You Are Dumb - Spastic Topic Monkey Friday

This, Weak In God

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 19:52:07 -0600

Religion, 5 December 2008

Memo to Rick Warren, Chris Buttars, the Kentucky legislature, and the Pope: YOU ARE DUMB.

I admit, now that the election's over, it's long past time I had a week with five goddamned columns in it. And since I've had four goddamned columns this week already, it just makes sense to close the week out with a God-damning edition of SPASTIC TOPIC MONKEY FRIDAY!

I talked about Rick Warren earlier this week, but I need to whack him again. We really need to push back against the notion that this guy is anything but a skinnier, less ruddy, more photogenic version of Jerry Falwell. In addition to fighting against gay marriage and giving made-up peace medals to George W. Bush, now he's going on Fox News to provide a biblical justification for bombing Iran. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"Well, actually, the Bible says that evil cannot be negotiated with. It has to just be stopped... In fact, that is the legitimate role of government. The Bible says that God puts government on earth to punish evildoers. Not good-doers. Evildoers." - Warren, comforting Sean Hannity, who wondered (rhetorically, I presume) if it made him a bad person to advocate that the United States "take out" Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

That is not a moderate. That is some hardcore shit right there. Saying the Bible condones assassinating a foreign leader or overthrowing a country because of a passage that, I'm told, refers mainly to punishing petty criminals? Even in today's red-shifted discourse, that's not a middle-of-the-road position. That's purpose-driven wingnuttery.

Over in Utah, where everything sucks all the time, State Senator Chris Buttars is looking to star in the off-off-off-off-off-Salt Lake City production of "Yes, Virginia, There Is A War On Christmas". And he's trying to win that war legislatively, hoping to get the state to officially demand that retailers wish shoppers a "Merry Christmas".

You know, the War On Christmas is stupid enough without buttards from Utah smashing through the church-state wall with their insistence that I can't buy a fucking screwdriver without being reminded of fake Jesus' fake birthday. Of course, he says we're a Christian nation, which I'd think would be a trickier claim to make when you're surrounded by Mormons. Then again, I can never figure out what's gonna make the sects schism and what makes 'em band together against the heathen scum.

And speaking of Kool-Aid Jesus busting through the church-state wall with a hearty O YEA, here's a fun fact. Did you know that for the past two years, the chief duty of the Kentucky Department of Homeland Security has been "stressing the dependence on Almighty God as being vital to the security of the Commonwealth"? Well, it has. Proving once again that there are few douches on earth douchier than red-state state legislators, Kentucky Rep. Tom Riner snuck an amendment into legislation two years ago.So now, amongst other things, the department has a plaque at its entrance declaring that "The safety and security of the Commonwealth cannot be achieved apart from reliance upon Almighty God." Oh, really? Then riddle me this, mister big-shot part-time state legislator and part-time Southern Baptist minister. If you've got the plaque, and you've got the legislation, and you've got the dependence and reliance on God, then why the fuck do you need a Homeland Security department at all? Why not just rely and depend on God to make sure nothing interesting enough for terrorists to attack ever makes it inside Kentucky's borders? Or, more accurately, why don't you just recognize that this seems to have already come to pass?

Oh, and a quick fuck you to the Pope and the Vatican, who, terrified of a slippery slope leading from "not killing them" all the way to "treating them like full human beings", are formally opposing a United Nations resolution calling on the world's governments to decriminalize homosexuality. In other words, the Catholic Church is happy to let gays be imprisoned and executed in third-world theocracies because the United Nations resolution might eventually make it difficult to fight against same-sex marriage.

And this is one hell of an argument for keeping religion out of politics. Politics is fucked up enough without the kind of calculus where preventing unjust executions would interfere with with the irrational fight against something that harms nothing more than the precious sensibilities of the godly. At least greed, as a corrupting rationale, makes some goddamned sense.

BOO!

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 22:16:21 -0500

Election 2008, 31 October 2008

Memo to the politics of fear: YOU ARE DUMB.

A lot of people are treating this election as a referendum of the effectiveness of character assassination and fear-based politics. Which would be a mistake. No, most of the attacks haven't succeeded in moving their beneficiaries ahead in the polls. That doesn't mean they're not working, it just means that Obama, for example, would be a lot farther ahead than he is now. We're lucky that fear is being overwhelmed by other factors right now, but don't count crazy bullshit out. In the interests of keeping you afraid of fear, for Halloween, I present the scariest ads of the 2008 campaign, courtesy SPASTIC TOPIC MONKEY FRIDAY.

We start in Mississippi, which right there ought to be enough to make you start shitting candy corn. Way down south in the land of cotton, Senator Roger Wicker is fending off a strong challenge from Democrat Robert Musgrove. In an attempt to scare voters into not voting for the not-very-progressive-at-all Musgrove, Wicker made a list of all the most liberal groups who contributed to the DSCC, who spent some money on his opponent. Well, he didn't make a list. He made a line. Of people in costume. Representing the interests.

The Friends of Hillary? Represented by a short-haired, possibly lipstick lesbian woman in a suit. A guy in a cow suit represented a beef plant. NARAL Pro Choice America is a middle-aged guy in glasses and a suit with a briefcase full of money, which only makes sense if you're a twisted embryo-fetishist. Oh, and the Human Rights Campaign? They got a cowboy, a biker, and a construction worker. You know, like the Village People. Because they're gay. And in Mississippi, the only gay stereotype they have is one from three decades ago, because they're backwoods pigfuckers.

Next we turn to my sweet home Minnesota, where Norm Coleman is getting long in the tooth in every possible sense of the term. In order to help Coleman defeat Al Franken, the crack team* at the NRSC came up with a great mailer. Using cartoon images of Franken, the cover says "Come on in, kids! Senator Franken's going to tell a few jokes..."

Open this inviting cover, and what do you find inside? On the left, cartoon kids with word bubbles attacking Franken. On the right, comic-book text saying Franken has "written so-called comedy routines about raping women", which as we've discussed happened in a writer's room brainstorming. Oh, and of course, "Wrote a pornographic column for Playboy - and thought it was funny."

See, if he'd written a pornographic column for Playboy and thought it -wasn't- funny, that would be a problem. That's called turning in shoddy work and getting paid for it, something Norm Coleman knows way too much about. The mailer caused a huge uproar because apparently Minnesota kids were going through the mail, looking at the comic book, and asking their parents what "pornographic" means. Or asking Dad if he still had the Playboy with the Franken column in it in that box in the closet Mom thought he threw away.

And finally, the big winner - the single worst, scariest, and most upgefucked ad in the history of Election 2008 - a call I'm more than willing to make with four days to go, because it's just that awful. Ladies and gentleman, I give you Elizabeth "My Husband's A Viagra Spokesman And All I Got Was This Lousy Lay" Dole, attempting to hang on to her North Carolina Senate seat. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"A leader of the Godless Americans PAC recently held a secret fundraiser in Kay Hagan's honor. Godless Americans and Kay Hagan -- she hid from cameras, took godless money. What did Hagan promise in return?"

First, as a proud godless American myself, allow me to deliver to Elizabeth Dole her obligatory "Fuck you and the plastic fake Jesus you rode in with". I didn't even know we HAD a political action committee, so that shows you just how harmless and powerless they are. We're certainly not some shadowy organization you can tar your opponent with based on a grossly exaggerated connection. Well, I guess Elizabeth Dole can, because she's a horrible human being.

Further evidence of Elizabeth Dole's oxygen-wasting potential comes at the end of the ad, in which the voice of Godless American Ellen Johnson saying "There is no God." is superimposed over Sunday school teacher Kay Hagan's face. If this ad proves anything, it's that there is a drastic shortage of tar, feathers, and rails for which to run people out of town on in modern American politics.

Hope you stocked up on fun-size Milky Way, because it's going to be a long weekend.

*Although to be fair, it's entirely possible they were cranked on meth instead.

The Challenge

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 21:33:30 -0500

Spastic Topic Monkey Friday, 24 October 2008

Memo to people not involved in politics: YOU ARE STILL DUMB.

A columnist's reach must exceed his grasp, else what's a Friday for? It's not going to be easy, but I think we all could use a brief respite from politics while we wait for the election. So I'm going to try and manage an entirely politics-free edition of SPASTIC TOPIC MONKEY FRIDAY!

MillerCoors LLC announced on Monday that they would stop making Zima. This, of course, raised a number of vitally important questions, the most obvious of which is, "They still make Zima?". I guess Zima's like the bottled, liquid version of Abe Vigoda. You think it's been dead for years, and then you see it looking sad and lonely in a liquor store. Who the fuck was still drinking Zima? I didn't think it was possible to be an alcoholic ironically.

MillerCoors says it's dumping Zima (and thereby emulating 90% of the people who try it) due to growing weakness in the "malternative" segment of the adult beverage industry. Now, I don't know much about booze marketing, but I'm pretty sure that having a "malternative" segment of it is a sign of weakness in and of itself. But don't worry, Zima fans - Zima's space on shelves will soon be occupied by Sparks brand caffeinated booze products, so you'll still get to sit outside convenience stores and drink like an asshole.

And speaking of horrible useless shit we won't have around anymore, Richard "Mr." Blackwell has died, and good fucking riddance. Blackwell was one of American society's all-time greatest barnacles, and a shining example of an asshole who sucks at something turning into a famous asshole telling other people they suck at the exact same thing. He was like a prototype for Bill O'Reilly.

I really hope nobody has the gall to take up his "Worst Dressed List" mantle. There are few things our culture needs less than vaguely alliterative crusty old-man snark aimed at random women who commit incomprehensible crimes against fashion's constantly mutating aesthetic. Bury the list along with Blackwell, in the bitter relics section of whatever cemetery he ends up in.

Here at You Are Dumb Dot Net, we have a longstanding tradition, at least a long-standing non-election-year tradition, of honoring those brave, stupid souls among us who fuck things they shouldn't. Why? Because whether it's a pig, a cow, a dog, a horse, or a Congressman, fucking things you shouldn't is hilarious. Which is why I'm officially giving the YAD Honorable Mention in Dumbfuckery to an unnamed man in Swan Creek Township, MI, who for reasons that will soon become apparent I will refer to as Herbert Hoover.

Mr. "Hoover" was arrested by county police after someone spotted suspicious behavior at a car wash. Police investigated, and found "Hoover" in flagrante delicto with the car wash vacuum cleaner. As with many such stories, the news reports are woefully devoid of details, like what crime he will eventually be charged with, whether he was cheating on the Dustbuster he has at home, and whether the car wash's HEPA filter trapped over 99% of his sperm.

The local paper did quote Sgt. Gary Breidinger to say this: "I've seen some strange things, but this is the weirdest thing I ever heard." Which tells me one thing. The fine citizens of Swan Creek Township aren't trying hard enough. Get on the ball, Michiganders! I want Sgt. Gary Breidlinger to long for the days when people got caught humping machinery in his town. I'm gonna need SOMETHING to write about after the election's over.

Who Speaks For Mario?

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 21:27:02 -0500

Election 2008, 17 October 2008

Memo to Joe The Plumber, John McCain, and Barack Obama: YOU ARE DUMB.

And so, we are done with the debates. And what a way to go out, huh? In a desperate attempt to create a new demographic out of thin air that will vote for him, John McCain conjured up the mighty JOE THE PLUMBER, whose plucky spirit and hard-working American grit would be crushed, CRUSHED, by Barack Obama's brutal, class-warfare taxcuttery. But that's not important right now. What's important is that we kick off an all-debate SPASTIC TOPIC MONKEY FRIDAY with the most important picture on the Internets.

I have no idea what the fuck this actually is. And I don't care. Sure, it's taken willfully out of context, one frame out of 24 per second in which John McCain seems to be doing the robot while tonguing an imaginary penis. Not at all representative of the man or his life. But boy, howdy, would I love it if this image was the first thing the entire universe thought of when they heard the name "John McCain", so I present it here in direct shameless service of that noble goal.

Only one man in all of history has been photographed with his face looking like that and managed to keep his reputation as an intellectual and genius intact. That man was Albert Motherfucking Einstein. And as anyone who watched Wednesday night's debate can attest, John McCain is no motherfucking Einstein. Also, are Republicans allowed to have jazz hands? Doesn't that automatically make you a beatnik or a fairy? Maybe it's time for one of McCain's own non-litmus litmus tests.

OK. Joe the Plumber. Immediately after the debate, when all I knew was the guy's name and story, I was already prepared to tell Joe the Plumber to fuck right back off to whatever S-Bend he crawled out of. In an election cycle that's already given us hockey moms, Joe Sixpack*, and Chris Matthews' famous "regular Americans", the last thing I needed was some new incarnation of some new demographic filled with people who irritate me.

Then I found out that, far from a new demographic, Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher is all too familiar - an underinformed, tribal pigfucker who's too stupid to figure out that Barack Obama's tax plan would leave him with MORE money, not less. Probably because he's too busy railing against the evils of Social Security to learn how to use a pocket calculator. So double-fuck that guy with a couple of three-foot lengths of professional-grade PVC.

And Obama. Buddy, you know I want you to win. And you know you've probably got it all under control. And it's great that you're running against Bush, and running against McCain by telling us he's just like Bush. But the last time I checked, Bush and McCain were just two representatives of an ideology known alternately as "the right", "conservatives", and "Republicans". And you know what three terms you didn't use last night, and that I can't remember the last time you used? "The right", "conservatives", and "Republican".

And maybe you think you need that to win. And maybe you're right. But your opponent spent the entire debate coming out of the closet as a hardline movement conservative. He played every single conservative douchebag card he was allowed to bring into a domestic policy debate - "pro-abortion", ACORN, Fannie and Freddie, never raise taxes, activist judges, class warfare, redistribution of wealth.

All watchwords for a movement and a philosophy that is weaker than it's been in three fucking decades, and you couldn't take a moment of your time to kick it while it's down, drive a stake into its heart, and maybe start building up positive associations with liberalism in the general public? Apparently not. You get a pass now, but come January, we need to see some movement on this front.

*Back in the good old days, we called them "racist alcoholics". Goddamned political correctness.

Chihuahua Two Ways

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 21:36:06 -0500

Spastic Topic Monkey Friday, 10 October 2008

Memo to Wall Street, John McCain,

There are bull markets, there are bear markets, but I'm pretty sure what we're in right now is a SPASTIC TOPIC MONKEY FRIDAY market.

You know what the biggest disappointment is about this week's stock market crash? A distinct lack of investors and tycoons leaping out of windows. At least in the Great Depression, common citizens could comfort themselves with the dull splatting sound of dickwads hitting the pavement as they walked down to the local applecart. I'm half convinced that the real reason the New Deal worked as well as it did is because the suiciding investors culled the fucking herd of greedy douchebags.

You know who I blame? Donald Trump. He's the living embodiment of the selfish 80s mentality that festered and grew and then decayed into a zombie shell of its former self. Plus, he's a show-off and a drama queen. If ANYONE should be making a grand, gravity-assisted statement about fiscal ruin, it's The Donald, and if he went, the rest of them would follow him over the edge like the apocryphal lemmings. Apocryphal lemmings with MBAs from state universities.

In case you were wondering what I, your humble auteur, thought was the single biggest dick move Gramps McGrumps pulled during the second presidential debate, well, it wasn't "That one." Oh, sure, some could argue that "that one" is the grammatical singular form of "those people", but it still doesn't measure up to McCain's giant, throbbing dick move - calling the heart of a planetarium an "overhead projector".

Planetariums are cool. You know how cool planetariums are? Planetariums are cool EVEN AFTER you take into account their showings of Laser Floyd. That's some serious cool held in reserve. And do not lump precision motorized machinery that can simulate the entire visible universe with movement choreographed perfectly to a 25-year-old recording of Carl Sagan's voice in with that overheated gray box that throws PowerPoint on the wall. Earmark my ass.

Planetariums are also a perfect example of what government is good for. If it were up to the private sector, there would never be any planetariums, because most of you fuckers out there would rather go see Beverly Hills Chihuahua than Betelgeuse and Cassiopeia. But government can make planetariums possible in spite of your horrible taste in projected entertainment, and thus children around the world will learn about the majesty of the universe without being told a bearded hippie died so that little boys would never touch their peepees until marriage.

And a quick update on our buddy David Zucker and his desperate attempt at conservative comedy, "An American Carol".

It seems that somehow, Zucker and Vivendi Entertainment failed to estimate the actual audience for stale pro-war jokes about Michael Moore and hippies that weren't funny back in the halcyon days when we all thought those yellow ribbon magnets were a meaningful gesture of sacrifice. It came in ninth for the week, doing just over $2,000 per screen, and somehow managing to do worse than the second-week grosses of "Fireproof", in which Kirk Cameron, I shit you not, saves his marriage thanks to a ridiculous month-long stunt proposed by his newly religious father.

And I'd just like to say this to all the conservative columnists out there, chock full of insane conspiracy theories as to why the public failed to embrace Zucker's masterpiece, ranging from John McCain's slump in the polls to an organized plot by minimum-wage ticket-takers to redirect Carol's numbers to "Beverly Hills Chihuahua". If it was sad and stupid when the Browncoat nerds did it, it's even more pathetic and crazy when you do it. Also, HA HA HA HA HA. Fuckwits.

Bail, Bar, and Bullshit

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 21:13:58 -0500

Spastic Topic Monkey Friday, 26 September 2008

Memo to Jack Thompson, John McCain, and Sarah Palin: YOU ARE DUMB.

The news is in a constant state of flux. John McCain has become a wrinkly gray pinball bouncing through domestic politics, leaving chaos and destruction in his wake. And who better to navigate a wake of destruction and chaos, possibly on a small plastic board of some sort? The SPASTIC TOPIC MONKEY.

But before we get to old conservative fuckwits whose comeuppance is merely on the horizon, let's take a second to bask in the pain of an old conservative fuckwit whose long-delayed comeuppance has finally arrived. Yes, Jack Thompson, the rabid anti-game lawyer who is one diagnosis away from being clinically bugfuck, got disbarred this week on account of being an utter fucking loon who thinks anyone who doesn't agree with him about burning all copies of any Grand Theft Auto game ever and prosecuting Rockstar Games for war crimes is part of a vast conspiracy to keep him down. Of which his disbarment is just another example. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"This disbarment is in retaliation, among other things, for Thompson's Tyndale House book Out of Harm's Way, published in 2005, which blew the whistle on the Florida Supreme Court's earlier efforts in the 1990's to literally pathologize his faith-based and successful activism against the American entertainment industry." - Jack Thompson, in a third-person statement that makes him sound completely reasonable and sane. Really. Still, in the world in which we live, it's unlikely that this huge professional setback will keep Jack Thompson from irritating the living fuck out of society for money.

And speaking of irritating the living fuck out of society and money, if anyone has any fucking clue what John McCain is doing, could they call him and tell him so that he'll know? By yesterday afternoon, it looked like we were heading for a traditional Democratic/Republican showdown. You know, the one where Bush and the Congressional minority threaten to hold their breath and turn blue unless they get their Big Crazy Stupid Thing, and the Democrats hold out just long enough to get a tiny concession that doesn't mean shit. Then everyone declares victory and goes home.

But then, by the evening, it appeared that Gramps McGrump was so desperate to disrupt the debate schedule that he came forward with a whole different plan. It's difficult to tell for sure because he gave no specifics, but the people whose job it is to figure these things out seem to think he may be getting behind a House Republican plan that makes Paulson's "Give me a trillion dollars in unmarked bills and trust me implicitly with it" plan seem like a paragon of reason.

The plan would include an "emergency" moratorium on the capital gains tax, which is hilarious, because this whole crisis is about massive, epic capital LOSSES. Oh, and it would also loosen accounting rules, presumably so it would be easier for rich people to pretend all their income was in the form of new, tax-free capital gains. Oh, and privatizing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which I don't even understand, so I guarantee they don't either.

But McCain is for it, or he's for something like it, or he's for something completely different. I can only assume it's because if he fucks with it, there won't be a deal, and if there isn't a deal, he can cling to his one-ply paper excuse for blowing off the debate. And if they blow off the debate, then the debate schedule gets fucked, and if the debate schedule gets fucked, they can scuttle the VP debate, and if they scuttle the VP debate, then maybe Sarah Palin won't actually choke to death on her own tongue.

I mention the tongue-choking because it turns out Sarah Palin isn't just woefully unqualified, potentially corrupt, and criminally stupid. She's also apparently incapable of the rudimentary skill of stringing together words to form concepts that follow any kind of logical narrative. If you thought it was curious that she spent the two weeks after her RNC speech traveling around the country giving the same exact speech to people, live, like Cheap Trick at Budokan? Turns out she learned politics phonetically. And when confronted with unscripted softball questioning by journalism's completely not a paragon at all Katie Couric, she flamed out like a nitro-burning funny car protesting the Chinese occupation of Tibet.

"We-- we do-- it's very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia as Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where-- where do they go? It's Alaska. It's just right over the border. It is-- from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there. They are right next to-- to our state." - Part of Palin's answer to the question of whether she's ever negotiated with the Russians.

Either Palin took a Toastmasters seminar taught by Dubya, or she's got a level of ineptitude that's simultaneously the funniest and most terrifying thing ever. We'd better hope John McCain doesn't find a way to start a war with Spain all on his own, because if I were saddled with a self-inflicted moose-shooting moron picked because she has more ovaries than brain cells, I'd probably want a bigger distraction than the implosion of the American economy.

Four For The Road

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 07:04:31 -0500

Spastic Topic Monkey Friday, 6 June 2008

Memo to Libertas, Gregory Rodriguez, Condi Rice, and Italian atheists: YOU ARE EACH DUMB IN YOUR OWN LITTLE WAYS.

It's a unique time in political history - that brief pause between being irritated by the primary season and being irritated by the general election. The world seems to pause, and there's a hush in the air. An all-too-brief void that I will fill with a data dump of stuff that's been clogging my research files for far too long. Prepare for the mental high colonic that is SPASTIC TOPIC MONKEY FRIDAY!

Looks like MGM has decided to remake the Reagan-era cinematic wet dream "Red Dawn", because... actually, I have no fucking clue why. I find the greenlighting process completely incomprehensible, and the thought processes of the people who go through the back catalog of shit they own and wonder if they need to make us a new one even MORE than completely incomprehensible. But what the hell. They're making a new one.

This, of course, gave a huge (in relative terms, of course) stiffy (in relative terms, of course) to the crazy nutjob right-wing film-reviewer over at Libertas, who concocted the following post-9/11 world fantasy all on his own. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"...having an army of Iranian backed Islamo-Nazis occupy a part of the United States would not only be a rip-roaring action yarn but also an important reminder of the evil ideology we’re fighting. The whole movie should be an allegory about the hell Obama has promised to unleash on the Iraqi people should he win the election... In my hands it would be set in Manhattan because an island’s easier for the terrorists to defend and chock-full of appeasers in desperate need of a wake-up call. The scene with a herd of Greenwich Village liberals being shoved into burqas writes itself.

I've always loved the viewpoint that if New Yorkers, who actually experienced the 9/11 attacks, aren't shitting themselves in constant Islamophobic terror, it's because the people who actually suffered the terror attack didn't learn the right lessons from the terror attack, and some Internet douchebag who's closest experience with suicide bombing is an M-80 in the high school toilet knows better.

And when nobody listens to him, the Internet douchebag will wreak his revenge by using a Red Dawn remake to school those Greenwich Village liberals on the truth of his prophetic vision. And really, Greenwich Village? I suppose an 80's-retread movie deserves a 70's-retread liberal-bash touchstone, but you'd have saved yourself a lot of embarrassment if you'd just set it in San Francisco and had a black guy in a cowboy hat dancing during the whole takeover.*

Because it's an election season, you will probably be hearing a great deal of bullshit about the "middle". Also known as "centrism" or "uncommitted" or "The Great American Reacharound". You will be told, by people like Gregory Rodriguez in the LA Times, that being centrist, in the middle, or uncommitted is a good thing. Rodriguez goes one step further and calls partisanship, I shit you not, "The New American Segregation".

Graves would have you believe that "a healthy democracy needs the uncommitted middle, the fence straddlers and the apathetic as much as it the firebrand activists. Indeed, in a nation so torn by the passions of partisans, it is those of us who aren't all that enamored of either side who give politicians the room to compromise, which, of course, is the art that politics is supposed to be all about."

Anyone who talks like this is not to be trusted, because they either believe, or want YOU to believe, that there's not only an unchanging center-point in American political thought, but that both sides are pulling equally on this center point in an eternal game of tug-of-war. And since both these things are obviously lies, believing them would be a MISTAKE. Blindly hating everyone equally, regardless of their actions and policies, is actually MORE stupid than blindly hating one side and loving the other, because at least in the latter case, you have a 50% chance of being right just by luck.

Condoleeza Rice, while visiting Stockholm, was inducted into the KISS Army, and got to meet the band, which the FDA has ruled is still technically KISS on the grounds that it is made up by 54% original KISS members by weight. Her and her staff got autographs, T-Shirts, and backstage passes.

I suppose that's OK. I mean, sure, the band's long past its heyday. They're certainly not the demons of corruption our parents and the bluenoses were terrified of during my childhood. But you know what they say. You get inducted into the KISS Army you've got, not the KISS army you wish you had.

As an atheist, I would like to denounce, renounce, and reject the views of a pair of Italian atheists who were arrested for having sex in a church confessional, possibly during morning mass. While I do think it's silly that the bishop planned a special ceremony to purify the confessional (when really, a simple bleach solution in a spray bottle should suffice, especially since it was just oral), I do not condone sex in confessional booths regardless of your lack of belief in the church's divine authority.

Those things are, if TV and movies are to be believed, cramped and uncomfortable. If you must desecrate while you fornicate, I'm sure you can find something more comfortable than a tiny wooden box. Especially in Italy, where the churches have some serious cubic footage to them.

*Your YouTube search terms for this joke: "sam graves values".

Litter, Bugged

Sun, 18 May 2008 09:21:40 -0500

Spastic Topic Monkey Friday, 16 May 2008

Memo to the usual suspects: YOU ARE DUMB.

The Spastic Topic Monkey would like it to be known that he denounces, renounces, rejects, and repudiates all attempts by Atlanta-area bar owners to use simians as racist imagery. However, he does fully endorse SPASTIC TOPIC MONKEY FRIDAY.

The Duggars are pregnant with their eighteenth child. You may, perhaps, expect even more of my traditional outrage over their ridiculous reproductive stunt, but at least this time I understand their motives. Now they're famous as the couple that keeps having babies when all reason, all sanity, and the fundamental physical principle of friction would demand that they stop. They've got a TV series, for fuck's sake. Sure, it's on deep Discovery spinoff basic cable hell, but still, it's television.

The Rolling Stones keep touring. Brendan Fraser is making a third Mummy movie. Every goddamned year there's a new Madden game, whether we like it or not. The only warped philosophy the Duggars are exemplifying now is sequel-itis. I mean, it's a shame that a dozen and a half semi-sentient beings have to have their lives ruined just so their parents can stay in the spotlight, but at least now it's no worse than a kid's beauty pageant.

I swear, Dubya isn't even fucking trying anymore. His two big fuckups this week came across like watered-down half-assed self-parodies of his usual bullshit. I guess when you've set the all-time record for people hating your sorry presidential ass, you can afford to coast.

Anyway, first he gave an interview where he talked about how he hasn't played golf since August of 2003 because he thought it would look bad for him to be on the golf course while soldiers were dying in Iraq. Only a mind like Bush's could somehow make the distinction that clearing brush, being gently mocked by Rich Little at the Correspondent's Dinner, and tap-dancing in front of the White House are all respectful of our soldiers' sacrifice, but golf is just a bit too tacky.

The only thing more awe-inspiring than Bush sacrificing his tee-time during war-time is that two months after he supposedly gave up golfing, he was GOLFING. He's gotten to the point where he just lies reflexively, about things that the lie doesn't even help. Next he'll tell us he had waffles and human flesh for breakfast, and three hours later someone will leak that he actually had pancakes and human flesh. But it's OK, because the chef that mixed up the presidential and vice-presidential menus has been fired.

Oh, he also said that Barack Obama would have appeased Hitler, but since it stopped being the summer of 2006 nearly two years ago, I really can't bring myself to care.

Marie Jon' is someone I've been meaning to yell at for weeks. Back toward the end of April, she wrote a long, rambling post at the factory outlet for right-wing nutjobs, RenewAmerica. Her post was a barely-coherent attack on rationality. Which is fine. I'm a big fan of reason and being rational, but I can see where stupid crazy people might feel differently. The problem I have is with this bit. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"We can reason and rationalize just about anything, including our lack of exercise and bad eating habits. We rationalize insensitivity to others' feelings because we live in a world that has become coarse and crude. Are we reasonable? Are we rational? How often does an alcoholic rationalize: 'I can have one drink?' Marriages and homes are destroyed by acts of infidelity. Some men rationalize that watching pornography has no detrimental effect on their libido. Nothing could be further from the truth."

Well, at least one thing could be further from the truth. "Marie Jon' has a full and complete grasp of the English language, and everyone understands why the fuck she has an apostrophe at the end of her name."

Rationalizing is not reason, you complete fucking mental invalid. Rationalizing is the opposite of reason. It's pretending you've made a decision for logical, rational reasons to hide the fact that your real reasons were emotional, crazy, or the product of addiction.

Don't blame intellectuals for the lousy excuses of idiots, and while we're at it, don't blame thinking, reasoning people for the fact that you have no idea what you're talking about. It's not our fault you're stupid, though I will accept blame on behalf of all smart people everywhere for noticing how stupid you are.

I Got Yer Maypole Right Here

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 21:09:20 -0500

Spastic Topic Monkey Friday, 1 May 2008

Memo to All and Sundry: YOU ARE DUMB.

Because tomorrow is a special You Are Dumb Dot Net event, we're bumping the traditional hodgepodge of micromorons up a day. SPASTIC TOPIC MONKEY THURSDAY!

If Janet Jackson's nipple didn't bring about the end of Western civilization, then Hannah Montana's shoulder won't either. Every time you give a shit about how much skin Miley Cyrus is showing on the cover of Vanity Fair, Disney makes five bucks, Vanity Fair makes about a buck fifty, and Exxon-Mobil makes ten grand.

Do you want to know what the Jeremiah Wright saga has taught us? That media acceptance of the crazy shit you say increases as you travel along all five of the following axes:

Black --> White

Liberal --> Conservative

Old --> Young

Ugly --> Attractive

Male --> Female

That last one is counterintuitive, and may be due to Malkin and Coulter wrecking the curve. Luckily for John McCain, the first two are MUCH more powerful than the bottom three.

I never got around to covering Roger Byrd, the pastor of a church in South Carolina who caused a small uproar when he arranged the letters on his church sign to read "OBAMA OSAMA HUMM ARE THEY BROTHERS". There's been a lot of coverage of the story, rightly ridiculing the pigfucking pastor and the members of his pigfucking congregation who agreed with him. But there has NEVER been an explanation for that "U". It really derails the attempt to seem thoughtful about the secret relationship between two men whose names rhyme when you misspell the onomatopoeic representation of your thoughtfulness. Or, to put it in words you won't have to Google, wow, do you suck.

I don't mind it when Hillary Clinton attacks Barack Obama, All I ask, and it is apparently too fucking much to ask, is that she not SIDE WITH MCCAIN against Obama. And if she does do that, all I ask, and it is again apparently too fucking much to ask, is that she not side with McCain on his second-dumbest policy idea after nuking Iran* - the gas tax holiday. I know it's impossible to underestimate the stupidity of the American voting public, but when faced with a bottomless hole, you're not actually obligated to spend all day throwing rocks down it. Or Baracks, for that matter.

*At least Clinton has only said she'd nuke Iran under specific circumstances, while McCain would apparently do it just because he likes to sing.

Idle Hands And The Devil's Work

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 22:11:29 -0500

Spastic Topic Monkey Friday, 11 April 2008

Memo to Monique Davis, Charlie Daniels, and Florida: YOU ARE DUMB.

Like sands through the hourglass, so go the stupid people through You Are Dumb Dot Net. And sometimes, you've got to shake the thing to loosen up a clump of fuckwittery that's clogging up the whole damn works. And around here, we save that until the end of the week, and call it SPASTIC TOPIC MONKEY FRIDAY!

You know, it's bad enough that an Illinois Democrat, Monique Davis, teed off on an atheist last week, ranting and raving about how awful he, and by extension we all, are. I mean, if I were the kind of person to give a fuck what Monique Davis thinks, I might get a bit cranky to hear something like this:

"What you have to spew and spread is extremely dangerous... it's dangerous for our children to even know that your philosophy exists! This is the Land of Lincoln where people believe in God. Get out of that seat... You have no right to be here! We believe in something. You believe in destroying! You believe in destroying what this state was built upon."

That's just misunderstood. We atheists have nothing against the Earth's crust. We're pro-crust. If we weren't pro-crust, would we spend so much time insisting schools get its age right? We're opposed to stuffed crusts, yes, but only because cheese-stuffed pizza crusts are the strongest evidence to date for the existence of supernatural evil. But as far as atheists are concerned, Illinois can continue to rest upon the Earth and not be swallowed up by a huge fissure.

And speaking of huge fissures, how big of a fissure do you have to be in order to blame yelling about atheists being believers in destruction on a dead kid? In what will go down as a classic in political excuse construction: ACTUAL NEWS STORY QUOTE TIME!

"According to Sherman and State Rep. Jack Franks….Davis claims her outburst was triggered by learning shortly beforehand…that there’d been another Chicago Public School student killed. State Rep. Jack Franks was chairing the hearing that day and says Davis’ outburst was uncharacteristic, adding 'she was having a bad day.'" - WBBM 780, Chicago. Really?

If this is true, we atheists could make a fucking killing, if you'll pardon the expression. We should just set up roadside stands. "Experienced a tragedy? Yell at an atheist!". For five bucks, you get to say all kinds of mean shit about us, right to our faces, and we'll let it slide because you learned about a completely unrelated tragedy earlier in the day. A schoolkid shot, a traffic accident, not enough cinnamon on your frappucino, whatever, We'll make it all better. For a price. It's a win-win! We make money, and you can keep not blaming your omnipotent, omniscient deity for shit that goes down on his watch. Deal?

And speaking of omnipotent, Charlie Daniels is a dumbass. Apparently, he's all grumpy because "The Devil Went Down To Georgia" was in Guitar Hero III, and you play it against the devil in the game's completely ridiculous battle mode. And he's upset because, well, it's a battle mode in a video game. Which means...SPOILER ALERT!

"The song, 'The Devil Went Down To Georgia,' which I wrote, is supposed to be a lighthearted novelty about a fiddling contest between a country boy and the devil and the devil always loses. That is not the case with the Guitar Hero version which comes complete with a horned, guitar-playing devil who battles the player and very often wins."

OK, Charlie. Let's throw out four decades of video game design fundamentals and end a game with a duel the player can't actually lose, no matter how bad he is at it, to avoid offending your sensibilities. I don't care how much easier that would have made my life last November, that's bullshit. Does your song really celebrate the Devil's incompetence? No, it does not. It celebrates the fiddle-playing ability of the mortal fiddle player. I say that Guitar Hero III teaches an important moral lesson - do not duel with the Devil unless you're really, really good at your instrument. By instilling this lesson into the youth of America, Activision could save millions of nonexistent immortal souls every year.

And speaking of instilling lessons into the youth of America, I must demand of the State of Florida that if they cannot teach their students basic human biology, that they at least control the spread of ridiculous rumors so that they don't result in a Darwinian zero-sum game.

You see, as a result of Florida's abstinence-only sex education program, Florida teenagers believe that drinking bleach will keep you from getting AIDS. This is a good thing, because it results in stupid sexually-active teenagers drinking bleach, which down the road will result in fewer stupid sexually active teenagers. Darwinian plus!

But they ALSO believe that a shot of Mountain Dew will keep you from getting pregnant, and I don't care what orifice they're downing, or upping as the case may be, that shot into - this will inevitably result in stupid sexually-active teenagers getting pregnant, which down the road will result in more stupid sexually active teenagers. Darwinian minus!

Come on, Florida. If you can't make us smarter, you could at least make us sparser. Convince all the boys that plugging their scrotum into a 110-volt outlet will render them sterile for the next six hours. That'd be fun, as long as the prevailing winds blew the scorched pube smell out to sea.

It Could Be Worse Friday

Thu, 20 Mar 2008 22:46:17 -0500

Religion, 21 March 2008

Memo to America: I SUPPOSE IT COULD BE WORSE.

American religious extremism has been in the news a lot this week. Well, if it's leftist black religious extremism, it has. And if you combine that with all the times crazy right-wing religious extremism has been in YAD, then you can sort of achieve a kind of bare minimum parity required to set up the idea of a column looking at religious nutters who are even nuttier than the local variety, in what I'm calling SPASTIC TOPIC GOOD FRIDAY!

We start in India, where around 50 people made it impossible for me to avoid making a "blind faith" joke. Apparently, rumors spread that a religious image was appearing over the home of a resident of Kattayam, India. Hordes of people came out to stare at the sky, searching in vain for the image, until they burned their fucking retinas.

The image, by the way, wasn't Krishna, or Ganesh, or any of the iconography usually associated with the subcontinent. It was the Virgin Mary. Apparently feeling a bit capricious after years of appearing in potato chips, urine-soaked underpasses, and frying pans, Mary decided to play a little trick on rural Indian Christians and blind them. It's like a missionary version of Punk'd.

When it comes to the kind of self-abuse the Christian faith doesn't frown upon, though, you're gonna have a tough time beating the Philippines. Because the Filipinos are too busy beating themselves. Apparently not content with the traditional forms of Easter torture - crappy chocolate bunnies and an entire week of painfully proselytizing B.C. cartoons - people in the Philippines nail themselves to crosses and whip themselves.

Not metaphorically. According to the Manila Times, the national health department is warning that "in the hot and dusty atmosphere... using unhygienic whips to make deep cuts in the body could lead to tetanus and other infections." Apparently, it's left to me to point out that using hygienic whips to make deep cuts in the body could lead to DEEP CUTS IN THE BODY.

They also want to make sure that people properly sterilize the nails they DRIVE THROUGH THEIR HANDS AND FEET INTO CROSSES. You know, say what you will about atheists, but not only do we not go around re-enacting scenes from Richard Dawkins books, if we DID, we wouldn't be impaling ourselves to do it. One guy in the Philippines has crucified himself fifteen years in a row to thank God for his mother's recovery from tuberculosis. Never mind that he could have just sent a fucking FTD bouquet to the guy who discovered ethambutol and saved himself a truckload of agony.

And finally, because the Internet belongs to no country, I must mention the Church of Scientology's newly launched Scientology Video Channel. It's an attempt to counter a series of YouTube videos released by a hacker group, "Anonymous", which has decided it wants to take down the Church of Scientology.

I have to say, if there's one thing that could make the Church of Scientology seem almost sympathetic, it's a bunch of irritating fuckwads on IRC who think they're on a crusade. But the Scientologists, in a marketing move that really makes me wonder how the fuck they get and keep any followers at all, has decided to counter three Anonymous videos on YouTube with EIGHTY TWO pro-Scientology videos on their own website.

Guys. I know that you go after Hollywood types who'll make a short film at the drop of an e-meter. But 82 is a bit much. Especially the 21 different videos in the "Way to Happiness" series. Here's a sign that your religion is barking up the wrong god-forsaken tree. When you think watching 21 short videos by Scientologists on the Internet is the way to anything except a wasted evening and a splitting headache.

Don't Get Comfy

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 22:59:21 -0500

Spastic Topic Monkey Friday, 14 March 2008

Memo to Republicans: DON'T GET SMUG.

Fuckers have had it easy this week, with Spitzer on one hand and Ferraro on the other. But don't start thinking you've lost your competitive edge in stupidity. You've just been a lower priority this week. And to help you play catch-up, and remember your place, here's the week in right-wing moronitude, served up SPASTIC TOPIC MONKEY FRIDAY style.

I mean, Geraldine Ferraro is racist, but she didn't have to resign because she was forwarding around e-mails with cartoons featuring black people overdosing on watermelon and fried chicken. And Eliot Spitzer may have fucked some prostitutes, but at least he didn't have to resign because he was banging his secretary. No, for that you need a special kind of Texas Two-Step, courtesy former Houston D.A. Chuck Rosenthal, who blamed his tacky behavior on prescription drugs, as any paragon of personal responsibility who'd argued (unsuccessfully) in favor of upholding Texas' sodomy laws would.

At least when our guys aren't fucking up, they're doing good, like taking on Wall Street crooks. Even when Rosenthal was doing his job the way he was supposed to, he was STILL trying to keep blowjobs and buttsex criminal. And as bad as the lesser of two evils is, by definition, it's better than the greater of two evils.

And speaking of evil, Dr. Laura is still around? For some reason, I thought we'd collectively gotten tired of her archconservative pop psychology when someone fed her after midnight and spilled water on her*. But apparently not. Apparently people still ask her to opine on stuff, and she still says reactionary retarded bullshit straight out of 1952. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"And when the wife does not focus in on the needs and the feelings, sexually, personally, to make him feel like a man, to make him feel like a success, to make him feel like her hero, he's very susceptible to the charm of some other woman making him feel what he needs. And these days, women don't spend a lot of time thinking about how they can give their men what they need."

You know why women don't do those things, and the employees of Emperor's Club do? Because the prostitutes are getting paid thousands of dollars an hour to lie. Seriously, if the fucking GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK didn't feel like a success, that's not his wife's fault, and you'd have to be some kind of retrograde June Cleaver wannabe with an axe to grind to say otherwise with a straight face. Oh, right. Dr. Laura. I guess that's redundant.

And seriously. I know the Bush administration is completely fucking obsessed with hiding away any and all government reports that challenge its bullshit, but this week, they tried to limit access to a Pentagon report that had already leaked. The results of that report? There was no connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda.

Why would you try to keep that quiet? Keep the Pentagon from putting the report online, or putting out a press release about it? The Saddam - Al Qaeda thing is as settled as EVOLUTION. Everyone sane knows it, and all the evidence in the world won't stop crazy people from denying it. All you do by quashing the report is reinforce the image that the Bush administration is blindly flailing around, desperate to maintain an illusion that's been so thoroughly shattered that you can see the strain on the faces of the poor shills trotted out on talk show after talk show to play pretend.

Well, except for John McCain. That motherfucker can pretend eight different self-contradictory things in his sleep.

*This was originally phrased in a more canonical way as "get her wet", which I think we're all glad I changed.

Look Back In Annoyance

Thu, 17 Jan 2008 22:31:11 -0600

Spastic Topic Monkey Friday, 18 January 2008

Memo to Mike Huckabee, Debbie Schlussel, and Kevin McCullough: WELCOME BACK, DUMBASSES!

Some people can't get enough of that sweet, sweet You Are Dumb lovin'. They know it's bad for them, but they keep coming back, because even though it's bad, it's so damn good. So it's time for an extra-special Associates Of The Column edition of Spastic Topic Monkey Friday!

Ah, Mike Huckabee. He started out seeming so nice at first. He seemed warm and fuzzy, but it turns out that was just because he was out of focus. As he came closer and started talking, the inner crazy shone through. Still, that dichotomy is at the heart of the latest fucking stupid thing he said this week:

"I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution. But I believe it’s a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God. And that’s what we need to do is amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than trying to change God’s standards so it lines up with some contemporary view of how we treat each other and how we treat the family."

See? He's right... and he's wrong. I mean, that would be an awful, awful way to change the Constitution. It would be a headlong rush into American Taliban theocracy. Fuck him and the cross he rode in on. BUT. If we ARE going to complete the transformation of this nation into a crazy irrational theocracy, changing the Constitution is the only legal and correct way to do it. Half-assed measures, faith-based initiatives, and chipping away at abortion rights and the Establishment Clause are much more insidious and intellectually dishonest than Huckabee's approach. Which is simultaneously reprehensible and uncomfortably refreshing.

Meanwhile, the constant vigilance against insidious jihadism has just been snuck up on and given a wedgie. Remember Debbie Schlussel? The one who thought that green Ramadan lights on the Empire State Building were a sign that the caliphate was marching down 5th Avenue handing out burqas at gunpoint? Well, it turns out the infiltada was closer than she thought.

You may have heard about Mark Siljander. Former Congressman. Republican. Just got indicted for money laundering, conspiracy, and obstructing justice. Apparently, he was lobbying for an Islamic charity and crossed a few legal boundaries. The government claims the charity was funneling money to Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Maybe it was. I've lost track of the number of Islamic charities that someone's accused of ties to terrorism, but I'm pretty sure it's close to "all of them".

But that's really beside the point, because at one time, alleged terrorist sympathizer and Al(leged) Qaeda fundraiser Mark Siljander had a 16-year-old girlwoman on his staff - writing his speeches, teaching him Hebrew. Yes, it was a young Debbie Schlussel.

Now, I would not stoop so low as to suggest that, due to her past ties to a suspected terrorist sympathizer, the authorities should apply the standards of the right-wing paranoiasphere and do things that are in no way torture to Schlussel until we find out what she knows. I will, however, stoop so low as to take her following words on the topic completely out of context, since it's the fault of her and her ilk that they sound so dirty. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"I was just 16, but more than an intern." - Oh, my.

Saving the best for last is our old buddy from Townhall.com, Kevin McCullough. What you may remember is that McCullough made the column over a year ago for opposing pregnant lesbians on the grounds that they can't produce their own sperm. What you probably don't know, because I keep that kind of shit out of the column on principle, is that the fuckstick later linked to the YAD column about him as one of several sites that proved, via the time-worn right-wing adage, that if they'd annoyed liberals, they must be right.

Well, I can only imagine how right McCullough must be feeling right now, after his insane column accusing the game "Mass Effect" of featuring "the most realistic sex acts ever conceived". He got so much shit wrong in that column even the general gaming public realized he was retarded. And he got yelled at. A lot.

He then wrote a follow-up column in which, true to form, he took pride in being yelled at, pretended he didn't say half the stuff he got wrong, and pretended the other half didn't actually change his point, such as it was. And then he got yelled at some more.

It's funny because he's stupid, it's funny because YAD was ahead of the curve by 13 months on him being stupid, and it's funny because on Wednesday morning, another post went up on Townhall.com containing the closest thing to the emotion of contrition that McCullough has likely ever expressed in print. And the first column, full of egregious and hilarious mistakes you probably already know about because you read Penny Arcade too, has vanished down the memory hole.

If only he'd taken my words to heart back in December '06, and given up writing for a profession more suited to his intellectual acumen, none of this would have happened. So let this be a lesson to future generations of narcissistic Googlers stumbling across my youhatred: MEND YOUR WAYS. Or you'll be humiliated in a much more public manner down the line.

So Glad We're Beyond Race

Thu, 10 Jan 2008 22:56:36 -0600

Election 2008, 11 January 2008

Memo to Barack Obama: SORRY.

We are such a nation of assholes. Really. In the past week or so, Obama's win in Iowa and his second-place finish in New Hampshire have elicited an ocean of commentary from that group of special people who are paid good money to talk shit about shit. While those of us who do it for free look on in horror. And to make sure that horror is equally shared, please enjoy this trip through Obamamania in the clinical sense of the word, in a very special color-blind edition of SPASTIC TOPIC MONKEY FRIDAY.

At the bottom of the crazy ladder we have James Lileks, who took one of his periodic breaks from writing books about awful food and ugly furniture to reprise his role as Minnesota's Unfortunately Set In His Ways And Slightly Racist Uncle. In discussing the Iowa results, he praised Giuliani and McCain, which tells you everything you need to know about the political insight of James Lileks. He then went on to place himself in early contention for a 2008 award for passive-aggressive punditry. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"I do not want a National Dad or even a Cool Brother (double-meaning unintended) for the President; I want someone with JFK’s optimism, Roosevelt’s steel, Truman’s irascibility, and so forth. But it’s all for naught if the Obamaboom continues, because he has the zeitgeist at his back and a sail the size of an IMAX screen. People will vote for him because they want to be part of something larger, and that’s a rare and potent thing these days. Whether that’s a wise thing to do in perilous times depends on whether people think we’re living in perilous times, I suppose. We’ll see."

Allow me to translate. "Go and ahead and vote for Obama. See if I care. Just don't come crying to me when your special 'first black president'* gets you blown up in a suicide bombing. And, as always, GET OFFA MY LAWN."

But we're just getting started. Let's turn to Christopher Hitchens, who took one of his periodic breaks from writing books about how all religions suck but Islam sucks more to drink heavily. And then he (presumably) took one of those periodic breaks from the heavy drinking to castigate people for voting for Barack Obama, because they're clearly only voting for him because he's black, and we're supposed to be beyond that now. AQT!

"Isn't there something pathetic and embarrassing about this emphasis on shade? And why is a man with a white mother considered to be 'black,' anyway? Is it for this that we fought so hard to get over Plessy v. Ferguson? Would we accept, if Obama's mother had also been Jewish, that he would therefore be the first Jewish president? The more that people claim Obama's mere identity to be a 'breakthrough,' the more they demonstrate that they have failed to emancipate themselves from the original categories of identity that acted as a fetter upon clear thought."

Allow me to answer Hitchens' questions in the order he posed them. Fuck you, you drunken prick. Because if you're dark enough to not get served at Denny's, you're black in America. Probably, especially since ethnic Jewishness is reckoned in a matrilineal fashion, although the media tends to focus on "followers of the religion" rather than "members of the ethnicity".

And while his last sentence wasn't technically a question, claiming that we're so egalitarian now that having a black man gain entry to the highest position in the land, for the first time ever, in a job held previously by 43 white men, a position no African-American has ever been higher than FIFTH IN LINE FOR - to claim that wouldn't be a breakthrough or a big deal? That's fucking ludicrous. Hitchens is, in essence, asking us to move beyond race so that we can elect another white man as President. Since Hitchens is not an idiot, I can only assume that he feels Obama will be insufficiently vigorous in Hitchens pet project, bombing the shit out of Arabs, and is willfully concocting specious arguments to derail the Obama train.

Now, if you want a crazy motherfucker who actually believes his specious argument about Obama, you have to turn to Adam Yoshida, a conservative blogger who slightly derails my introductory bit about people who get paid to say stupid shit. Yoshida does it for free, because he's a true believer. A true believer in the danger of Obama. First, to establish Yoshida's analytical bonafides, here's the advice he's giving the Democrats for 2008:

"If Brad Henry, Mike Easley, or Phil Bredesen were set to be their nominee the Democrats would be looking at something like a five to ten point win right about now." I think I speak for all of us when I say, Who, Who, and Fucking Whodesen? But that's just the horshit d'oeuvre. Yoshida really doesn't like Obama:

"Every time I see his face – pale and strangely off-putting like that of a transsexual – my blood boils." Note the misdirection. Yoshida hates Obama because of how PALE he is. Also, Adam Yoshida has no problem with us believing that transsexuals make his blood boil. Take that however you want. But what he really hates about Obama is that he might possibly be out to destroy us all.

"Indeed, we know – thanks to Hillary Clinton’s discovery of a youthful ‘essay’ – that Obama had political ambitions from a very early age. Islam has a specific doctrine, known as “al-Taqiyya”, which permits the followers of Allah to conceal their true faith when among unbelievers. Now, let’s be very clear – I’m not saying that Obama is a concealed Moslem, a Manchurian candidate, waiting to seize the office of the Presidency in the service of sinister interests. But, on the other hand, it’s impossible to rule it out. These things are, after all, unfalsifiable by their very nature. Is Barak Hussein Obama secretly a Moslem, pretending otherwise under the cover of a goofy Black Nationalist church? I can’t prove it and I, personally, don’t believe it – but neither I nor anyone who isn’t a telepath can disprove it either. Unfalsifiable."

I mention this not to refute it or be outraged at it, because Yoshida's clearly engaging in deliberately provocative dickery. But talk like Yoshida's is precisely the kind of thing that gets put out there so that other people, who would get in trouble for saying it that openly, can hint at it obliquely, thereby reinforcing it in the minds of the crazy people reading the chain e-mails, Canadian conservative blogs, or old Ron Paul newsletters**. And if Obama keeps winning things, you'll keep hearing more of it, and worse. But it's OUR pathetic and embarrassing emphasis on shade, of course.

*It is impossible to spell out the sneering sarcasm my imagination is making this phrase sound like. Feel free to add it yourself.

**If you don't get this joke now, you will at some point next week.

Your Torture In America Update

Thu, 13 Dec 2007 22:50:00 -0600

Prisoner Abuse, 14 December 2007
In case you're wondering what happened to the Spastic Topic Monkey, it turns out authorities are holding him in a black site prison because he ended up on a no-fly list by mistake. The good news is, he's being treated humanely. The bad news is, it's only because the government hasn't gotten their Fisher Price My Size Waterboarding Kit yet. In honor of his predicament, today is Spastic Tortured Monkey Friday!

It's been a busy couple of weeks in America's new role as Torturer, And Proud Of It. Now, I'm not naive enough to think that Dick Cheney invented American torture. But I do think that they invented torture as defendable, official policy. That this hideous shit has been normalized to the point where people can defend it and not be laughed off the national stage should really be bothering more people than it is.

For example, it should be bothering Nancy Pelosi, Jay Rockefeller, and Jane Harman, who, it turns out, have known we were waterboarding people since 2003. And, depending on reports, they either approved, failed to disapprove, or failed to disapprove besides sending a secret letter to the torture people saying that maybe they shouldn't torture.

Now, I'm not going to sit here and claim that this makes the Democrats as bad as the Bush administration when it comes to flagrant abuse of the Constitution and American ideals and basic human decency. But there's a hell of a gap between "better than Bush" and GOOD ENOUGH. And whatever the reason, their collective inaction then was doubly craven. Because not only was it a failure to stop it THEN, but the revelation of that failure undercuts efforts to stop it NOW. What was that Burke quote? All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing? Well, we don't even have good men, so it's no wonder evil has been such a fucking growth industry this decade.

And speaking of evil, what the fuck must have been on those CIA tapes that getting busted for destroying them was preferable to getting busted for whatever was recorded on them? Of course, in their minds, some underling at the CIA can take the fall for the tape destruction, while the people in charge of the policy that dictated the acts that were ON the tapes skate one more time in what's become the Ice Capades of perfidy.

And there is no greater example of the twisted logic that rules in the psyches of these bastards than Tony Blankley's interview with NPR. Blankley, who is usually paid to say stupid shit by the Washington Times, who approves wholeheartedly of the CIA's illegal destruction of criminal evidence. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"All I could imagine was that video being leaked to Al-Jazeera and from there to YouTube and from there to the minds of hundreds of millions of Muslims around the world... actual waterboarding would instill more passion in the Islamic world than the still pictures of Abu Grahib prison. It would have constituted a catastrophic propaganda defeat for us that would make it yet harder to begin the long process of winning the hearts and minds of currently non-violent Muslims. ... A necessary early step is convincing the Muslim world that we are not their enemy. How could the release of such an inflammatory video help with that vital effort?

That's not an argument for destroying the tapes of us torturing people. It's an argument for NOT FUCKING TORTURING PEOPLE! We're told time and time again by these fucks that our civilization is fighting for its very existence, that winning this war on terror is the most important thing ever. Yet when deciding on a course of action that, if discovered, would cause an epic-level setback in that very fight, they go ahead and do it anyway and just hope that nobody finds out how bad it really was. GENIUSES.

Never mind that it's inhuman, unethical, and proven to be ineffective. Beyond that, even the crazy people seem to realize it's awful strategy. But the tapes got destroyed, so everything's hunky-dory to Blankley! As long as the Muslim world is somehow fooled by this into thinking we're not their enemy. I'm not sure that's something we can count on, since most of the ones we've bombed are pretty sure we're their enemies, and if we haven't bombed them, then odds are they still have working eyes and ears.