You Are Dumb - Post-Millennial Judgment and Retribution for the Information Age

Delusioniehl

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 22:29:14 -0500

Wingnuts, 28 August 2008

Memo to Dan Riehl: YOU ARE FINALLY DUMB.

Well, actually, I'm guessing you were always dumb and will always be dumb. I just can't believe it's taken me this long to get around to you. But both my own search and Google says I haven't, and that's good enough for me. Dan Riehl is the proprietor of the unfortunately-named Riehl World View, a right-wing blog I often see referenced on left-wing blogs as an example of a right-wing blog that shows how hilariously stupid right-wing blogs can be.

This week, in honor of his chosen party's rampant human rights abuses over the past four years, Dan Riehl decided to pick up a metaphor on the battlefield, declare it an enemy combatant, pack it in a plane, ship it off to Eastern Europe, and torture it until it goes insane and confesses to the Kennedy assassination. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"A series of events are coming together to create, perhaps not a perfect storm, but certainly in-climate weather for Barack Obama given that he hoped to capture lightening in a bottle with a rhetorical whirlwind Thursday night at Invesco Stadium."

That's the FIRST SENTENCE. Let's run the numbers. One misspelling. One not having the slightest fucking clue what the actual word is. Seriously. "In-climate weather?" Not only is that not the word, it's completely redundant. What exactly would the weather be that's OUT of the climate? Some kind of outer-space hail? Oh, and one reference to a shit-ass movie. All in service of a version of events so far from reality it should be wearing a gold vest and a goatee.*

"Hillary Clinton, who endorsed an agenda last night in Denver which included at least slight personal praise for John McCain, yet yielded no such thing for Barack Obama. The second big wave to crash into him is coming tomorrow with Hillary's, even if sometimes inappropriately engorged, lessor half."

Clearly, Riehl didn't read any transcripts of Hillary's speech - he just extrapolated her primary behavior into the future. And speaking of predicting the future, I am typing this while Bill Clinton is speaking. Normally I wouldn't bother, but I wanted to see if there was any way a nitpicking parser could interpret Bubba's words in a way favorable to Riehl's predictions, and, um, no. There isn't. Sorry, but you're going to have to borrow a magnetic poetry set from Megyn Kelly so you can change all the words.

But the joy of Dan Riehl is not in his being wrong, like when he praises John McCain's masterful plan to announce his VP candidate on Friday. It's in the way he likes to pretend to be an erudite pundit. He's like a six-year-old kid pretending to be Superman. He's got the towel around his neck and his underwear over his pants, but will he jump off the roof, thinking he can fly?

"If I might slip my metaphor here, one almost senses John McCain and, to some extent, the Clintons are playing Chess while Obama is left to play Checkers - jumping up on to a podium so some number of Democrats can crown him king, thereby feeding into the very celebrity meme McCain has been beating him up with for weeks... And to think, this was his big chance to shine. All that's needed now is a cloud burst Thursday night, which, if nothing else, would at least hide the tears generated as a result."

Oooh, that's gotta hurt. Crotch-first into a poison ivy hedge. And the neighbor's dog is peeing on him. First of all, never pick up a second metaphor after you've impaled yourself on the first one. It won't help. Second, in the world we live in, the one that Dan Riehl views through a two-way funhouse mirror, the celebrity ads weren't a beating, they were a full-on nerd slapfight, complete with WINDMILL PUNCH. People stopped to watch, yeah, but unless they were the nerd's best friends, they didn't come away impressed.

I don't know what to make of Riehl's fantasy of Obama standing in the rain, crying. I can only assume that in his formative years, a just-dumped Riehl tried to recreate the Peter Gabriel scene from Say Anything, only to have all ten of the C-cell batteries in his boom box course through his body, causing the irreparable brain damage and concurrent grasp of imagery that would turn him, years later, into a wingnut blogger.

*I -wasn't- trying to see how many columns in a row I could work a Trek reference into, but now that I've noticed it's happening, it's difficult to stop.

What They're Up Against

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 21:32:42 -0500

Election 2008, 27 August 2008

Memo to Karl Rove, Richard Cohen, and Megyn Kelly: YOU ARE DUMB.

I haven't really been paying much attention to the Democratic convention this week. With the Republicans invading my home turf next week, I need a bit of a political buffer zone. But I do need to give a certain amount of attention to Michelle Obama's speech on Monday. From all accounts, the Obama campaign put a great deal of care and effort into presenting the presumptive future First Lady in the best possible light and counteracting the wildly xenophobic right-wing propaganda from the primaries that she's some kind of raging militant.

And I hope, today, that they realize just how little anyone cares about that effort. And on the off chance they don't, allow me to helpfully provide a Michelle Obama Speech Reaction edition of IDIOTS SAY THE DAMNDEST THINGS!

"I don’t think she did too well on saying I love America. That wasn’t adequate enough because, look, people are gonna hear that, and then those that have paid attention to her earlier comments are gonna try and square those two off." - Karl Rove, FOX News.

Assuming the human race survives and America regains its sanity, we're going to look back on this decade and wonder who the fuck it was that a news organization would pay Karl Dograping Rove to tell the viewers whether Michelle Obama demonstrated enough love for America. Karl Rove hates America. And it's not even an honest hate like Osama bin Laden's hatred of America. Karl Rove hates America in a sick, corrupt, selfish manner. He doesn't even have enough respect for America to bomb it. He just tunneled his way to the inside and started eating, like a fat fucking earwig. It must be tricky, gauging Michelle Obama's patriotism while you employ an army of Constitution-fucking Bush administration lawyers to keep your turd-blossoming ass free of a minimum-security prison.

"Last night, she gave the standard “Log Cabin” speech expected of nearly all American public figures -- born poor, raised in faith, etc. -- with nary a mention of race. It was a speech designed to reassure, but it did not do that at all. Politics can sometimes be ugly. In this case, we witnessed how a dynamic woman with a razor-sharp intellect had -- for the moment -- been lobotomized." - Richard Cohen, professional dickwad, Washington Post.

Oh, look, it's our good buddy Richard Cohen, last seen in these spaces lamenting how people think Stephen Colbert is funny and he isn't. Well, congratulations, Dick, because this was fucking hilarious. Worthy of Joseph Heller. Michelle Obama, portrayed as an angry black woman for the entire calendar year of 2008, gives a speech in which she doesn't rail against "whitey", espouse black militant theology, or wear a dashiki, and here comes Richard Cohen to immediately label her as inauthentic, overcautious, and LOBOTOMIZED.

I really hope the Obamas don't spend too much time finding that sweet spot where they don't intimidate racists while still pleasing media barnacles like Cohen, because that sweet spot is like Bigfoot, Jesus, and Richard Cohen's dignity. It doesn't fucking exist, and any time you spend searching for it is time you could better spend elsewhere. You cannot win with these people. It's the journalistic equivalent of the Kobayashi Maru.

"Do you think that, you know, her saying that she loves America, that she loves this country, is going to do it for those who questioned her patriotism? Because she said something -- what she said was, and I wrote it down, was, 'The world as it is just won't do.' If you replace 'world' with 'country,' you're back to the same debate, arguably, that you have been having about Michelle Obama's feelings about this country. Did she give her critics any fodder with that comment?" - Megyn Kelly, Fox News

And here comes Megyn Kelly, playing the role of three more Romulan ships in our Kobayashi Maru analogy. Even if you go over every single word for hidden meanings, exploitable loopholes, and potential misunderstandings, along comes Fox News to speculate on how unpatriotic it would have been if you'd said something completely different. But seriously, Megyn, if that's your REAL gratuitously-devoweled name, why stop there?

I mean, if you replace the word "she" with "I", "critics" with "boss", "fodder" with "head", and the word "comment" with "job application", you could argue that Megyn Kelley got her job by sucking off Rupert Murdoch. Which gets you back to the same debate, arguably, that we've been having over whether the entire on-air staff of Fox News, from Brit Hume to Steve Doocy, are complete and utter whores, or if they'd do it even if they weren't getting paid.

Let's all just cross our fingers that if Obama didn't know who his enemies were before this week, he certainly does now, and treats them with every last bit of plausibly-deniable contempt these wormhumpers deserve.

The Lighter Side

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 19:59:32 -0500

Election 2008, 26 August 2008

Memo to liberal troublemakers: YOU ARE ZANY.

As we head into the major party conventions this week and next, I thought now would be a great time to step back and have a little perspective. There's so much sturm und drang around elections - so much angst, ennui, and other foreign-sounding words that it's good to take a deep breath every once in a while and laugh about the things we've gotten so worked up over in the past.

Like electronic voting machines. Those liberals were so up in arms! The magical computer fairies are disenfranchising people! Ooooh, spooky! Even the company's name was spooky. DIEBOLD. It's got "DIE" right in it! Of course, everyone knows that Bush won his second term fair and square, and that all that talk of lost or stolen votes was just Luddite paranoia. And when people go to their voting booths this November, they can be safe and sure that their votes for war hero John McCain will get safely recorded.

Heck, Diebold doesn't even -exist- anymore. They changed their name to Premier Election Solutions, I assume because their solutions for elections are so premiere. How premiere? Just look at this glowing praise from the respected Washington Post newspaper. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"The problem was identified after complaints from Ohio elections officials following the March primary there, but the logic error that is the root of the problem has been part of the software for 10 years, said Chris Riggall, a spokesman for Premier Election Solutions."

See? Sure, there was a logic error in the software, and sure, they've admitted to it after denying it for years, but look how long it's been there! Ten years! I'm sure if there was some kind of logic error in the last ten years of major elections, it would have revealed itself in some way in the results of elections in key battleground states like Ohio. Oh, and I'm pretty sure that when Diebold became Premier, Chris Riggall legally changed his name to Chris Riggnone, so I expect to see a correction in tomorrow's Post.

OK, that sounds bad, but still, can't we all look back and laugh at the people who said electronic voting machines without a paper trail were a bad idea? I mean, they WERE liberals. Plus, the president of Premier nee Diebold himself said that "We are indeed distressed that our previous analysis of this issue was in error." See? He's distressed. And they sent out a recommended action list to the 1,750 jurisdictions that use the logically flawed voting machines.

Among the recommendations? Well, they include printing up "No, Really" stickers to hand out to people along with the "I Voted" stickers; hiring Tom Cruise's autistic brother to count the votes as they happen; and making sure that if Captain Kirk shows up to vote, he's not allowed to vote against Proposition M-5, which demands that all electronic voting machine votes be recorded correctly.

And with these measures in place, Premier has assured election officials that an accurate count is assured for this November's election. And why wouldn't we believe them? It's not like they have a record of incompetence, ass-covering, and out-and-out lying stretching back a decade or anything.

So why stress out? Just sit back and relax. Forget about all that hard news and read something light and trivial. You know, like a Maureen Dowd column or the scroll at the bottom of the screen on Fox News. The election will take care of itself, and all your silly fretting and caring will seem like your childish Joey Lawrence infatuation in retrospect. You just need some perspective.

Mandatory

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 06:57:46 -0500

Election 2008, 25 August 2008

Memo to Joe Biden: YOU ARE... OKAY.

This column was, of course, inevitable. Whenever Obama picked his VP, I knew I was going to be following up the announcement with the kind of quick, savvy political analysis that You Are Dumb Dot Net is famous for. And it turns out it's Joe Biden. Yay? Certainly, this won't be the seething, rage-filled, profanity-laced diatribe you'd have seen if Obama had picked Evan Fucking Bayh. Jesus, that would have been a mess.

As any casual searcher of the archives knows, I am not, and have never been, a member of the Joe Biden Fan Club. Which, before yesterday, was three old dudes in a booth at a Perkins in Dover. My biggest problem has been his quickness to take up arms and be on the outside of the Democrats' traditional circular firing squad. Whenever a Democrat has dared to step outside the narrow ideological trench between 1960's Republican and Bill Clinton, Joe Biden has been there to push them back into line.

Biden is also a complete and utter whore for the credit card industry. You see, they're all based in Delaware, because of Delaware's legal philosophy that credit card companies can do whatever the hell they want and not pay any taxes. As a senator from Delaware, Biden is either willingly at their beck and call, or inexorably forced to be at their beck and call. The awful bankruptcy bill from a couple of years ago? Biden loved it, because the credit card companies wrote it.

I don't give two shits about the plagiarism. Even at the time, I couldn't give two shits about his patronizing "clean, articulate" comments about Obama. And if Obama could get over them, any outrage I could manufacture about it now would be completely inappropriate. And it turns out that during the primary, he was pulling a Hillary, talking down Obama and complimenting McCain. Because it was the Biden campaign, nobody noticed, but now the quotes are surfacing. Sigh. But despite all that, I'm still up on Joe Biden right now. And you know why? ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"This is bullshit. This is malarkey. This is outrageous. Outrageous for the president of the United States to go to a foreign country, sit in the Knesset ... and make this kind of ridiculous statement." - Joe Biden, May 2008, responding to Dubya's clumsy attempt to tag Obama as a Hitler-loving appeasement-phile.

Joe Biden, using the word "bullshit" to describe something that was, in fact, bullshit. Joe Biden, utilizing the single most woefully underutilized word in political discourse today. Joe Biden, dropping the BS-bomb right where it belongs, on Bush's pointy, empty head. If Obama picked Joe Biden because Joe Biden is willing and able to call BULLSHIT when he sees it, then I can't support this choice more, because there's already been a steady stream of the stuff flowing out of the back of the Straight Talk Express, and I was worried Obama was serious when he said he'd trust in the American people to see through it and make the right decision.

And in case I needed any more confirmation that I was supposed to be happy with this choice, let's turn to an expert in the political field and see what he thinks.

"It seems that his rhetoric has been around change, there needs to be change in Washington and he has used for his political advantage this concept of the need for Washington outsiders. Then when he has one of his first big decisions, he chooses the consummate Washington insider, which I think is noteworthy.[General Petraeus is} an outstanding leader and somebody who would better represent the mainstream of the country." -Tim Pawlenty

Thanks, Timmeh! Who better to give Obama advice on a VP pick than someone on McCain's short bus for veep? That's awesome. I'm sure all you want to do is help Obama be the best candidate he can be. Why are we listening to you again? And why are you recommending Dave Petraeus, Bush administration shill, for Obama's VP? Petraeus just got caught giving a blurb to a Christian chaplain's book, saying it "should be in every rucksack for those times when soldiers need spiritual energy". Apparently, Dave Petraeus believes there are no atheist rucksacks in foxholes.

Well, if Tim Pawlenty really thinks Joe Biden is a bad choice, and isn't just saying it to help keep John McCain semi-erect in the polls, then there go the last of my reservations about Biden. Plus it actually presents the first ever up-side to McCain picking Timmeh as his VP - the Biden-Pawlenty debate, which I will Tivo just so I can watch the beating over and over again in slow motion.

Feet Bigger Than Brains

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 22:00:43 -0500

Paranormal, 22 August 2008

Memo to Search For Bigfoot, Inc.: YOU ARE DUMB.

Do I even need to keep writing? Is it not self-evident that a "company" devoted to Sasquatch-hunting is inherently stupid? Could I perhaps just stop here, bag it, and rest comfortably in the knowledge that my astute readership knows exactly what I mean?

I could. But that takes the fun out of it. The devil, as they say, lives at 666 Details Lane, Details, DT. And the details of this week's Great Sasquatch Corpse story are devilish indeed. Devilishly stupid, that is. By now, you must have heard about the two gentlemen from Georgia who claimed to have found a dead Bigfoot. They held a press conference, then turned the frozen body over to the "scientists" at SFBI, who determined it was a gorilla suit in a block of ice.

Now, right there, that gives Search for Bigfoot, Inc. the highest starting value in the stupid finals. So how did they do on execution?

Well, according to news stories, SFBI paid "an undisclosed sum" to the Georgia pair for their story and the find. Without seeing it. Just based on their word that they found some Bigfoot roadkill. That's the kind of stark raving genius that you wouldn't even expect from people who hunt Sasquatch for a living. I mean, this can't be the first Sasquatch hoax they've encountered. I mean, EVERY Sasquatch they've encountered has been a hoax. Because Sasquatch doesn't exist.

But no. The Georgia boys got their money, and the Bigfoot hunters got a rubber gorilla suit. Which is my second-favorite part of the whole thing. What's my favorite part of the whole thing? The part where Steve Kulls, host of Squatchdetective Radio, attempts to salvage the scientific reputation of the Bigfoot hunting community by describing the events in a cold, impartial style he clearly learned from X-Files circa Season 2. Kulls, who claims to have had doubts from the beginning, gives us the moment of truth thusly: ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"On August 17th, 2008 Searching for Bigfoot Team Director of Field Operations, TJ Biscardi and myself, were up early to discover that some hair was now exposed. I extracted some from the alleged corpse and examined it and had some concerns. Bob Schmalzbach arrived and concurred. We burned said sample and said hair sample melted into a ball uncharacteristic of hair."

And, I'm guessing, with the kind of smell that made them wish it was a rotting Sasquatch after all. But wait, there's more!

"Within one hour we were able to see the partially exposed head, as I was now able to touch it, I was able to feel that it seemed mostly firm, but unusually hollow in one small section. This was yet another ominous sign. Within the next hour of thaw, a break appeared up near the feet area. As the team and I began examining this area near the feet, I observed the foot which looked unnatural, reached in and confirmed it was a rubber foot."

Unfortunately, his account stops before his painstaking description of "a long, toothed metal strip running parallel to the spine, unlike any previously described Sasquatch feature". But still, every word that IS there is redolent and dripping with the epic-ness of this epic fail.

What puzzled me from the get-go is this - where the hell does Searching For Bigfoot, Inc. get the funds to pay off hoaxsters? Do they have investors? They can't possibly be funding the entire operation from web ads for local Mexican restaurants and, I shit you not, thirty-dollar Bigfoot commemorative belt buckles. Is there some insane venture capitalist calling them angrily even as we read this? Or is he reassuring them, comforting them, explaining that when the tests came back and "the size of the DNA was consistent with human/ape DNA"*, they had no choice but to move forward?

I wish I knew. But until then, I'll have to console myself with the knowledge that once in a great while, stupidity and gullibility and superstitious fanaticism don't actually lead to financial success and powerful government positions. We take what we can get.

*I'm no forensic geneticist, but I'm pretty fucking sure that's not how DNA testing works, and maybe they should be checking the credentials of their scientists more thoroughly.

Back In The Saddleback Again

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 22:46:38 -0500

John McCain, 21 August 2008

Memo to John McCain: NO THEY DON'T.

In my ongoing and apparently increasingly necessary series on Reasons Not To Vote For John Fucking McCain Already, I would like to point out this little nugget of joy. As you may have heard, last Saturday, both presidential candidates appeared at a forum on faith at Rick Warren's Saddleback Theme Park, Gift Shoppe And Religious Experience.

Now, Rick Warren is seen as a moderate by the conventional wisdom, at least as evangelical Christians go. Of course the CW defines "moderate" as "anyone to the left of Dick Cheney and to the right of Joe Lieberman", so all Warren had to do to earn it was write a hugely popular self-help and not blame any natural disasters on the homos. Apparently being a moderate gives him the right to compel the two presidential candidates to visit his megachurch and answer a series of questions designed to determine to within one decimal place their exact godliness.

One of the questions was "At what point is a baby entitled to human rights?" Now, in a sane world, this sentence would have immediately caused all the cable news cameras covering the event to spontaneously combust. At ten words, that sentence is fully fifty percent dogwhistle-framing-code words by weight. First there's "point", which means there's a specific event, a demarcation, a hard and fast line at which the event occurs. Second, "baby", obviously. Third, "entitled". And fourth and fifth, "human rights". It's the kind of sentence you'd expect to find, with numerous misspellings, on a hand-lettered Operation Rescue sign. NOT MODERATE.

It's also an incredibly leading question, and John McCain knew exactly what it was leading to. And he was happy to oblige. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"At the moment of conception."

This is the point, by the way, that you should be stark raving fucking terrified of this old bastard occupying the Oval Office. John McCain just expressed his support for full and equal human rights for TWO CELLS, and the media is treating it like he won the fucking Super Bowl. It's full-on, naked, undisguised red meat to the embryo-fetishists, and it ought to be treated like the mind-blowing radical notion it is, not as the correct answer for a cheering crowd of purpose-driven fucktards.

Human rights for fertilized eggs. Think about it. That's not just an attack on abortion. It's an attack on contraception. It's an attack on stem cell research. It's an attack on miscarriage. It's taking the fetal personhood fight halfway up the fallopian tubes. And it's not based on science, or knowledge, or evidence. It's based on the raw superstition that conception is the point at which a human Christian soul is created. Since we're talking about an undifferentiated blastula here - fewer cells than you kill by idly scratching your balls - it has to be based on something intangible and mystical. Which should be an unacceptable basis for public policy, but, you know. Again. Sane world.

And fuck the "pandering" excuse. That's the McCain Hypnotoad Effect kicking in again. "He doesn't really believe it. He's just saying it to get elected. He won't actually govern that way." People said the same shit about Dubya eight years ago, and were wrong then and are wrong now. Since he's said everything at one point or another, there's no way to know what President McCain will do. Therefore it's prudent to at least plan for him living up to the worst of what he's said.And even if he is pandering, how is that better? Nobody panders to ME. I thought John Edwards was pandering to me for a while there in the primaries, but it turns out that was just afterglow and pillow talk. Where's my dogwhistle? Where's my secret code? Barack Obama's never, EVER gonna get to stand in a room full of scientists with John McCain and answer a question in a sly way that lets me know he'll be bombing the Creation Museum a week after Obama takes the oath of office. Even if he doesn't really mean it.

It's just one more example of how far out of whack everything is in American politics right now. As the country crumbles around our ankles, the populace casts its gaze upon the people in charge, every last one of them carrying sledgehammers. And as one, they point at Barack Obama and say "Oh yeah? Well, he doesn't wear a flag pin and kills babies*." And suddenly everyone's blaming anti-American baby-killers for $5/gallon milk and the foreclosure crisis. And it won't get any better once fertilized eggs have the right to vote.

*Keep an eye out for the words "Obama" and "infanticide" to start gaining the same kind of proximity as "Iraq" and "9/11".

Texas Stupidi-Tea

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 22:45:23 -0500

Environment, 19 August 2008
Memo to Bill Sali and Newt Gingrich: THANKS FOR KILLING US ALL.

One of the reasons I was so concerned with Operation: Immortality last week is that I figure there's a non-trivial chance we're all gonna die. And not in the "we're all gonna die someday" sense, but in the extinction of the human race kind of we're all gonna die. Or something close enough to it that it may as well count - the collapse of civilizations, the destruction of the biosphere, all of us huddled in the ruins of society looking for someplace to charge our iPods.

And if it happens, and someone offers me a giant laser to burn humanity's epitaph into the surface of our dead world, what I'll painstakingly spell out is this: WE LISTENED TO MORONS.

That's all it boils down to, really. There are smart people. They've spent their lives studying things. They're paid to figure shit out. People like NASA climatologist James Hansen, who I bet is setting up one hell of a bunker. Seriously, if you're living near James Hansen, bring that guy brownies and fruit baskets and shit, because once the seas start boiling and the wells start running dry, you're going to wish you were nicer to him.

But we don't listen to James Hansen. We listen to people like the horrible woman I caught on (liberal!) talk radio yesterday afternoon arguing that environmentalists hate children and pushing the Global Cooling bullshit talking point. And we listen to people like Bill Sali. Hell, we let people like Bill Sali WRITE OUR LAWS. Who is Bill Sali? He's one of Idaho's congressmen. He's a Republican. And he is too stupid to live. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"Congressman Sali informed us that a solution to the high price of gasoline was to make petroleum from 'all those trees in our forests.' He continued by saying there 'could be up to 40 barrels of oil' in a single tree. - A report from congressional candidate Byron Yankey. Lest you think Yankey is Yankeying our chain, the fine folks at ThinkProgress found this from Sali two years ago: "Forty percent of the mass of every tree in the forest is crude oil."

For the record, and you cannot imagine how bitter I am at even sort of having to mention this - there is no oil in trees. None. Not forty barrels, not forty percent. There's no fucking petroleum in trees, and if you're caught thinking that there is, you should be sent back to Remedial Congress. Of course, first we'd have to MAKE a Remedial Congress, for all the special needs senators and congressmen, where they can name parks and pass proclamations and name their fries after freedom while the proper Congress goes about setting public policy.

The most charitable interpretation of Sali's comments is that someone, somewhere, told Sali that if we can ever figure out how to turn wood cellulose into ethanol, we could get forty somethings out of a big tree. And he keeps saying it, differently each time, like a masturbatory game of "Telephone". And if I were a congressman and in a position where THAT was the best thing anyone could say about me, I'd admit to cheating on my wife with a dead goat just to change the subject.

The only thing worse than stupid people being stupid is stupid people being deliberately stupid to discredit the good ideas of smart people. Which brings us to Newt Gingrich and the whole "inflate your tires" thing. In a just world, any son of a bitch going on television and mocking the effects of proper tire pressure on gas mileage should be set on fire. It sounds harsh, I know, but the only way you're going to keep Newt Gingrich and his ilk from appearing on television is to make them hideously scarred lumps of screaming flesh that the anchorpeople and pundits can't bear to look at. Because saying shit like this doesn't get them kicked off:

"Well, I got a very funny e-mail from a retired military officer in Tampa who pointed out that most tire inflation is done at service stations and you pay for it. And it’s actually a higher profit margin than selling gasoline. So Sen. Obama was urging you to go out and enrich Big Oil by inflating your tires instead of buying gas."

That doesn't even work as a joke. When you put a quarter in the air machine, that quarter does not actually pass through a series of tubes and land in a big pile in Exxon-Mobil's "money room". The gas station on the corner is not Big Oil. The guy behind the counter isn't getting rich off four buck a gallon gas. And what's this "instead of gasoline" bullshit? Nobody's saying you can run your car on tire air. That'd be crazy, since we all know they run on LIQUID TREES.

But by all means, keep listening to stupid people. Keep making sure there's a stupid person sitting across from a smart person for "balance". And we'll all laugh at the funny dark man with his fully inflated tires as we ride off the edge of the cliff in our Hummers. And the last thing we'll hear, as we dive headlong into the Abyss, is Rush Limbaugh saying "Global Cooling!".

Urban Redevelopment In Huffington

Sun, 17 Aug 2008 22:46:26 -0500

Internet, 18 August 2008
Memo to the Huffington Post: YOU ARE DUMB.

I realize it's entirely possible I'm late to the game on this. Since it began, I've largely known the Huffington Post by its reputation and ontological definition. A large group blog started by liberal spokeswoman and Zsa Zsa impersonator Arianna Huffington. Occasionally I would follow a link there, but I never actually read it myself. Until recently.

And honestly, even looking at the front page, you might not notice the true face of the Huffington Post. There's world news, politics, some Olympics news, and a regular stream of slightly left-of-center commentary. Unfortunately, the Huffington Post is also the first major new-media venture to follow in the footsteps of cable news and fulfill the 24/7 prophecy. Once you have a certain amount of space to fill, twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, you will inevitably produce piles of vapid, stupid crap to fill that space and feed the imagined maw of the imagined growing readership. And once I subscribed to the HuffPost's RSS feed, I saw the horrible truth. The Huffington Post has embraced Sturgeon's Law so thoroughly they'll never get the stains out of their pantsuit.

Subscribing to the full RSS feed of the site left me with many questions, but foremost among those questions was this conundrum: where are all of these naked women coming from? I'm not saying I don't like titties. I'm just saying that when I subscribe to a feed marked "News", I expect to see news. Not an astonishing array of pointless celebrity stories illustrated with large JPEG's of naked or nearly naked boobs and ass. Did Eva Mendes show a nipple in a Calvin Klein ad? Huffington Post subscribers will see it, whether they want to or not.

I figured I could escape the nudity by cutting back to just the main news feed, but I was wrong. You see, Brooke Shields made a surprise guest appearance at two in the morning at an Upright Citizens' Brigade show about a week ago. First of all, I don't know why the FUCK this was in my news feed in the first place. I'm not saying I don't like the UCB, and I'm not even saying I don't like Brooke Shields. All I'm saying is that there oughta be some goddamned way to not read about Brooke Shields and the Russian invasion of Georgia in the same category.

And on top of that, they decide to illustrate the news story with a picture of a naked Brooke Shields straddling the inside of a picture frame. This didn't happen at the UCB show. It's some picture from earlier in the year. So here I am, trying to follow the news so that I can produce the quality hate you people expect five days a week, and instead I've gotta look at Brooke Shields' naked ass because some blogwag at the Huffpost gets hard over it and pulls it out of his wank folder to incompetently illustrate the non-story. Great.

In addition to news about Brooke Shields' night life, every single day my news feed is polluted with that day's Huffpollstrology - a mix of polling data, candidate horoscopes, and political betting lines. What. The. Fuck? I don't get to mention my hatred for astrology much in this space, because thankfully, the intersection of the world's most banal superstition and current events is limited. But here, on HuffPost, every fucking day, you'll find the star charts of John McCain and Barack Obama, along with information on polling data and methodologies.

It looks like the Post is trying to handwave it away as an attempt to illustrate the largely unscientific nature of public opinion polling as it compares with the completely unscientific nature of astrology, but you know how often you need to do that? Once a month, tops. When you're running star charts every single day, you're endorsing astrology as a means of insight into the presidential race. When you publish astrologer Philip Sedgwick peddling this complete line of bullshit, there is something wrong with you. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"As I stated in my last post, I was wrong about the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections. To cherry pick conclusions and conspiracies, I was right about the popular vote. Yet neither of my picks were inaugurated. So I was wrong, right? I'm not sure about the astrological signatures for the electoral vote. I'll leave that prediction to the boys at Five-Thirty-Eight (www.fivethirtyeight.com). What I can accurately predict is a heap of election controversy ahead, following upon the heels of an impetuous, sloppy primary season and two presidential elections where we couldn't get it right.

If someone ever invents James Randi Bingo, I am bringing this guy to the game every single time. The guy racks up every excuse, ploy, and trick in the book to get around the fact that the shit he gets paid to do doesn't actually work. If he got the last two elections wrong, why am I listening to him about this election? Oh, because the SYSTEM failed. If the electoral system had been working the way it should, his predictions would have been correct. But only this time around is he predicting vague turmoil and controversy without actually settling on the provable, true/false prediction that somehow tripped him up the last two elections. Douchebag rising!

So thank you, Huffington Post, for proving that even in this brave new world of the blogosphere, it's easy to slip into laziness, padding, and steaming piles of bullshit to fill your column-inches each day. May you serve as a warning to other, more readable blogs. I don't want to see Josh Marshall naked in a picture frame either.

Immortal Kombat

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 08:54:34 -0500

Nerds, 15 August 2008
Memo to Richard Garriott: CUT IT OUT.

Look, dude. I think it's great that after two decades of making Ultima games, you're taking the piles of money they gave you for that and fulfilling a lifelong dream to go to space. That's great. I bet you're loving the training, and if I had $20 million, I might join you. But this Operation Immortality you've got going? That shit has got to stop.

You see, Garriott has made a MMORPG called "Tabula Rasa". If you don't know what an MMORPG is, it stands for Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game. If you don't know what THAT means, it means "Like World Of Warcraft". If you don't remember what World of Warcraft is, it's the game from that South Park episode. If you're still confused, enjoy your trip to Wikipedia. Anyway, he made this game, and the game involves humanity being mostly destroyed by aliens, so as a marketing tie-in, Garriott is going to fill a bigass storage device with a pile of data and drop it off at the International Space Station.

And the main thing on the drive, and the reason it's called Operation Immortality, is the sequenced DNA information for a bunch of people. Ostensibly, the idea is that if humanity is wiped out by global warming, or alien invasion, or a whole bunch of new offshore oil wells finally waking Cthulhu from his slumber under the coast of Florida*, the human race can be reconstituted from the information on the Immortality Drive.

Which is cute. Or it would be cute, but here is the most complete list I could assemble of the humans who will be "preserved" in Operation Immortality to date:

Richard Garriott, of course. Noted electric guitar noodler Eric Johnson. Warbler Patrice Pike. Jacked-up pro wrestler Matt Morgan, also known as "Beast" on American Gladiators. A female editor from game site The Escapist. Random players of Tabula Rasa who win a sweepstakes. Oh, and Dragonlance Chronicles co-author Tracy Hickman, who it turns out is a dude.

Before I get into the specifics of the program, TRACY HICKMAN? Immortality? Fuck that. Being one of the people responsible for the Dragonlance Chronicles is like being one of the guys that fucked a sick monkey and created AIDS. You thought all you were doing was having a bit of fun, but it turns out you're unleashing a plague on the literary world it has yet to recover from. Fucking Raistlin.

OK, back to the project as a whole. I think you can start to see the fundamental flaw. Some alien civilization comes along, decodes the Immortality Drive, and reconstitutes humanity on a small colony world or island. Matt Morgan immediately declares himself king, takes Patrice Pike as his queen, and the poor Escapist editor has to play Smurfette to a nation of slightly pudgy, goateed dudes who think if they keep going into the same cave over and over again, they'll come out with different stuff each time.

Johnson won't hunt, because you can't kill the alien equivalent of a wild boar with an eight minute guitar solo. Matt Morgan can't hunt, because the aliens won't realize they need to stock the colony with trained animals who fall over when you hit them lightly. The nerds will start to starve, Morgan and Pike will be forced to turn to cannibalism until they get sick of the taste of nerd burgers, and the aliens will chock it up to an elaborate practical joke played on them by a long-dead race of comedians. Offended at being intergalactically punk'd, they'll blow up the dead Earth out of spite.

Of course, there is one other possibility. You see, the Immortality Drive will also contain the avatars of every active Tabula Rasa player as of September 2, 2008. If the aliens decode and understand THAT, then humanity's only future will be as sweatshop labor in the alien equivalent of a Korean Internet cafe, grinding for rare virtual alien artifacts that the aliens can sell for huge space dollars on eBalien. Matt Morgan will be executed for accidentally crushing every control device the aliens provide for him.

Now, I love my nerd brethren, but I say this as a pudgy begoateed man who will, as soon as he's done typing this, go play a point-and-click adventure game based off a ten-year-old webcartoon I don't even watch: DO NOT REPOPULATE THE SPECIES WITH JUST ME. I only have one survival trait, and you're looking at it. So unless we're reconstituted by a bunch of snarky liberal aliens suffering under a perniciously stupid and evil sociopolitical system, I will not be able to help you.

Sure, it's a marketing ploy. And sure, any calamity that takes out the Earth will probably take the ISS with it. And I don't think even advanced aliens can clone nerds from a flash drive. But it's bad enough that we've been beaming Gilligan's Island reruns into space for decades. If the aliens get the impression we spent fifteen bucks a month and days and days on end playing Tabula Rasa, and voting Star Wars as the greatest movie ever** they're not going to hand over the fusion reactors and the cancer cure. They'll just dust off and nuke the site from orbit, because as we all know, it's the only way to be sure.

*Yes, ALL the Old Ones go there to retire.

**Yes, they did. So they're not even proper nerds. Proper nerds would vote for The Empire Strikes Back.

Temporal Anomaly

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 21:48:52 -0500

Idiots Say The Damndest Things, 14 August 2008
Memo to Thursday: YOU ARE WEDNESDAY.

The nice thing about being the sole owner and proprietor of your website is this. You make the rules. When you make the rules, then you're the only person you answer to when you break the rules. Especially when the rules are little more than arbitrary traditions that serve no practical purpose. My point is, just because it's not Wednesday doesn't mean there aren't IDIOTS SAYing THE DAMNDEST THINGS.

"She is committed to her global warming fanaticism to the point where she has said that she's just trying to save the planet. We all know that someone did that over 2,000 years ago, they saved the planet -- we didn't need Nancy Pelosi to do that." - Minnesota's own Michelle Bachmann.

This, right here, is why I have so much trouble with the "live and let live" thing when it comes to religion. If Michelle Bachmann wants to believe that 2,000 years ago, Jesus saved the planet, that's one thing. Yes, it's ridiculously bad theology, but given the other claims made about Jesus, I can let slide that "saving the souls of a few hundred million Christians" is the same as "saving the planet".

But to believe that is one crazy thing thought by one crazy person. What's happening here is on a whole other level. Someone is setting public policy based on the belief that Jesus saved the planet 2,000 years ago, and on top of it, that it's the only time the planet will ever need saving, and the only type of saving the planet will ever need. That is certifiably batshit. That's driving down the road with your engine on fire, insisting everything is fine because you got the first free tune-up at the dealership ten years ago. And even if Bachmann's just saying it to score cheap political points, that means that there's an entire constituency out there to whom this argument sounds sane. And we knew that, I guess, but that doesn't mean I can't be irked every time it's reaffirmed.

"Why would I want to do that? I’m gonna have a good life out here in the private sector. Why would I go back to telling everybody in the world how much money I make and…barely surviving to have some obscure cabinet post and have some 20-year-old from the White House telling me what I’m gonna do? - Mike Huckabee, in an interview with an Arizona newspaper.

And speaking of crazy Christian hypocrisy, let's all take a long, hard look at Mike Huckabee, one-time presidential candidate, covenant marriage booster, weight-loss guru and soon-to-be TV show host. One of the enduring myths about Huckabee is that he's a true believer. That he may be a right-wing, prosletyzing douchebag, but at least he's not cynically exploiting his faith for political gain. Well, guess what. The Huckster feels the same way about public service and money as every other goddamned Republican.

The salary he'd "barely survive on"? Well, he was being asked how he felt about taking a CABINET POST in the unlikely event of a John McCain administration. You know what the lowliest of the lowly cabinet positions pays? To borrow from an old punchline, $150,000, same as in town. A hundred and fifty grand is subsistence level for Huckabee. I guess he was willing to settle for the lower-middle class Presidential salary, $400K, because of all the heathen-bombing perks and the cafeteria priveleges. Sounds like someone needs his fake saviour to come by and kick over a few tables.

"NOBODY WANTS TO MARRY A POTTYMOUTH... Outrage follows, much of it extremely unladylike." - Tim Blair, blogger for the Daily Telegraph, commenting on the anger from female bloggers after a story about a female blogger convention landed in the New York Times "Fashion and Style" section.

As a world-renouned pottymouth myself, I must call bullpucky on the farkakt ravings of this stupid melonfarmer. I would marry a pottymouth in a chicken-befriending minute, and there are millions of other global citizens who would do the same. I don't know what gosh-darned century Tim Davis thinks he's from, but "ladylike" behavior isn't some heckish Victorian constraint anymore. So Tim Davis, please offer a nice big piece of sugar to the horse you rode in on.

In Russia, Butt Spanks You!

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 22:03:29 -0500

Gender Issues, 12 August 2008
Memo to the Russian judicial system: YOU ARE DUMB.

It seems strangely appropriate. Right now, the news is full of images from Georgia, as Russia attempts to take by force that which it cannot obtain through peaceful and mutual negotiation. But instead, I'll be talking about the fascinating ruling from the end of July on a sexual harassment case in St. Petersburg.

I say it's strangely appropriate because the woman lost, joining the ranks of all but two women, ever, who've tried to sue their bosses in Russia. The case was fairly cut and dry. A 22 year old woman was locked out of her office for attempting to control the means of (re)production.

More specifically, she was what you might call a refusenik in the delicate matter of her 47-year old boss wanting to play ""hide the KGB mole" with her. I know what you must be thinking. What's more sexually irresistible than a 47-year-old Russian executive? But resist she did, and it cost her her job, and the judge was fine with it. Why was he fine with it? You'll love this.

"If we had no sexual harassment we would have no children."

Ah, the ugly, vodka-bloated face of biological determinism rises once again. Apparently, the birth rate in Russia has gotten so low that their only hope lies in middle-aged assholes gleefully impregnating young women against their will. To hell with demographic winter. If that's what it takes to propagate your people, maybe you should step aside and let someone else have your nice buildings.

It's precisely that kind of thinking that makes me glad I live in America, where biological determinism would never be used in a ham-handed attempt to rationalize boorish behavior and deny women basic reasonable freedoms. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to read the Daily Gut, where author Greg Gutfeld provides me with the blatantly telegraphed double-take moment I need. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"I mean, as a dude, I am hardwired to stare at breasts. Sorry - it's a biological fact, backed up by reams of data proving mammaries are magnets for the male eye. Apparently, breasts are designed mostly to attract men to the front of a woman, so, they will engage in sex that leads to reproduction, and species survival. It's nature's neon sign that says, 'Hey, stupid - not the butt - over here.'"

Now, this is clearly fucking ridiculous. But it's so ridiculous I knew there was no way he could have come up with it on his own. He must have wildly misinterpreted some actual science somewhere, and after a bit of research, I figured out what it probably was. The theory he mangles is that bipedal hominids spend a lot more time face to face than face to ass. So the ass became less prominent as a sexual attractor, allowing breasts to, shall we say, grow into that role. It is not, as King Shit Doofus thinks, that titties make it more likely for men to hit the right hole.
So why would anyone write a paragraph like that in the first place? To take a stand against public breast feeding, of course. What else could it be? Public breast feeding means public breasts, and public breasts mean public ogling, and there's nothing he can do about it because if he didn't stare at your La Leche display with La Lechery, he'd poke you in the pooterhole with his tiny penis and never propagate his genes. Or, in an even less flattering way of putting it, here's Gutfeld's own words:

"In a sense, my eyes are like two little infants, who also need sustenence. You can understand that, right?" - And in a sense, the eyes are the window to the soul, and therefore, in a sense, you have the soul of an infant, desperately in need of sustenance. And also desperately in need of the ability to spell "sustenance". And also desperately in need of either throwing yourself down a deep rocky hole, or moving to Russia where this kind of thinking qualifies you for judge's robes.

Talking Penis Memo

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 21:30:54 -0500

YAD Talking Points, 11 August 2008
Memo to John Edwards' Penis: YOU ARE DUMB.

It has become clear over the course of this weekend that it is no longer legal, in America, to not have an opinion about John Edwards fucking around on his wife two years ago. I'm not entirely sure why that's the case, but time and time again, I'm reminded that I don't make the fucking rules. And since I can understand why you might be reticent to spend the time forming your own, independent opinion of John Edwards' penis, I'll do it for you courtesy some new YAD Talking Points.

IS IT NEWS?

Sort of. It's not news enough to warrant the amount of coverage it's gotten already, that's for damn sure. Assuming the current version of events bears out as true, he was fucking around two years ago as a private citizen, his wife found out about it two years ago as a private citizen, and presumably they worked it out as private citizens. From a purely idealistic standpoint, there's no more reason to harp on Edwards' infidelity than there is to publish the sordid details of any other southern lawyer's love life.

On the other hand, he's famous. And he ran for President this year. And ideal or otherwise, one of the rules of engagement the media have with celebrities is that the media WILL track your genitals. With RFID if they can manage it. So wringing your hands over the media invading the private lives of the citizenry in a tabloid sex scandal feeding frenzy is disingenuous and irritating, and if you're doing it, you should cut it the fuck out.

Luckily, it's possible to have it both ways. All you have to do is decry any coverage that occurred after you read the two paragraphs above, while admitting that any coverage that took place before you read the second paragraph above is understandable given the circumstances, if a bit regrettable.

DO WE HATE EDWARDS NOW?

Sort of. I don't care that he cheated on his wife. I don't even technically know that he DID cheat on his wife. Maybe he had permission to fuck around. They'd never admit to it if he did, because that'd cause an even bigger stir than garden variety infidelity. But either way, it doesn't matter. It doesn't even matter if he did it while she had cancer. John Edwards was not a moral crusader, he didn't oppose gay marriage on the grounds that homos can't keep it in their pants, so there's no hypocrisy charge to be laid at his crotch.

Of course, if he knocked her up, that's a whole 'nother story. Now, as far as I know, the only people claiming he knocked her up are the National Enquirer, but if he did, that's stupid. And even worse, it's TACKY. And he's lying about it and it'll draw the story out and it'll be a whole big mess. So I really hope he didn't knock her up, because if he is the Jacksonian "one", then that's a perfectly valid reason to hate on him.

No matter what, we can hate on him for running for President while having this particular skeleton in his closet. It was a ticking time bomb, and if it'd gone off when he was the nominee, or even the running mate, we'd have been collectively fucked. If Edwards didn't think he'd be electable if this came to light, then he shouldn't have been running, because this shit ALWAYS COMES TO LIGHT. Trying to keep it under wraps was stupid and dangerous.

WHAT NEXT?

Nothing. Refuse to talk about it. Claim reticence to feed the beast. Declare forthrightly that you don't want to be part of the sex-obsessed, scandal-addicted water-cooler culture. Take the moral high ground.

When that doesn't work, remember that this will probably hose any chances Edwards had of being Attorney General, because putting his penis into a non-wifely vagina makes him less fit for the office than John Tittycovering Ashcroft, Alberto Torturing Gonzalez, and Michael Covering Up For Torture And Probably Torturing A Little On The Side Mukasey. That oughta shut 'em up.

Thinking Problem

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 22:41:43 -0500

Republicans, 8 August 2008
Memo to David Zucker and Stephen Hayes: I'LL NEVER BE OVER HOW DUMB YOU ARE.

Yesterday, we began our own special making-of commentary on the Weekly Standard's right-wing fellation of David Zucker and his new movie, "An American Carol". In "Carol", the ghost of General Patton attempts to guide a bad Michael Moore parody away from left-wing, terrorist-abetting activism and toward the proper, moral, upright American way of fearing and shooting brown people.

Yesterday, I offered up a few examples of the lame-ass "satire" Zucker is going for here, but there is one other scene that deserves a quick crushing. Let's keep in mind that the beloved Zucker Bros. comedies of the 80's didn't start out particularly fucking subtle. Add a couple of decades to that, plus the Dennis Miller defunnification factor that automatically comes with a post-9/11 political shift, and what have you got? This:

"In the film, a rotund comedian named Rosie O'Connell makes an appearance on The O'Reilly Factor to promote her documentary, The Truth About Radical Christians. O'Reilly shows a clip, which opens with a pair of priests walking through an airport--as seen from pre-hijacking surveillance video--before boarding the airplane. Once on board, they storm the cockpit using crucifixes as their weapon of choice."

See? Rosie O'Donnell said radical Christians were as dangerous as radical Muslims, so Zucker has Rosie O'Connell saying that radical Christians act exactly like one particular bunch of radical Muslims acted seven years ago. Which is such a ridiculous strawman I can only assume Zucker's secret inner fantasy is to remake "The Wizard Of Oz".

But let's set the movie aside for a second. There are two other aspects of this article that make it so awesomely bad. First is the loving attention given to the bravery and importance of the "Friends Of Abe". Named after Abraham Lincoln, it's a regular meeting, circle jerk, and group therapy session for Hollywood conservatives. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"Such revelations are common occurrences at the periodic meetings of the secret society of Hollywood conservatives known as the "Friends of Abe." The group, with no official membership list and no formal mission, has been meeting under the leadership of Gary Sinise (CSI New York, Forrest Gump) for four years. Zucker had spent a year working on a film with Christopher McDonald without learning anything about his politics. Shortly after the film wrapped, he ran into McDonald, best known as Shooter McGavin from Adam Sandler's Happy Gilmore, at one of these informal meetings."

Where to begin? First of all, any group mentioned in the Weekly Standard and dozens upon dozens of Google pages is the worst fucking secret society ever. Second, any secret society with no schedule, no member list, and no goals is the worst fucking secret society ever. And third, any secret society where the big insider info you get is that the guy from Happy Gilmore likes Bush is the worst fucking secret society ever. Why are these people so scared? They're scared of Muslims, they're scared of Hollywood liberals, they're scared of being associated with modern Republicanism... why not call yourselves the Friends of Ronnie? Why do you have to go back to the 1860's to find a respectable member of the Republican Party?

The other great thing about this article is the ridiculous, almost casual bias that author Hayes throws in unbidden. He treats his transitions like a wingnut talking point Mad Libs. It's awe-inspiring devotion to a moronic cause.

"But Zucker's film... is once again reviving hope that conservatives will have a battalion in this exceedingly influential battleground of the broader culture war. - I love how wingnuts militarize everything so that they can serve just like soldiers without actually, you know, being shot at.
"His brother Jerry remains an unreconstructed liberal and recently optioned a sympathetic movie about the life and times of serial fabulist Joe Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame." - A gratuitous shot at Joe Wilson? Did I die and wake up in Lambert's Personal Hell Circa 2004? Should we bake up a yellowcake to celebrate?

"He contributed another $600 to an outfit called the "Hollywood Women's Political Committee" which, with members like Jane Fonda, Bonnie Raitt, and Barbra Streisand, probably wasn't calling for low taxes and abstinence education." - This, from a lengthy section describing Zucker's liberal past, just drips with the kind of generic, namedropping scorn you can only get from a douchebag at the top of his game. Stephen Hayes, I salute you. Well, it's been called a salute. It involves at least 20% of my hand.

OK, I lied. There is one more thing I have to mention about the movie. It would be incredibly offensive if it weren't so completely fucking ridiculous that I know it doesn't actually apply to anyone who actually exists. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"David Alan Grier plays a slave in a scene designed to show Malone what might have happened if the United States had not fought the Civil War. As Patton explains to a dumbfounded Malone that the plantation they are visiting is his own, Grier thanks the documentarian for being such a humane owner."

Ladies and gentlemen, I believe we have found the polar opposite of the Rosetta Stone. If we can decipher this paragraph, it will be possible to never understand anything ever again. Anti-war doesn't actually mean anti-Civil War, first of all, which the FUCKING SOUTH STARTED, second of all, so they could keep their slaves, third of all. So if the South had seceded, and the North had acquiesced and not fought, slavery would not only be thriving in the South, but would spread to California (not actually part of the Confederate States, mind) where liberal filmmakers would have adopted the practice wholeheartedly!

If that seems even remotely like a cogent political argument to you, you should probably give Gary Sinise a call. I hear they don't have any volunteers yet to bring the brie and wine coolers to their Rambo marathon in September.

Overly Macho and Grande

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 14:12:40 -0500

Republicans, 7 August 2008
Memo to David Zucker: SURELY, YOU ARE DUMB.

And so is Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard, by the way. The two have joined forces to produce what may very well be the defining right-wing puff piece of our generation - a lengthy profile of "Airplane" director David Zucker and the cast of his new movie, "An American Carol".

This thing has it all, I tell you. Persecution complex? Check. Uncritical fawning? Check. Unfounded paranoia? Check. And vivid descriptions of scenes from the movie that accidentally make it clear just how awful it's going to be? Check squared.

You see, David Zucker is a conservative. And not just any conservative, but a piss-stained, post-9/11 conservative convert. These are the most annoying conservatives of all, because they don't have any real convictions. They're just lashing out in the dark, looking for someone to hold them and tell them they'll be safe from the boogeyman... As long as they keep making donations to the GOP, and maybe the occasional ham-handed political satire. They truly put the "reaction" in "reactionary". Take a look at the first scene from "Carol" that Hayes describes.

"Just as the officer pulls on the zipper, however, a small army of ACLU lawyers marches up to the policemen with a stop-search order. The cops look at each other and shrug their shoulders. 'This says we can't search their bags.' The young men are relieved. They smile fiendishly as they walk toward the crowded platform. As the lead terrorist once again slips the backpack over his shoulder, he mutters his appreciation. 'Thank Allah for the ACLU.'"

Yes, the ACLU, pursuing it's crazy, left-wing agenda, is the best friend of terrorists, allowing them to bypass common-sense security measures and kill us all. Yawn. I am so mind-numbingly bored with this weaksauce bullshit. Yet, according to Zucker and Hayes, there's no way I could possibly be bored. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"Zucker's latest movie, An American Carol, is unlike anything that has ever come out of Hollywood. It is a frontal attack on the excesses of the American left from several prominent members of a growing class of Hollywood conservatives. Until now, conservatives in Hollywood have always been too few and too worried about a backlash to do anything serious to challenge the left-wing status quo. David Zucker believes we are in a 'new McCarthy era'."

It's pretty fucking amazing how every single time one of these pisscon propaganda pieces come out it's seen as the only movie ever to break the ultra-liberal lockdown in Hollywood. Somehow, despite the New McCarthyism, I've had no problem whatsoever finding people getting paid to say the things Zucker wants to, and currently is, being paid to say. So cry me a fucking river. What other great conservative ideas are the Hollywood bigwigs keeping me from seeing?

"[T]he film follows the exploits of a slovenly, anti-American filmmaker named Michael Malone, who has joined with a left-wing activist group (Moovealong.org) to ban the Fourth of July... When terrorists from Afghanistan realize that they need to recruit more operatives to make up for the ever-diminishing supply of suicide bombers, they begin a search for just the right person to help produce a new propaganda video... When they settle on Malone, who is in need of work after his last film (Die You American Pigs) bombed at the box office, he unwittingly helps them with their plans to launch another attack on American soil."

Wow! I can't believe Zucker is finally getting onto film the subtle imagery of a fat, stupid Michael Moore parody whose liberal beliefs cause him to directly aid America-hating terrorists! I feel so liberated. It's like I'm back in 2004, watching the exact same joke play out in Team America: World Police. Only they had puppets in Team America, so they didn't have to resort to Chris Farley's brother Kevin, who is also, conveniently, a persecuted douchebag.

"There was this dance that we did--a dance familiar to conservative actors in Hollywood. Lots of actors have done it. I usually just bite my tongue unless it gets too ridiculous. The only thing that really bothers me is when they go off about the president. It just gets annoying."

Yes, Kevin. As a Hollywood conservative, you are the only person who's ever had to keep a lid on your beliefs because of imagined retribution from a co-worker or boss with different beliefs. I'm sure all those Wal-Mart employees forced to watch Powerpoint presentations about how voting for Democrats will lead to unions, and unions will destroy Wal-Mart, pity you and your forced silence in Craft Services. What must it have been like, thinking constantly that defending our shit-ass president might cost you your next bit part in a shitty sitcom or direct-to-video movie? You must wake up every night in a cold sweat.

Of course, I'd wake up in a cold sweat too if I knew I was getting my feature film debut because people fondly remember my dead brother AND Larry The Cable Guy couldn't take the part due to scheduling conflicts. When will those particular stars line up again? I wouldn't hold my breath.

TOMORROW: THe saga of "An American Carol" continues, with more drama and more trauma as conservative Hollywood bands together to make conservative movies while complaining they can't make conservative movies.

Why So Stupid?

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 21:54:43 -0500

Republicans, 6 August 2008
Memo to the Wall Street Journal, the entertainment media, Mark White, and Robert Arp: SAME DUMB TIME, SAME DUMB CHANNEL.

How does he get such wonderful quotes? Well, it's all the product of an extensive research and development budget that allows me to manipulate cellphone signals and instantly locate stupidity on a global scale. "The Dark Knight" is a huge success, and like any huge success, will inevitably cause IDIOTS to SAY THE DAMNDEST THINGS about it. Here we go.

"Like W, Batman is vilified and despised for confronting terrorists in the only terms they understand. Like W, Batman sometimes has to push the boundaries of civil rights to deal with an emergency, certain that he will re-establish those boundaries when the emergency is past. And like W, Batman understands that there is no moral equivalence between a free society -- in which people sometimes make the wrong choices -- and a criminal sect bent on destruction. The former must be cherished even in its moments of folly; the latter must be hounded to the gates of Hell. - Andrew Klavant, in the Wall Street Journal.

Now, in the week or two since his ridiculous fucking article got posted, Klavant has been, quite justly, mocked along the entire length of the Internet for saying it. But I couldn't do a Batman column without mentioning it, because it's so goddamned stupid. it's not just stupid, it's stupid circa 2003. Even the majority of wingnuts these days don't use the "Dubya as bold leader doing unpopular things to fight the Evil Hordes" framing much anymore.

Klavant, on the other hand, is so delusional he thinks Bush is somehow going to restore civil liberties in the next six months, that he's even bothering to pretend to "confront terrorists" anymore, and that "cherished in moments of folly" isn't just "Love it or leave it, hippie" in a rented suit and a comb-over. Here's a hint, dipfuck. When 78% of the country doesn't even think W's a hero, much less a superhero, it's NOT a parallel to a vigilante unfairly becoming the focus of public scorn. It's just a long line of people slowly coming to their senses, while you march in the other direction hoping against hope that the slag heap they're marching away from has a free buffet.

"...curse..." - IGN, The Telegraph, the LA Times, and countless others.

Look, fuckers, THERE IS NO CURSE. Yes, a camera guy died. Yes, Heath Ledger died. Yes, Christian Bale allegedly beat up his family. And yes, Morgan Freeman got in a car crash. You know what all these things have in common, besides the individuals involved all being in "The Dark Knight"? NOTHING. Stunts go wrong all the time. Actors OD all the time. Car crashes happen all the time. And Bale's alleged domestic abuse isn't some externally-imposed accident, he's just an alleged dickhead.

Maybe the Dawkinsian school of atheism has it wrong by going after the big guns of organized religion. Maybe we should instead start a campaign to eradicate the casual mysticism that permeates every aspect of society we live in. Three bad things happen to three actors from the same movie, and it's a CURSE. Three very bad things happpen to three actors who were never in a movie together, and it's "they always die in threes". The Huffington Fucking Post is running the daily horoscopes of McCain and Obama. Maybe this is the shit we should be eradicating. Maybe we can stop slowly indoctrinating people with the existence of supernatural banality. Of course, try taking the horoscopes out of the daily paper and you'll probably get burned in effigy. Or effigy ascendant, depending on what part of the month it is.

"But if we say that Batman should kill the Joker, doesn't that imply that we should torture terrorism suspects if there's a chance of getting information that could save innocent lives? Of course, terrorism is all too present in the real world, and Batman only exists in the comics and movies. So maybe we're just too detached from the Dark Knight and the problems of Gotham City, so we can say 'go ahead, kill him.' But, if anything, that detachment implies that there's more at stake in the real world - so why aren't we tougher on actual terrorists than we are on the make-believe Joker?" - Mark White and Robert Arp, in the International Herald-Tribune.

Before I delve into some specifics, I'd just like to point out that the above is not logic. It's not reasoning. It bears no resemblance to any of the verbal and mental constructs humans have developed to forge a path between ideas and conclusions. It's just the clumsy juxtaposition of Something People Like and Something I Want. It's the semantic equivalent to "Pie is delicious, so why hasn't anyone given me a Playstation 3?"

Clearly, White and Arp like hurting people and are desperate for a way to feel good about it. How else can you explain their rhetorical backflip from a fictional obsessive vigilante unwilling to violate his own ethical codes even when it would make his life much, much simpler, to a nation deliberately abandoning its moral compass for the illusion of greater safety? It is, as I believe Sigmund Freud put it, "fucked inn der kopf".

These two, by the way, are the authors of "The Philosophy Of Batman: The Dark Knight Of The Soul", which is one more point in my Unified Shit Theory, specifically, the corollary that any book entitled The Blank Of Blank, where the first blank is some intellectual discipline, and the second blank is some nerdy pop culture thing, IS SHIT. The Genetics Of The X-Men? SHIT. The Physics Of Stargate: Atlantis? SHIT. The Epidemiology of Halo 3? SHIT. Stop writing these books, and stop excerpting them in major publications as if they weren't desperate cries for help.