Fundraiser Day #2

Another glimpse of a future where "news and opinion media" has ceased to be anything but this shit running on every telescreen in Jesusland 24/7/365.

Only you can make the bad man go away...

On the Occasion of Blogiversary #6

and Spring Fundraising Day One, I wondered how I might best go about the business of separating the nice people who come here from their hard-earned cash.

And then, suddenly, a thought rang out.

Well, a memory, actually, heaved up unbidden from the recesses (or after school detentions) of my mind; the remembrance of a charmed ritual from long ago in the age of steam powered Walk-Mans (Men?) and rotary phones; a time when our local "drive-in" (a big, outdoor iPad that wouldn't work until sundown and with worse speakers) would offer all-night runs of horror movies that were, um, awful.

Really. Just awful.

And the deal was, you paid to leave.

In retrospect, it was kind of brilliant in its understanding of the relationship between the sacred space of the drive-in and the mating and drinking habits of the young adults of the surrounding communities.

Because they seemed like relatively safe places to parents (with all the signifies of suburban security; high fences, a business license, snacks, playgrounds, family-friendly features most nights, and drowsy, off-duty cops in case some unsavory elements tried to ruin everyone's wholesome good time), during good weather drive-ins became a unspoken-of refuge for ennuified and/or horny teenagers who did not otherwise have reliable shelter and privacy arrangements, but did have access to, say, a Camero under whose hood one could fit an ample supply of cheap beer and/or fortified wine as a hedge against the drive-in police finding your main stash in the trunk.

It was tricky business, but if you stopped 1/4 mile up the road and secured your booze correctly, it was a good bet that if you drove with care over the gravel lumps and tank-trap-sized pothole on your way up the driveway, you'd slide on in without bursting a bottle of Boone's Farm near the engine and reeking up your ride for a week.

It was also a good bet that if you were, like so many of us, a girlfriendless loser during much of your testosterone-berserk formative years, you were going to make the same trek using the same liquor-muling strategy, but with a carload of your fellow, bored, testosterone-maddened pals because it was something to do and anyway Brad's older brother had said that in some of the movies they actually show some nekkid girls!

Doin it!

Whatever the Hell "it" was supposed to be.

And so, as the sun ran away to the West, in the burnished glow of one of a rapidly dwindling number of pre-Reagan summer evenings, we would stop dandling on the swings while smoking and calling each other "queer" and punching each other in the arm and straggled back to our hulking American cars for the evening's entertainment, determined to hold out until the last credit on the last reel of schlock had rolled, and the eastern sky had given back its star-frosted black ninja peejays and picked up the color of new denim.

And there's the rub.

Because, sure, with enough beer and/or carnal distraction you might be able to laugh or chug or ignore or frottage your way through "Frogs" or "The Boggy Creek Monster".

But by 1:30 in the morning that little pre-hangover/smoke-too-much headache is starting to build real a sizable lead in the primaries. And the beer is warm or gone, and you have seen not one, single bare titty (let alone some nekkid girls doing it! Your brother's a liar, man!) all night , and your companions -- who had all nobly pledged to pass the night by your side in this Gethsemane of Roger Corman and Hammer Film gorestravaganzas -- are passed out or bored out of their minds...and suddenly slogging through "My World Dies Screaming" and "Vampire Circus" just to say you did it seemed like an amazingly dumb idea.

Again.

And so, once again, you all dig up the dough to buy your parole from horror movie hell from the sleepy guy at the exit and, as "Exorcist II: The Heretic" fades to an unlamented black and the opening credits for "Two Thousand Maniacs" flare luridly to life, you join the short line of cars waiting to roll out into the heart of a suburban soul's midnight, towards a bag of sliders and home.

And the "Paying to Make It Stop, Please" model prevails once again.

Now sadly I don't have access to something as perfect for this task as "The Corpse Grinders"...

(Oh wait.

yes I do)

...but I do have a fund-raising goal in mind, and an apparently unlimited supply of Republican political action commercials more chilling and terrifying than "Manos: The Hands of Fate" with a side of "Devil's Rain" (Thanks Koch Brothers!)

One of which will played here each day until my dreams of avarice modest goals are reached.

Or until I get bored with it and go get a bad of sliders.

So won't you please

help stop the horror :-)

Thank you.

Your pal,

driftglass

How to Get Doughy Pantload

to Twitter-block you.

Step 1: Follow Jonah Goldberg for a bit just to keep tabs on what one of the founding members of the Dick Cheney Fan Club is up to (nothing good) and to see if his writing has improved any (it hasn't: Doughy still makes a fine living selling his signature brand of stone soup out of mossy cultural cliches, beer jokes and reflexive Liberal hatred.)


Step 2: Note the above tweet as Jonah (Editor-at-Large of NRO, LA Times Columnist, USAT contributor, USA Today columnist, author of Liberal Fascism, visiting fellow American Enterprise Institute.) and Byron York (Chief political correspondent, Washington Examiner, Fox News contributor, author of The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy) share a hearty tweet-laff over how awful Ron Reagan Jr. is for not worshiping his father in a manner sufficiently idolatrous to meet the exacting standards of giddy, Reagan-fetishizing neocon chickenhawks.


Step 3: Send him a note explaining how I could "certainly understand why an ambulatory moral dumpster fire such as yourself would think that."


Step 4: Blocked.


Step 5:

As he bravely runs away, away.

Bravely runs away.

Brave, brave, brave, brave Sir Panstload.

Because after all these years and all of their humiliating failures, that is still

Tucker (Carlson): ....you're apt to see hyperventilation. People hate Cheney on this visceral level. What is so hate-able about Dick Cheney?

Goldberg: I have no, I really...I truly have no idea. I like Dick Cheney. Love to have a beer with the guy---I think one of the things that bothers them is that he doesn't care! The opposite of love isn't hate---it's indifference....

just how

Well, at least Jonah Goldberg of National Review has considered volunteering for military service:

As for why my sorry a** isn't in the kill zone, lots of people think this is a searingly pertinent question. No answer I could give -- I'm 35 years old, my family couldn't afford the lost income, I have a baby daughter, my a** is, er, sorry, are a few -- ever seem to suffice.

But his sorry a** is still good enough for National Review Online?

the Yellow Elephants roll.


(Don't forget to join the fundraising fun already in progress here.)

A Post for Fundraiser Eve

The Grand Nagus of the Ferengrich Alliance loves, loves, loves Jebus.

And America too.

Just not so must Teh Science.

From The American Prospect:

"I think you can certainly refer to both creationism and evolution as something that people ought to be aware of -- together," Gingrich told me at a press conference in Manchester, N.H. "If you look at chaos theory and the degree to which the certainty of the 19th century is beginning to be replaced, I don't think there's any problem with teaching both."

The precise, numerical answer to the question "How stupid do you have to be to belong to a Party where Newt is 'The Brain Guy'?" remains unknown.

Fund the research here...

Now Entering the Cantorchy of Ewick

"So let it be written. So let it be done," says House Majority Idiot Eric Cantor.

In a press conference today, Cantor promised to present the "Prevention of a Government Shutdown Act" on the House floor on Friday. He said, "that will say to the American people: the Senate's got to act, prior to the expiration of the CR. If it doesn't not act, HR 1 becomes the law of the land."

Except, of course, only in the People's Republic of Ewick -- that Cantorchy that exists entirely in the House Majority Leader's imagination -- does American gummint work that way.

Back here in the real world...


So let it be written.

So let it be duh.

Up Next, a Pile of Shadows

Tom Tomorrow leaves Salon for pastures greener and more beautiful.

I have no idea if Salon will be replacing the big hole "Tom" leaves behind, but based on the recent trends in media consolidation, mindless deck-chair-shuffling, the mad dash towards the nonexistent Center, and the frantic jettisoning of anyone or anything outside of the charmed circle who has the temerity to want "money" in exchange for their services, I would not be surprised to see, say, a "Mallard Fillmore" or maybe just a one-page-per-week reprinting of every Chick Tract ever published being brought on-line to fill the Tomorrow void.

Unless of course they can throw enough cash in the air to coax an edgy, sure-fire powerhouse like "Dondi" or "Cathy" out of the grave of retirement (although given "Cathy"'s last strip

I would consider the latter unlikely.)

On the upside, Glenn Greenwald will still be on hand to mete out brutal retribution against people who disagree with him.

So they've got that going for them.

How Conservatives Win

You hate Liberals, right?



Well, do you know what would make those
damn Liberals really crazy?



Picking up that gun.




And then putting it in your mouth.











And then pulling the trigger.












Oh yes.
Absolutely.




Liberals will hate that
more than anything ever!



Or maybe you don't really hate Liberals?



Maybe you secretly love them!




Maybe you secretly want to have
gay Muslim sex with them!!


























You hate Liberals, right?

Each year in America, there is a sucker Conservative voter born every minute.

Please give generously to help us find a cure.

If You Love Conservatism, Let it Go.

If it returns, it was always yours.

Or something.

You know, whenever Andrew Sullivan drops a few too many tabs of Rancho Reagan Shinola and goes all maudlin and squishy and mystical over the great, untrammeled Conservatism that Never Was of his youth, and how these kids today with their crazy hair and Toby Keith music have gone and ruined it all...

Left, Right And Time
29 Mar 2011 10:10 am

I suffer, it seems, from an affliction that bedevils many. I now find myself largely opposed to most Republicans and in favor of a Democratic president as an even tempered pragmatist. But I have not reimagined myself as a leftist. Others have, of course, but I wince a little every time. Take the issue of taxes - and you see where the right-left paradigm is totally insufficient to the occasion.

Income tax rates are now lower than they were under Ronald Reagan and far lower than they were under Eisenhower. And yet it has become a Norquistian non-negotiable that no taxes can be raised at all on anyone, let alone the beneficiaries of the last thirty years - and those who differ must be "leftists" - even when the US is facing debt of historic and dangerous proportions. Someone advocating what Eisenhower was perfectly comfortable with would be regarded by the Republican right today as a communist. And yet, of course, Eisenhower was emphatically not a Communist, whatever the John Birch society believed.
...

I cannot help but be reminded of this delightful 1998 item from "The Onion"

Why Do All These Homosexuals Keep Sucking My Cock?

By Bruce Heffernan
October 28, 1998

Look, I'm not a hateful person or anything–I believe we should all live and let live. But lately, I've been having a real problem with these homosexuals. You see, just about wherever I go these days, one of them approaches me and starts sucking my cock.

Take last Sunday, for instance, when I casually struck up a conversation with this guy in the health-club locker room. Nothing fruity, just a couple of fellas talking about their workout routines while enjoying a nice hot shower. The guy looked like a real man's man, too–big biceps, meaty thighs, thick neck. He didn't seem the least bit gay. At least not until he started sucking my cock, that is.

Where does this queer get the nerve to suck my cock? Did I look gay to him? Was I wearing a pink feather boa without realizing it? I don't recall the phrase, "Suck my cock" entering the conversation, and I don't have a sign around my neck that reads, "Please, You Homosexuals, Suck My Cock."

I've got nothing against homosexuals. Let them be free to do their gay thing in peace, I say. But when they start sucking my cock, then I've got a real problem.

Then there was the time I was hiking through the woods and came across a rugged-looking, blond-haired man in his early 30s. He seemed straight enough to me while we were bathing in that mountain stream, but, before you know it, he's sucking my cock!

What is it with these homos?
...

See, this thing of it is -- the thing that Mr. Sullivan will never admit to himself or his readers -- is that he does not owe his long and successful career to being a "real" Conservative.

He owes it to being a Gay Conservative. A token. A front-man. Mr. Outside. A "roper", in the parlance of the confidence game.

It is a subject on which I have touched before:

The Trajectory of Falling Objects

...
The Modern GOP, as is now painfully clear, has always been the furious white guy party. The Jebus party. The gun-fetish party. And the all-of-them-riding-the-short-bus-to-school-together Party.

Not exactly an appetizing bill of electoral fare -- certainly not the kind of people you’d ever trust to baby-sit your Constitution -– but fortunately the Party of God was also the Party of Money, and so the GOP did what any hagged out failure with a ton of cash would do: it went out and bought itself some credibility!

It bought itself a whole religion, complete with satellites and universities. It bought institutes and governments. It underwrote think tanks and teevee networks. Book publishers and spokesmodels. Coast-to-coast radio coverage and “serious thinkers”.

And it bought itself a teevee-friendly veneer of diversity.

What the Right needed was a light coating of urbane respectability to buy them enough time and access to destroy the country.

And it was people like Sullivan who happily lent it to them.

On the Left, the technical term for a gay or minority political writer is…writer.

But on the Right, the technical term is “celebrity”, which meant as long as people like Sullivan were onstage doing their dancing Conservative monkey act, the Party of God could point to them and say “See, we’re not haters” to the press.

And as long as the con game played itself out, times were good in Tokenville, high-paying gigs were plentiful.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but without the word “Conservative” tacked to their resumes, people like Andrew Sullivan, Kathleen Parker, David Brooks and a growing nest of “Obamacons” would all have had to go looking for honest work a very long time ago.

And so Sullivan miraculously managed to miss the moral dumpster fire that was the Conservative movement as it burned cheerily away in his own back yard year after year after year…

…until the day that Conservatism’s Brand Identification started to fall faster than Port A Potty stock the day after scientists figure out how to turn shit into gold.

Which leaves the Apostates with a serious cash-flow problem.
...

Without the "conservative" bit, Mr. Sullivan is just another anti-DOMA, pro-pot, gay Gen-Xer clipping articles out of the local Penny Saver and writing occasional paeans to Obama. And according to the one million Liberal anti-DOMA, pro-pot, Penny-Saver-article-clipping, Obama-paean-writing gay bloggers I know, the ROI on that gig is slightly less per annum than what you can dig out of the sofa cushions of the average community college teacher's lounge, and certainly not enough to launch anyone to the top of Mt. Beast.

And so, Mr Sullivan finds himself trapped in a odd sort of Hell of his own making: a cramped little Malebolge of the Deceivers where, in order to continue to enjoy the fruits of being the Gay Conservative, he is compelled to continually undermine the credibility of everything else he writes by ritually and publicly polishing the turd of Conservatism's Once and Future greatness over and over and over again.

...
For the Palinites, the lie is that history began on January 20, 2009, when the Black Guy became president; for the Sullivanites, the lie is that history began in 2003, when George W. Bush apparently snuck into Ronald Reagan's crypt and peed on the Great Man's mortal remains.

Because every bit as much as any Birther flake or Death Panel stooge -- every bit as much as Sarah Palin -- Andrew " Reagan-Thatcher pragmatic Christian Tory" Sullivan hangs onto his position and paycheck only by tirelessly hawking his own brand of discredited, self-absolving, self-deluding revisionist bullshit ("Bush Betrayed 'Real' Conservatism"). Mr. Sullivan dresses his crackpottery up by nudging the time-line back a little bit, but the object is the same: to exempt himself from the same, harsh judgment he wants to lavish on the Palinites by excusing himself from the much larger and more destructive crime of helping to create the environment in which moral monsters like the Palinites could flourish.

And because Mr. Sullivan builds his critique of the Palinites on fundamentally corrupt ground, his observations of them not only come across as deeply dishonest, but also loudly and unintentionally hilarious.

Tomorrow, when I hold my breath and balance my checkbook, I might well find the whole sham infuriating.

But today I just find it pitiable.

NYT To Replace Frank Rich

and Bob Herbert



With Rich Bob



and Frank Herbert




A fictional, soulless, proto-Teabagging Wall Street huckster


And a long dead writer of science fiction about power politics, holy wars and a scarce resource on which the economy depends

set on a desert planet populated by warrior zealots.

Sounds about right.

Because however many more millions of dollars you throw at them, Tom Friedman and David Brooks are just not gonna be able to plug that brand-new combined 3,200 words-per-week op-end page deficit all by themselves.

Also too, apropos of nothing, and FYI, I will be celebrating my sixth blogiversary next week with cake, sensibly-priced party hats and my first fundraiser since last Fall.

To get the stats right, I peeked in the rear-view before writing this post and found that in the last six years I have done

• An average of 1.4 posts a day, every day for the last 2,191 days.
• Somewhere in the neighborhood of 3-4 pieces of original, story-supplementing graphic art every week for the last 312 weeks, and,
  
• Along with my partner in crime Blue Gal, one original podcast per week, every week, for the last 66 weeks.

Which, considering how basically lazy I am, slightly amazes me :-)

Professional Left Podcast #66

"Play La Marseillaise. Play it!"

— Victor Laszlo, "Casablanca"

Which the band does, but only after Rick gives them the nod.

And that tiny sign of committing to one side (however weak and imperfect it is) over the other (however powerful and well-financed they may be) is the moral pivot on which the entire story turns.

Related Links:

1. Lewis Black signs on as Donald Trump's campaign manager.

2. Paul Wolfowitz.

3. Yeats' "The Second Coming".

4. Tom Friedman, "The Mustache of Understanding" .

5. Ginni Thomas hired by Bib-and-Tucker Carlson.

6. Steve Forbes gets eated.

7. Constantine's Sword.

Outside of a dog, a Professional Left button is man's best friend.


Inside of a dog it's too dark to read (sorry, Groucho .)

You know you want it, so why not toddle on down to Blue Gal's Cafepress Store (and keep listening later in the year for an opportunity to win one). Also too, the Podcast Donate Button Button below allows listeners to throw a contribution specifically towards the podcast. Thanks for your listenership and support!

Thanks again to Frank Chow for the graphic at the ProLeft website and Heather at Crooks and Liars Video Cafe for their help. And don't forget, our archives are available for free with no downloads at Professional Left.

Eventually They Will Peel Our Flesh

to use as pool-liners.

Of course, if pressed at, perhaps, a Davos media mogul bukkake roundtable on, oh, let's say, the Future of Post-industrial Media Ecosystems and Integrated Wisdom Vector Visioneering they'll make a little moue and explain how they rilly, rilly regret it, but times are tough and sacrifices have to be made and it's whole new world now and where the fuck is that intern with my latte and a big sack of free content I can used to pad out my cash cow bold, new direction in journalism?

From Media Bistro:

WaPo Staffers Pissed at Publisher’s Paycheck
By Alec Jacobs on March 25, 2011 4:54 PM

WaPo‘s 2010 SEC filings were released this week. In a year when the newspaper saw tough cuts in staff, publisher Katharine Weymouth (granddaughter of famed Post publisher Katharine Graham) earned $537,000 and a bonus of $483,750, plus an additional $1,053,441 based on a pre-established long-term pay plan. She’s also getting a 16.5% raise in her 2011 salary. Not too shabby. Except that now, staffers at WaPo are…displeased.
...

And from "Broadcast News"...24 long years ago.


Because everything old and filthy is new and even filthier again.