Wingnut HQ.

So dark and stinky you can't tell an “ideology” from an “alibi”.

Well ask not for whom the troll bawls, because recently my snug hobbit hole has been a stunk up a bit with maudlin, triflin’ whiffs of poo from one who signs himself “L. Brent Bozell, III.”

Now his bone fides check out -- both his URL link (which points back to the odious “M*dia Rese@rch Center -- punctuationally scuffed-up here to avoid any future accidental Googly association between this site and that febrile bowl of sump chowder) and other indicators, as well as the congruence between the breed of theocastrated opinionating L. Brent Bozell, III does on that site and the tiny, webbed footprints left here by he-who-called-himself-L. Brent Bozell, III.

It is a puzzlement, and hey, I am no Sam Spade.

Hell, I’m not even “Encyclopedia Brown”

(although I did learn all of my early moves from that hero of the Junior Scholastic set.

And remain convinced to this day that he was the proto-Veronica Mars, although his adventures to not travel well...

...so if you haven’t read “The Case of the Mysterious Pitch” or “Encyclopedia Brown vs. the Board of Education” best leave them where Fundies leave their notions of history: in that gauzy, fur-and-cosmoline-lined, cedar-scented memory chest. The one full of old pocket squares and button-hooks marked “Back in olden times, when everything was so much better.”)

Anyway, I’m no sleuth, but it did get me to thinking about what a pitiable creature L. Brent Bozell, III would have to be to have come around here, squirting his idiot opinion into the corners like a subway masturbator.

Not that everyone is not welcome here, so long as you keep it Southside-tavern civil.

But consider for a moment little old me and what I do here.

Me? I'm just a reader of newspapers and an occasional scribbler of words, on a wee blog, waaaay on the outskirts of Left Blogylvania. My dad was an Irish drunk and professional man from a creepshow of a family who did the best he could to raise us literate and well-traveled within the parameters made possible by lower-middle-classhood.

But L. Brent Bozell, III?

Heaven’s! He is ever so much choicer a cut of loin.

Gracious me, according to his blurb…

Mr. Bozell is a nationally syndicated writer whose work appears in publications such as The Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Washington Times, the L.A. Times, and National Review. He is regularly invited to provide media expertise on news programs by all the major networks and cable affiliates. His appearances include NBC’s Today Show, CNN’s Inside Politics, and Larry King Live, ABC’s Good Morning America, many Fox News Channel shows, C-SPAN, CBN and Entertainment Tonight. He has appeared as a guest and guest host on hundreds of radio shows, from local talk shows to ABC Radio, NPR’s Morning Edition, The Michael Reagan Show, and the Rush Limbaugh Show.

But wait, there’s more…

His father was a speechwriter for America’s #1 Raving Alcoholic Demagogue, “Tailgunner” Joe McCarthy.

And his uncle is Bill Buckley, whom his pater helped to edit the National Review, among other things.

And yet He Who Purports to be L. Brent Bozell, III Hisself took time from his busy schedule to toddle into my little bodega and pee in the cornflakes.

Twice!

Not debate or refute or engage – activities which Dubya's Loyal Retainers can no longer safely engage in without getting tangled up in their own lies and hypocrisy. No, just dropped in to do what every traitor or Dominionist freak or fool or co-conspirator still toeing the GOP Party line is reduced to doing these days as their Shangri-Laissez-Faire dystopia melts back into the bullshit and libertarian delusions from whence it came: regurgitate tired, kneejerk Christopath talking points like a bulimic wingnut Pez Dispenser.

Why?

Well consider that Bill Buckley recently had some very harsh things to say about our current, raving, Republican, dry-drunk demagogue and his failed war.

And consider (as was pointed out in the post just south of this one) that another Old School Consie – Kevin Phillips – has repudiated Brent’s Party as essentially having betrayed everything Brent’s daddy was supposed to have stood for.

And finally consider that one of Brent’s daddy’s biggest gigs was as a speechwriter for that King of All Conservatives -- Senator Barry Goldwater -- and ghostwriter of Goldwater’s seminal work of Original Conservativism: “The Conscience of a Conservative.”

So what did Brent’s daddy’s employer and friend have to say about the people who now run the GOP?

People like...Mr. L. Brent Bozell, III?

(All quotes borrowed from this terrific site)

Well, Goldwater said this:

“I don't have any respect for the Religious Right."

and this:

"Every good Christian should line up and kick Jerry Falwell's ass."

BTW, Someone please tell a certain current Senator from Arizona that Goldwater said "kick" and not "kiss".

and this:

"A woman has a right to an abortion."

and this:

"The religious factions will go on imposing their will on others..."

and this:

”I am a conservative Republican, but I believe in democracy and the separation of church and state. The conservative movement is founded on the simple tenet that people have the right to live life as they please as long as they don't hurt anyone else in the process."

and this:

“When you say 'radical right' today, I think of these moneymaking ventures by fellows like Pat Robertson and others who are trying to take the Republican Party and make a religious organization out of it. If that ever happens, kiss politics goodbye."

and this:

“There is no place in this country for practicing religion in politics. That goes for Falwell, Robertson and all the rest of these political preachers. They are a detriment to the country."

and this:

“The uncompromising position of these groups is a divisive element that could tear apart the very spirit of our representative system, if they gain sufficient strength."

and this:

Can anyone look at the carnage in Iran, the bloodshed in Northem Ireland, or the bombs bursting in Lebanon and yet question the dangers of injecting religious issues into the affairs of state?"

and this:

“We have succeeded for 205 years in keeping the affairs of state separate from the uncompromising idealism of religious groups and we mustn't stop now. To retreat from that separation would violate the principles of conservatism and the values upon which the framers built this democratic republic."

and, finally, this:

“It is the arrogance of power. It is the ultimate contradiction. …They never explain themselves. For them to acknowledge making mistakes is like the Fonz from Happy Days saying he was wrong. They can’t do it. [Acknowledging mistakes] would probably do the most to erase their slide into oblivion – which they are in right now. Mistakes can’t be made. People do make mistakes, but when one makes mistakes, one ought to, especially if one is in a position of responsibility, acknowledge those mistakes.

Oh no, wait a minute. That last one wasn’t from Barry Goldwater.

It was from Mr. L. Brent Bozell, III himself, in his April 23, 2001 interview in the Dartmouth Review.

Tastes yummy, no?

The Party that shrugs off treason and Plame and “Downing Street” and domestic spying...and yet is still button-poppin’-proud it impeached the last President over trivia and peachfuzz.

The "Personal Responsibility" Party of “Mission Accomplished”, “cakewalk”, “greeted as liberators”, “reconstruction will pay for itself”, “we have enough troops”. “yellowcake”, “mushroom cloud”, “last throes”, Katrina, and a hundred more fuckups and lies behind which thousands of Americans have died...and yet can still work itself into such a twist over people in “position(s) of responsibility” not owning up to the mistakes they had made.

The Party Mr. Bozell so reflexively and oafishly defends using the sword and shield of Conservativism...and yet which is now so conspicuously in the claws of those very swine about whom Barry Goldwater so clearly warned the world. By name.

Which is what makes me wonder why, if it was him, such a Culture War Bestriding Colossus as L. Brent Bozell, III would be slumming it around here?

And I thought, you know, maybe the poor goof is looking for redemption?

Maybe like many of the morally ossified members of his End-Times-cult, he knows at some basal level how unrecoverably perverse his ideology has become. That it reeks now with a putrescence that no amount of Eau De Jebus can cover up, which is usually when the Flagellant’s Instinct kicks in and leaders of the Hectoring Right go looking for a hooker to lay with, a Jeffy Gannon to smack them around, or some other way to flog and humiliate themselves back onto God’s A-List.

Maybe deep within the soul’s midnight, as the clock dooms out long, sepulchral minutes, bathed in fear-sweat and in the iron grip of a “My life is half over”, Middle-aged Mortality Awareness Moment, the terrible realization has dawned on Mr. L. Brent Bozell, III that he has helped to gut the heart out of his own Movement’s ideals and sell the Conscience of Conservativism to degenerates at remaindered prices.

That he has helped thugs and Segregationists despoil the sacred resting place of Abraham Lincoln, make a bonfire of the Great Emancipator’s bones and play dress-up in his winding cloth.

That he has helped theocrats and homophobes shit all over his father’s ideals.

So perhaps while we disable and disarm his dogma and dispatch it to the lead-lined crypt where it belongs, we can spare a little pity for poor, old Brent.

Who, like the Dear Leader Himself, is obviously working out some massive Oedipal issues on our dime.