tabbed as a Matt Drudge-like figure who “says what everybody’s thinking” with “no filter.”
A cartoon where the main character is Matt Drudge-like Rush Limbaugh? Sign me up for that!
The cartoon character, according to Spike TV, notably won an award for a column titled “If Ann Coulter is a man, then I don’t want to be straight!”
Well, since Matt isn’t straight, I guess we have our answer as to Ann’s gender.
Newport, in his late twenties, hangs out with buddies Craig Tindle, a “house-husband,” and Jimmy Townhouse, a teacher, described as Newport’s best friend and a moderate Democrat who “constantly has to apologize for his pal’s occasionally over-the-top opinions and actions,” according to a description on the Spike TV website.
The lead character, says Spike TV, is “outspoken, opinionated, unabashedly politically conservative and quick to crack an inappropriate joke.” Newport “is both the center of the hurricane and the cause of it. A speak first, think second, apologize eventually kind of guy … you can always count on Newport to either say what everybody’s thinking, or what everybody wishes he wouldn’t say at all.”
But with that description, doesn’t Newport come off as somewhat of a “boob,” cast in contrast to the refined sensibilities of his “moderate Democrat” friend?
No, says Marmel, “the jokes fall where they fall.”
“The only people who think this guy is a boob are the people who are boobs on the other side of the equation,” he said.
Let me get this straight: Newport “is quick to crack an inappropriate joke.” He is “the cause” of the hurricane. “A speak first, think second” kind of guy whose friends are always having to apologize for him. But the only ones who think he’s a boob are the liberal boobs — to everybody else, Newport is a breath of fresh air, a hero who “says what everybody’s thinking,” thus sparing them the effort of having to make articulate noises.
So, this cartoon takes place in an alternative universe where loudmouthed, rude, bombastic, jerks are admired by all (except boobs). The Fox News universe.
Permalink
Mar
5
Posted at 8:03 by Sadly, No!
Ten Reasons to Hate Sean Hannity
That’s the title of a TechCentralStation column by some guy. His thesis is that since Sean Hannity invited Utah Democratic Party Chairman Donald Dunn on the radio after Dunn said that Hannity was “a pimp for the GOP,” that if only he [the guy] said mean things about Sean, then maybe Sean would invite him on his radio show, and he could plug his book and people might remember his name. But of course, the guy loves Sean way too much to actually say anything bad about him, so his top two reasons to hate the handsome, witty, and studly Sean are
(1) Sean’s books sell more copies than mine
(2) Sean gave my daughter VD.
Okay, his real second reason was something like “Sean never invites me to plug my book on his show, and never invites me to sleepovers at his house.”
The guy concludes his piece with:
I will leave it up to you to come up with the other eight reasons — and you are free to call up and ask a Democrat friend to help you out with your list, if you prefer.
So, I’m proposing one of those wildly popular Sadly, No! contests, where you come up with some reasons to hate Sean Hannity.
Here are a few I thought up:
1. Because his hair looks like the evil, possessed hair that murdered people on that Simpson’s Halloween ep.
2. He wrote a book called Deliver Us from Evil : Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism.
3. “Hannitize.” ‘Nuff said.
4. Sean’s radio site is currently running a poll asking “Is God on America’s Side?” Your choices are “yes” or “no.” (Interestingly enough, right now, with 235,969 votes, the results are running 50/50 — I suspect this means that some naughty liberals are messing with Sean’s poll.)
5. I just hate him, okay?
Anyway, here’s your chance to help out that nameless TechHappyTime Station guy to complete his list of ten reasons to hate Sean, AND win a cool prize for yourself (which Mr. No! will give you when he gets back). So, enter now. Operators are standing by.
Permalink
Mar
5
Posted at 4:43 by Sadly, No!
Hi. I just wanted to see if this works. If it doesn’t, then shooting Seb was all a waste of time.
Anyway, while no one can ever replace Mr. No!, I will do my best over the next month or so while he is away to make you really miss him. It will be a growing experience for us all.
–s.z.
Permalink
Mar
4
Posted at 13:49 by Sadly, No!
Last month, we found ourselves taking an unexpected and unannounced break from the demanding work that is posting to Sadly, No! because of an undisclosed medical condition. We’d hoped our hospital stay, however brief it turned out to be, would be sufficient.
Sadly, No!
Unfortunately, we will soon require more quality hospital time. Unfortunatelier, we will be away much longer this time around. (It’s hard to say exactly how long, but it’s likely to be a month or so.) However, we would not think of abandoning you for so long. Doing so would quite obviously have very serious (and harmful) effects on a number of people, especially the loyal Frederick, who might then be forced to spend more time with his family, or, horror of horrors, working.
Which is why we’ve arranged for a trio of guest bloggers to keep you entertained. They are (in alphabetical order:)
Blair, a friend of S,N! and our most reliable source of interesting news stories for posts. Blair was delighted when we asked if he would help while we are away, responding to our email with:
I will be [away] from March 11-15, but otherwise I will be glad to try to post things of interest just so you will shut the fuck up and leave me
alone.
Thanks Blair — you’re a real pal!
Regular commentor and Amber groupie Peanut, whose witty observations on life and politics have earned her millions of fans, if you count the multiple personalities of Meghan Cox-Gurdon and the email correspondents of Andrew Sullivan.
s.z. from World O’Crap, who is no stranger to anyone with an internet connection. She didn’t just agree to help, she promised to make it exciting:
I plan to make it my mission to get the Secret Service interested in you while you’re away. I’ll tell you more about that later.
How could we say no to that?
Of course, handing things over to these three is a bit like the old and overweight [not that we're either of course] shortstop on your local softball team telling you he’s leaving and that he’s gotten Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez to sub for him while he’s away. You may like your regular shortstop, but it should be obvious you’ll do more than fine with the replacements. We ask that you treat them (well, two of them at least) like the ladies Amber Pawlik strives to be, and we look forward to going back to our gratuitous cheap shots and sophomoric jokes once we return.
We’ll be on the road until tomorrow, and technically around this weekend though otherwise preoccupied. And remember, starting next week this will no longer be your father’s Sadly, No! Instead, it will be our myrmidons’ Sadly, No!
Thanks, and see you soon.
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