Hi friends, speakingcorpse here, one of the three animals (2 cats, and me) currently infesting the apartment of Blicero.

In case you were all doing other things yesterday, I'm making sure to inform you that the cable news coverage of Kerry's selection of John Edwards as his running mate was nothing other than a televised funeral--a funeral in which there were no survivors, in which the dead could "speak" (in a limited sense), in which the dead in fact "spoke" obsequies over their own mouldering corpses. A funeral for the undead.

The liturgy was provided by the Republican National Committee, which, as soon as Kerry announced his choice, blast-faxed and e-mailed a series of talking points to the cable news stations, points which included the following: Edwards is a millionaire trial lawyer, Edwards has no experience, Kerry really wanted McCain, etc. These various talking points would have remained only talking points, and not taken on a morbid ceremonial function, if they had been broadcast as the reaction of Republicans to the news of the day, the selection of Edwards. But it was not Republican operatives who made these points, it was the news anchors themselves. In fact, the news of the day, by early evening, was not the nomination, but the GOP response.

Never mind the fact that this is good news for Democrats; I think it makes the Repugs even more repugnant in the eyes of many voters. What is remarkable is the fact that the anchor-corpses immediately "spoke" the GOP talking points as if they were "speaking" their own words. Clearly, the anchor-corpses cannot speak their own words--cannot, in fact, speak. They are dead--or, at best, undead. The closest they can come to living speech is turning their death-mask "faces" into holes through which poisons are emitted. In this way, the GOP talking points are fused with their own dead souls, and the corpses can simulate life for the duration of their television programs. Of course, such tricks cannot undo the fact of death. The speech simulation is really only a testament to the corpses' own mouldering putrefaction. It is the announcement of a death, the death of the one who purports to speak.

See, for example, the transcript of the CNN program "Paula Zahn Now" (the title of the show seems to insist on the presence of Zahn, thereby revealing the anxiety of the producers concerning the fact that she is not present, that she is in fact no where, that she is not). The program was hosted yesterday not by Zahn, but by Judy Woodruff (who, as AmCop readers know, is a skeleton that has been sprayed with wax and then repeatedly irradiated, giving the wax a firmness and a preternatural death-glow). Below is the very beginning of the program:

JUDY WOODRUFF, HOST, "JUDY WOODRUFF'S INSIDE POLITICS" (voice-over): Tonight, Republicans target John Edwards.

SEN. JOHN KERRY (D-MA), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Senator John Edwards from North Carolina.

WOODRUFF: A freshman senator...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: John Edwards is someone who had only four years experience in the United States Senate.

WOODRUFF: With a liberal record.

SEN. JOHN EDWARDS (D-NC), VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: President Bush has fallen short of that goal.

WOODRUFF: No international credentials...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No foreign policy experience.

WOODRUFF: And he's not John McCain.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Not a bad choice for his second pick.

WOODRUFF: The case for and against vice presidential candidate John Edwards.

I can't bear to actually respond to the charges that Woodruff herself levels against Edwards. And it's not necessary anyway, as he is obviously a good choice. Let us just acknowledge, in grief and terror, the ritual that Woodruff has performed upon herself in this segment.


The smile you see is a smile frozen onto a corpse; it was
traced on my dying body by my soul as it abandoned the human world.