Voice of Empire, Ctd.

To the clappy delight of her fellow employees at the Roger Ailes News Abattoir, the Scintilla from Wasilla made funny popping and clicking noises on Fox News, dismissing any criticism of her 11,287th consecutive American Cultural and Historical Literacy Test FAIL as coming from a "shouted, gotcha" question, and therefore not counting towards her final grade.

The French Open pre-empting "Meet the Press", leaving the nation asking itself where oh where Newt Gingrich and John McCain will get their complimentary pedicures this week.

The following week it will be back on with the new DNC Chair, Debbie Wasserman Schultz (talking about how we can save the Middle Class), and RNC Chair Reince Priebus (talking about the legal dos-and-don'ts of cashing 3rd party campaign checks from foreign billionaires, dictatorships and multinational corporations.)

On "The Chris Matthews Show" the panel rather candidly admitted that the reason the media obsessively covers Palin is that she is a "shiny object", covered for exactly the same reason they cover high speed chases, missing white teenagers and sharks: it drives ratings through the roof.

As if we didn't already know that.

Having watched the Mouse Circus humiliate itself for going on three years now by peeping up Palin's digital skirt, looking down her political blouse and gazing deep into the vast, airless abyss in her head enough to last anyone nine lifetimes, it is obvious that the only remaining valid angle for any coverage of Palinism is that taken by Hunter S. Thompson when covering the Kentucky Derby. To wit, ignore the meaningless event itself and swing your lens around to focus in sharp and tight on both the meatsticks and headcases who are actually far-gone enough to take it seriously, and the depraved media whoremasters who will happily go bobbing for turds in that cultural cesspit

if it means a bump in their page-hits and ratings.

In other words:

The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved

By Hunter S. Thompson

Pink faces with a stylish Southern sag, old Ivy styles, seersucker coats and buttondown collars. "Mayblossom Senility" (Steadman's phrase)...burnt out early or maybe just not much to burn in the first place. Not much energy in the faces, not much curiosity. Suffering in silence, nowhere to go after thirty in this life, just hang on and humor the children. Let the young enjoy themselves while they can. Why not?

The grim reaper comes early in this league...banshees on the lawn at night, screaming out there beside that little iron nigger in jockey clothes. Maybe he's the one who's screaming. Bad DT's and too many snarls at the bridge club. Going down with the stock market. Oh Jesus, the kid has wrecked the new car, wrapped it around the big stone pillar at the bottom of the driveway. Broken leg? Twisted eye? Send him off to Yale, they can cure anything up there.

Yale? Did you see today's paper? New Haven is under siege. Yale is swarming with Black Panthers...I tell you, Colonel, the world has gone mad, stone mad. Why, they tell me a goddam woman jockey might ride in the Derby toda

...
The rest of the day blurs into madness. The rest of that night too. And all the next day and night. Such horrible things occurred that I can't bring myself even to think about them now, much less put them down in print. I was lucky to get out at all. One of my clearest memories of that vicious time is Ralph being attacked by one of my old friends in the billiard room of the Pendennis Club in downtown Louisville on Saturday night. The man had ripped his own shirt open to the waist before deciding that Ralph was after his wife. No blows were struck, but the emotional effects were massive. Then, as a sort of final horror, Steadman put his fiendish pen to work and tried to patch things up by doing a little sketch of the girl he'd been accused of hustling. That finished us in the Pedennis.

...
By this time Ralph wouldn't order coffee; he kept asking for more water. "It's the only thing they have that's fit for human consumption," he explained. Then, with an hour or so to kill before he had to catch the plane, we spread his drawings out on the table and pondered them for a while, wondering if he'd caught the proper spirit of the thing...but we couldn't make up our minds. His hands were shaking so badly that he had trouble holding the paper, and my vision was so blurred that I could barely see what he'd drawn. "Shit," I said. "We both look worse than anything you've drawn here."

He smiled. "You know--I've been thinking about that," he said. "We came down here to see this teddible scene: people all pissed out of their minds and vomitting on themselves and all that...and now, you know what? It's us..."

That will not happen, of course, because among the Ignoratchik (tm)



(from whom all ratings flow), Rightward-facing paranoia and raving idiocy is considered to be a sign of special grace.

Like a splinter of the True Cross.

Or a picture of dinosaur-riding Baby Jebus riding in to Philadelphia to help Superman and Thomas Jefferson write the Star-Spangled Banner.

Of course, if you're really jonesing for some real conversation about real issues that won't insult your intelligence and won't bore you to tears, check out the latest "Professional Left" podcast (#76).

No downloads
No logins.
No commercials.
No loyalty oaths.
And no shiny objects.