In which “Too Much Birdshot Bukkake Makes the GOP Go Blind.”
One personal matter about which I’d like to do a little happy dance first:
This is my 500th Post.
Ta Da!
Comments and the conversations they create are terrific and informative: I look forward to them more than you may know. The emails I get are usually thoughtful and/or informative, and often really funny. Rising hit counts are dandy, and awards or nominations or suchlike are things about which I'm deeply ambivalent, but I appreciate the sentiments they express.
But in the end, writing is about sitting down and writing, and with my tempus fugitting away these days towards every horizon like a Baker’s Dozen of Runaway Brides, to look back and see that in less than a year I’ve piled up half-a-thousand essays, poems, lyrics, PhotoShopping Expeditions, etc. is very satisfying.
But enough about that, ‘cause I don’t know if you heard, but Dick Cheney shot some old guy!
In the face!
On Fox...
Chris Wallace asks if using terms to describe the Dread Lord Cheney like “Above the Law” “Arrogance of Power” isn’t the kind of language that makes the Dems look silly.
Evan Bayh, eager to look squinty and Presidential and eat whatever orts he is offered off the Fox table, urges Dems to drop the Cheney thing and get on with other stuff.
Lindsey Graham, fearfully aware that Big Dick is lurking in shadows, armed, deep in his cups, and mouthing “Wanna birdshot facial pretty-boy?” at him, sums Cheney thusly: Great Hunter. Nice man.
Wallace: Isn’t this White House “too secret”?
Graham: Nah.
Wallace faults the Dems for “killing the Patriot Act”. And wanting to get out of Iraq. Not very manly…
Graham: The Preznit has a theme. We have a theme. The Dems don’t have a theme. Agree with him or not, he’s got theme shooting out of every pore, whereas the Dems are “all over the place”.
Funny, I always thought that’s what a democracy engaging in a national debate over vital issues sounds like. Whereas demanding “One Party. One Leader. One Identity.”?
Doesn’t that sound just a wee bit…Teutonic? And not in a good blonde hottie kind of way?
Bayh: There can’t be a choice between cost and protecting America.
Hey, what about that White House plan to sell major US ports to a firm based in Dubai…
Graham: It is unbelievably, politically tone-deaf for the White House to approve the sale of major American ports/ port security to a company in the UAE.
Wallace: So Softie McSoftington, how about what you said about you guys being seen as soft on security.
Bayh: Yeah, we have to work on that.
Waiting…waiting…waiting…
Nope.
Bayh is palming the same card as many of the rest of the leading Dems: more talking about the day when we’ll talk about stuff.
More “pre-meeting, meetings”.
Chris Wallace then disinters the GOP’s favortite Crazy Uncle Fester -- Alan Simpson -- to ramble about the non-story that everyone on Fox insists that everyone ELSE needs to Stop Talking About: Dead-Eye Dick Cheney.
Wallace all but 'umbly pardons himself for giggling and swooning like a crushing school girl every time Simpson opens his quirk-hole. And then opines that ”some worry” that this may take a toll on poor Dick Cheney.
Simpson (and this almost a quote): “The American people know what it is to have someone have an accident on your ranch, when someone gets shot or bucked off his horse or something…”
Really? Most Americans maintain large, private, hunting ranches? They understand shooting accidents on their property? When the shooter is the most powerful man on Earth? Who is somehow so involved with applying direct pressure to the wounds, or CPR, or something for 20 straight hours that he doesn’t bother to tell his alleged boss – the President – or his actual boss – the American People – WTF was going on?
Even though he’s traveling with a phalanx of doctors and Secret Service?
For a guy who constantly flogs the press and the D.C. culture for being too insular – and about that, he is quite right – Alan Simpson needs to spend considerably less time sniffing his own saddle (so the speak) and breathe that clean American air, laden with the perfumes of millions of people who aren’t rich Republicans with 10,000 acre private hunting demenses.
Wallace then tries passing Simpson an, “If you like me, check one of these boxes...” note. Wallace then tries to “yawn an arm” around Big Al and sidle up a little closer. Wallace then tries to slip him a little tongue.
Sadly, Simpson is sitting over a thousand miles away and is appearing on one ‘a them new-fangled video-monitor dealies, so their love must remain unrequited, and all Wallace got was a mild electric shock and mouthful of old teevee screen dust.
Which, come to think of it, is probably quite a lot like soul-kissing Alan Simpson for real.
Eww!
Sorry; sometimes it does not pay at ALL to have a vivid imagination.
Wallace: Hehehe. Could you be more colorful!
Simpson: “I travel all over this country and talk to all kinds of people, and the American People this and the American people that…”
Simpson: “The American people are waiting for something-something the American people, something pitch forward, catatonic coma.”
And then the Ugly People rolled out and I went away after Brit Hume took off after “the press” for acting like “a Pack of Jackals”! Heavens! It’s the Press Corps that’s outta line here! They behaved badly. For Shame. Bad press! Naughty press! You get down off that nice Mr. McClellan right now!
Perhaps it’s just me, but seeing a Fake-Plastic-Joke-Vomit-For-Entertainment-Purposes-Only-“Newsman” like Hume whining about how actual journalists should behave is just plain funny. Like a meth whore taking a 10-second time-out between working a dozen drunks in an alley to scream at passing lady cop that her lipstick is shamefully immodest.
Meet the Press…was MIA from Chicago teevee, displaced by Winter Olympic hockey: Two concepts which, when combined, reach new heights of "Don't Careishness" with me. There is a nice summary of “The many responses of Lady MacCheney” over at the indispensable Crooks and Liars here, and a longer excerpt here.
(My only remaining question is about Lady MacCheney generally is, what exactly is her Botox Injection Regimen that she can so perfectly petrify her face into slate fetish mask of peevish incredulity at every word everyone else utters, while still staying facially pliable enough to allow a veritable Niagra of bile and lies to fountain out of her mouth?)
Note to MoDo (who was on Meet the Press, along with David Gregory): The next time you’re on a panel with this shrike, instead of futilely attempting to engage her in a fact-based form of communication with which she is completely unfamiliar, try pelting her with holy water while firmly intoning “The Power of Christ compels you! The Power of Christ compels you!” instead.
Because I think the resulting detonation of pea soup, head-spinning and potty language would make for some mighty entertaining teevee.
On Face the Nation -- Senator's Frist and Boxer.
Fristy is all a-squirm when asked The Question, because Herr Docktor still dreams of changing his address to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and you don’t get to go to that dance by offending the Party Mullahs like James Dobson, and certainly not by taking sides against Dread Lord Cheney.
Wants to leave “The Vice President Who Mistook His Friend for a Hat…and Then Shot Him” alone like crazy, so he does what all savvy pols do under pressure: Break’s into a soulful ballad, covering one of my personal favorites from Emmylou Harris’ “Red Dirt Girl”. …
“… I don't want to talk about it now
I don't want to talk about it now
I don't want to talk about it now
I wanna go down
God knows why you don't want me
No one would do the things I do
But to my grave it's gonna haunt me
How I got down on my knees for you
You are my obsession
And the reason that I live
You already got my soul
There's nothin left to give
But I don't want to talk about it now
I don't want to talk about it now
I don't want to talk about it now
I wanna go down…”
Yeah, that about sums it up. Of course Emmylou sings it much better.
Then he's asked, Hey Doc...Ain’t Cheney a liability?
No! He is a bald leader.
Bald?
Oh. “Bold”. Never mind.
The only other thing Frist is firm about is that he doesn’t approve of injecting “partisan politics” into this.
Don’t worry, Senator. It’s only a light peppering of partisanship. From 30 yards away.
And we feel just AWFUL about it.
Barbara Boxer; silver highlights and concern in front of a roaring fire. Talking about the “secret” study or negotiations (I’m a little dodgy on the details) to sell several major American ports to a Dubai company.
Boxer on that: No foreign company should run our infrastructure.
On Medicare reform, Boxer was good, but everybody – and I mean everybody – was asserting all kinds of things about “The American People” today and what “they” want/need/believe. It is a subject that has irritated me for a long time, and I had intended to finish a long-ish piece entitled “No ‘We’ In America” for my 500th post, but it’s still up on blocks.
Boxer asserts that the more the America people look into this plan, the more they’ll hate it.
Sorry, Senator, but not one American in 30 will “look into” this plan to the level of detail at which they can form the kind of opinion you’re talking about. That’s why we hire you and send you to D.C.; to act as our proxy because we have two or three thousand other things to get to before we can get around to figuring out whether or not some staffer jiggering with the way administrative costs are calculated in some massive bill is a good idea…or a stealth plan to destroy the program by making it unrunnable.
On This Week… Katrina vanden Heuvel! I must have you!
But first there was Michael Chertoff, who said the usual and customary Chertoffy things that a Chertoff is going to say.
I imagine Chertoff on a Republican Space Ark, looking through a porthole back at continent-sized splinters of rubble where the Earth used to be before an asteroid took it out, saying, “Sure there were some mistakes, but we did some things extremely well too. We learned from the experience, and I’m sure we’ll do better next time.”
There should never, ever, ever again be a “next time” for these criminals.
De Facto Republican Senator Joementum and De Jure Republican Rep. Tom Davis debate FEMA and Homeland Security.
Davis: The White House wouldn’t even give us someone under oath to talk about this. The WH has the Magic Wand, and they need to cooperate.
Strikes me that the Congressional GOP talks plaintively about what the WH “should do” in the same way a lot of Moderate Dems talk about “Getting around to talkin’ ‘bout stuff by-and-by.” A wistful, daydreamy wish for some far off tomorrow when things will magically right themselves and the bestial men who run the government will miraculously start responding to reason and legalities, stop behaving like mobsters in a bent town and suddenly sprout some respect for the law.
Seriously, Representative Davis, why should the White House do a fucking thing? Are you planning on subpoenaing them? Sending in the Feds to confiscate records and files? Because if you’re not, then kindly shut the fuck up. If you’re not, then you’re just another Republican wheel-man feigning concern for the fate of your country with fierce, empty words. Another useless Barney Fife, talking big and bold about Law Enforcement, and then hiding like chickenhawk from a Marine recruiter when it comes to actually DOING something about it.
And then…
And then…!
Katrina vanden Heuvel! I must have you!
She of the beautiful, bee-stung lips, razor-studded, pear-shaped prose and raven hair brings the Big Heat and positively kills George Will. Not just hits him, but punches right on through the quivering, truckling piñata of thesauran Jell-O that is George Will. And rolls on so strong and clear and passionate that she actually cracked Cokie Roberts’ Lucite Hair open wide enough that the funky, fungus-y moths that nest up there fluttered out, flapped erratically once or twice and died under the bright studio lights.
Oh. My. Goodness.
Pleaaaase let C&L have this, because it’s both a work of art and a masterpiece of pure verbal craft, and a textbook example of what Not Backing Down One Inch looks like when delivered with a smile.
It was so relentless that Cokie Roberts had to drop any pretense of even token once-upon-a-time moderateness, hop aboard her “Vroom Broom” and fly to the rescue of Po’ George.
Reminded me of nothing so much as the most brutal Dysfunctional Family Thanksgiving you’ve ever seen or been at.
George Will, the ossified, thin-lipped Angry Dad who is forever ranting out his charmingly rustic ideas about Dirty Liberals, and Ayrabs and Fem’nists and The Coloreds, and Katrina vanden Heuvel as the smart, emotionally-healthy daughter who left the neighborhood, stopped sopping up her worldview solely from local boneheads repeating what they heard on Rush last night, went to college, learned about the wider world, grew tough and beautiful and has now finally Had It with Idiot Dad spouting his Idiot Drivel.
And then, one holiday over turkey, she just unloads on his dumb, hateful ass with a forcefulness that Bad Dad is completely unprepared for.
Every time he tries to run yet another one of his hoary, ridiculous Conservative clichés at her as some kind of rebuttal, she drops him in his tracks like Cheney bringing down a 78-year-old Liberal Texas Trophy Buck.
And finally Will can do nothing but sit there and seethe. Absolutely unmanned, spidery hands furiously steepled, glaring passive-aggressive “I Hate You and the Air You Breathe” daggers at Katrina with all the impotent irk a little man can muster without blowing a header gasket at this awful, awful girl who dared to stomp the Truth all over his stupid fussy dogma.
And Cokie Roberts was perfectly cast as Terrified Enabler Mom. Positively leaping into her role as Evil Edith Bunker, defending her stupid, ignorant spouse and trying with that desperate rictus that passes for a smile pasted to her face to keep peace at the dinner table.
Oh, Lawdy! Why oh why can’t we just talk of happy things? Why can’t just laugh and stuff ourselves with cranberry sauce and dispense with all of this unpleasantness.
Katrina vanden Heuvel finds it fucking fascinating that the press has suddenly, finally become interested in asking hard questions. And hopes that maybe it’ll set a trend, and maybe they’ll bring the same fire to interlocuting about actual, important matters.
George Will squeaks out “Elite press. Bad Press.” That no one cares about this, and when he stops to take a wee breathe Ms. vanden Heuvel saws his ass off and serves it to him on the good china.
As he goes beneath the waves for the third time over the issue of Hamas, George pipes up with some non-sequitor that “words are deeds”, and gets hit with another anvil.
Ms. vanden Heuvel goes down the whole laundry list like a Very Hot prosecutor reading out the bill of particulars on a mob family. Katrina. Iraq. “Cherry picking” intel. Lies this Administration tells as a matter of course. The sneeringly imperial attitude. The disastrous mess of Neocon dogma and wishful thinking that passes for “foreign policy” and has made the world vastly more unstable and dangerous, not less. The contempt for the Bill of Rights. The secrecy and mendacity and unbelievable incompetence that this Administration has on exhibit every single day.
George Stephanopoulos has to break up the fight, with “well, this debate could go on forever, but now…”.
Except of course it wasn’t a debate; it was a beat-down.
Those Democrats who are forever verging on thinking about drawing up plans to maybe, someday, eventually engage the GOP instead of just standing up -- right now -- and smacking these people need to dupe off 1,000 copies of Ms. vanden Heuvel’s performance, mail it to every Democratic organization, and mandate the watching of same with as much focus as an NFL coach reviewing game film.
She was on fire.
Will was humiliated. Completely gutted.
And soft-boned Dems need to take a lesson.
[Welcome C&L Readers. Bathroom's on the left, and I think I've still got some War on Christmas lemon bars around here if you're hungry.
Also mind the cat; she's a bit of a...disemboweler. Which I believe according to the Dear Leader means she lies a lot.)
I haven't seen the video feed yet up on C&L , however the Podcast is available HERE.
:-D
I watched the Cokie Roberts/George Will take down, and I totally agree with everything you said - it was a thing of beauty.
Katrina V. came prepared. And, yes, every Democrat should watch that performance and take notes!
Congrats on you first 500 posts!!
- Portia
And thank you from the bottom of my little church attending heart, for "Sunday Mornin' coming down" -- just one of the finest things on the web that makes me swoon in that special ecstasy that comes only from hearing of someone deserving recieving their comeuppance.
I laugh, I cry, I smack my computer.
Fab-u-lus.
Keep it up - and congratulations!
-- mac
It's a pleasure to read you...
Hell Portia, it wasn't just a takedown, it was a bend-over-and-humiliate-with-malice-of-intent.
PS- this afternoon's hockey game was much better ;-)
Re: The Black and Birdshot Blue Incident....
There's always 'Big Time - The Movie'
OK, ok.
Will you settle for a small chunk of the screenplay?
Vichycrats, Elephascists, McMedia weasels, and their corporate patrons display little significant difference among themselves. They all live on the Confederated Floating Islands of New Laputa (aka the wealthy and powerful enclaves of Washington, DC, New York, LA, etc.) and don't give a flying duck about us peasants, even the ones who live on the Islands with them.
From the swamps of Arkansas, Ivory Bill Woodpecker
Congrats on the 500 drifty. You made my bookmarks at a time when I was dumping a bunch of them. I likes me some clarity with a side of snark. You serves it nice and spicy.
second, it's nice to know that vanden heuvel smacked down g-will. i bet it was no dutch treat.
third, as for evan bayh ... animatronic human. i don't think he's ever done a spontaneous thing in his life. keep him in the senate where he would do the best work.
he and richard lugar, the other indiana senator, are poor examples of humanity -- sir john falstaffs they ain't.
Anytime anybody bitch slaps George Will, my heart soars.
But when it's done like this, with this kind of force, man, that's beautiful.
Will irritates the crap out of me with the all-too predictable historical paralles and tired 1950s-era rhetoric about the damnable 'welfare state' that he spouts each week.
But, of course, my favorite Will-isms are when he shakes his little fist and says 'conservatives are tough' or he crows about the GOP being the reform party.
Anyway, it's nice to see someone take him to the woodshed.
jp
What an interesting coincidence. Just as I finished bookmarking this page, I decided to browse the comments to burn some afternoon leisure time. Lo and behold, I arrived just at the right time. It seems there are others like myself who felt this column worthy of a bookmark.
I must admit, the impetus for me was your vivid description of "Lady McCheney-Matalin." Positively superb!
Speaking of Matalin, she reminds me of a song excerpt by the all-but-forgotten Marty Robbins:
"Blacker than night were the eyes of Feleena
Wicked and evil while casting a spell"
To my good friends in blogland, a special "Andalé" goes out to you!
El Paso Andy
Great synopsis!
George W. and Cokie reminded me of my in-laws, shocked that someone might have the temerity to utter a subject-verb-object statement that was baldly true and therefore somehow rude.
Katrina's pitchfork brigades are here, finally, on the Sunday talk shows--skewering the smug and clubby the best possible way, with words, facts, and arguments.
Hear that ABC/Capcom? Hell, I'd even sit through the commercials.
Great job, Katrina! I'm walking on sunshine, and don't it feel good?
i like you!
George Will, like "conservative intellectual", is an oxymoron. Did I hear him say doo-far?
Cokie was given away by LBJ at her wedding -- I think she's jealous of Doris Kearns Goodwin.
Anybody notice that George Stephanopoulinopoulis didn't look at KvH much past the opening question? Oh beauty, it seers the soul...
polo grounds discovering how phoney they really have been all these years!
Upthread, another anon. wrote She was inarticulate and ineffective.
This strikes me as hyper-critical. She showed a slight case of the nerves--I was sensitive to this, as I sometimes stammer out my views in the face of hostile, GOP in-laws--but Katrina clearly grew more and more plucky as the segment wore on. This is evident on a second viewing of the C&L video.
Finally, although her nerves showed, Katrina's effect on George Will was painful to watch. The man simply caved in. That, more than her rather charming occasional stammer, makes driftglass's case.
Thats the way I saw it. Thats the way the non-ivory tower dwelling folk saw it.
Your wish, well the part that seemed reasonable was granted at C&L
Well done.
It's been a helluva ride. And I ain't taking my seat belt off, yet.
Btw, I nominated this series of yours for a Koufax Award (best series).
Oooooh, that's a gem!!
I've never heard a more succinct description of the pompous fluff that spews from Will's mouth and in his columns.
drawing a line in the sand when it comes to her! I SAW HER FIRST---SHE'S MINE!!! :)
Drifty - great work as usual and congrats on the milestone.
That one had me chuckling, too. I've envied our host's abilities in the adjective/noun one-two punch category department since he first popped up over at Gilliard's place.
Congrats on your 500th, driftglass!
(Whacks self upside head.)
Remember: The 'Preview' button is your friend.
I have never laughed harder! Perfect. Just perfect!
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Senator Boxer told him in essence the People have an elected Congress(already.... Simpson is just some lobbyist.). Why was Simpson appointed to some Iraq group(so called working). It may be getting appropriated funds, as some GOP Congressmen seem to want to use more pork--rolls-- to send money to nut cases like Simpson, more explotation of the Iraq issues. Hover-craft calls Simpson a "dribbiling liar." Most accurate of Hovercraft's keen observations.
It is a travesty to have some phony Iraq Working Group, with lunatics like Simpson on it, dribbling about "sparrow belches".
Isn't our elected Government working , that it now has to have appointed some insane lunactics and buddies of Cheney on some Iraq Working group to issue more misleading lies to the American public. What a con.. more newocon dupe jobs, in the name of ALAN the dribbling moron.(WORKING GROUPIEE, a la Dick the CHAIN-EE, gang.
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