Today's theme: Are Republicans more offensive to God or to man, and why?

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Woodruff: "[Edwards] talked about how they're going to fight the war on terror--it's a message we've not heard from the Democrats..."

Right, Judy: it's funny how the Democrats have never before now mentioned that they plan on fighting the war on terror. Weird. I'd thought they just planned on kind of dropping the whole thing...

Question for CNN: immediately following Edwards' speech, Wolf Blitzer turned to Ralph Reed--Ralph fucking Reed--for commentary. When the next "correspondent" you tried to interview, Victoria Clarke, couldn't be accessed due technical problems (evidently her head had become disattached) you returned to Reed and let him hold forth for a good five minutes. So, in fairness--and although there is obviously no analogy for Reed and Clarke in our party--immediately following Cheney's nomination speech, will you turn to first one and then another liberal Democrat to ask them "what they thought" of the VP's "presentation"?

(During this mini-shit-fest, MSNBC was interviewing an inarticulate and visibly intoxicated Dianne Feinstein.)

MSNBC is reporting that Dick Cheney has told an audience in Salt Lake City that the Democrats "couldn't protect the country because 'perceptions of weakness invite these kinds of attacks.'"

Two things occur to me:

i. This must be getting close to fascism.

ii. By Cheney's logic, one cause of the 9-11 attacks must have been Al Qaeda's perception that America under the Bush administration was weak. The perceived weakness of the Bush administration "invited" the attacks--not some theoretical attacks, but the ones which actually occurred. Therefore, we should eliminate that perception of weakness by electing a new president, John Kerry.

I've been enjoying watching Larry King along with George Mitchell and David Gergen nod happily along with Max Cleland and Wes Clark as they praise Kerry's war record, character, leadership qualifications. But then, every three minutes, they have to cut to an image of a corpse with clotted black splotches for eyebrows blowing sound-air out of a desiccated, puckered hole in the lower part of his vacant-eyed face.



This nasty old fart--who literally can't go two seconds without expressing his unpurged bitterness over the '96 election--actually had the audacity to say (in "contradiction" to the others' views) that Kerry had "flip-flopped" on Vietnam, since he went from doing the good thing (shooting at gooks in the jungle) to doing the bad thing ("going before Congress and talking about Vietnamese being killed and ears being chopped off...denigrating the United States of America").

Can't you see Dole's point about how Kerry had "changed" his "views"? Being a war hero in Vietnam naturally indicated that he was for killing gooks and chopping off their ears. Then, later, after he got back from Vietnam, Kerry stopped being a war hero, flip-flopped, and said he was against killing gooks and chopping off their ears. See the contradiction? He said he was against killing gooks, even though up until quite recently he himself had been killing gooks. See how his "views" did "a 180" there? Why couldn't he just adopt a "viewpoint" and then stick with it? Is there no consistency in this world?

I guess I should feel sorry for this "virile" husk of a man, who is obviously out of his depth, out of the loop, practically out of the fucking world. But, he chose it, he loves the camera, he needs to do his turd-spitting before a live TV audience--and so he deserves this benediction:

Dole: when you die (and hopefully it will be soon) just know that as the pundits and your fascist colleagues and the nation's image-makers descend on your corpse to feast (a corpse that will no doubt have been much improved, both appearance and taste-wise, by the minor alteration of death), know that some of us will be spitting on your grave for the bad you've done in this life.

Dear Brian Lehrer,

I've been unfortunate enough to hear some of your "coverage" of the Democratic convention this week--particularly your turd-swapping and -munching with professional shit-slingers John Podhoretz and Glenn Reynolds ("Instapundit.")

Your game was up long ago--you don't care a damn about trying to be "fair" and "balanced" by giving airtime to these petty fascists. You're just a snivelling little third-rate media whore pandering to "pundits" who you probably wish were clamoring for your ear, so they could shit in it, rather than you clamoring for their "views" and "analyses."

You probably wish you were on cable news shows every night, mugging for the cameras as Joe Scarborough and Van Susteren shit on your face.

Let me help you, since I am a liberal, local New Yorker, a natural constituent of your radio programming: Fuck you. I hate you. Take this as symbolic of a massive lack of appreciation of you among all craven liberals, and use it as a justification to jump ship and become a full-fledged "conservative" pundit. I am personally handing you a resentment you can take over to Fox (if they'll have you) and nurse, and cherish. We don't want you anymore. Go: get out. I'd rather John Podhoretz hosted your program than you. Because you pretend to be a thoughtful, liberal-minded host who is willing to listen to differing "opinions" (when in fact you preside over a charade in which people whose language precludes all thinking and all rational opinion-formation are permitted to spit robotic poison at a microphone) you are a living symbol of everything that's corrupt, and ridiculous, and shameful and degrading about the media.

Please, just go. You make me sick. Go kneel down before those who will pretend to love you.

is so genius it has to be reprinted here:

Dean to Hannity

Last night:

[Y]ou should watch "Outfoxed." It's a great movie that says why people like you say things like that on this television station.

Ah, delicious. Sometimes it's gratifying to see that the Media Whores aren't really evil Furies sent by the RNC to spread lies--they're simply whores. And although they prefer to chew on large, juicy turds, regurgitate them and offer them up to the TV "audience," when they realize that everybody else is having a party and snacking on truth and beauty, they prefer to go along for the ride.

Yes, there was Wolf Blitzer "bringing in another one of our analysts" (to respond to Ted Kennedy's speech), and that "analyst" turns out to be the small-animal-torturing disappointed-ex-Phys-Ed-teacher-cum-ex-Pentagon-"spokeswoman" Victoria Clarke, defiling the audience with a thin stream of gray diarrhea that dribbled forth from her tight, pursed mouth. Yes, Blitzer asked whether Kennedy's speech was "too liberal, too historic." (Yes: "too historic.")

Yes, there was skull-covered-with-wax-then-frozen-and-irradiated Judy Woodruff, claiming "Howard Dean is not where John Kerry is and a lot of Democrats are on these issues"--i.e. "totally against the war" and "against giving Bush a blank check." (Yeah, Kerry was totally for giving Bush a blank check.)

Yes, we had to listen to the irradiated skull noting that "A lot of us were fooled...Dean did a great job on TV and in igniting the left wing of his party...."

Yes, we had to listen to irrepressible mass-stupidifier Tweety ask his "guests" the same question about Teresa Heinz Kerry over and over again, recycling the words "spicy," "exotic," "Latin" and "Peoria" (as in "But isn't she too spicy and exotic for those people in Peoria?")--without irony!

But oh, the deliciousness of Candy Crowley--betraying her pathetic middle-school wannabe-popular-girl soul--declaring (with as much eloquence as she is capable of mustering): "With Obama, it was like, wow."

That's right, Candy--it was like, wow.

To see Nina Easton, powder-faced ditz of the Boston Globe, gushing "My favorite was 'the audacity of hope'..."

To see Tweety and Fineman hail the arrival of the New Democratic Party in the faces of Obama, Ron Reagan, and Teresa Heinz Kerry.

To see the typically repulsive Andrea Mitchell hailing Heinz Kerry vigorously against the best efforts of Joe Scarborough to suffocate himself on a shit-clod lodged in his windpipe and turning his face purple with jealous despair.

To see Fineman declare that the developing message of this Democratic Party was about "what we are as a people."

It's now midnight, and the atmosphere (at least on CNN and MSNBC) is one of celebration and admiration.

Oh, man. What could they do? There was Obama's genius and sublimity, Reagan's sincerity and compassion, Heinz Kerry's depth, smarts, and tenderness. What could the whores do but put the shit back in the freezer and sip champagne?

With all due respect to the Johns, can we cut the bullshit and just nominate Barack Obama now?

Celebrate by contributing $25 to the DNC. (Pretend you went out last night and had five drinks. I would have if I hadn't been having an allergy attack.)

A few highlights:

Worst

1. During the address by Barbara Mikulski (representing on stage the contingent of women senators, of whom she is the most senior) MSNBC was airing a "humorous" bit about a John Kerry look-alike.

2. CNN's axis of evil (Blitzer, Woodruff, Greenfield) discussing
a) how Kerry wasn't necessarily the same as Ted Kennedy even though he was "another liberal Massachusetts senator."
b) Jimmy Carter's "pacifism"; how he's "drifted to the left" of his party.

3. MSNBC's Tweety on how the Monday night lineup of speakers seemed unlikely to persuade any "undecided" voters.

4. CNN "senior political correspondent" Bill Schneider on how "the rap on the Democrats is they don't treat their losers well."

5. MSNBC's Joe Scarborough: the evening was "a real missed opportunity" since people in middle America "don't care anything about Iraq."

6. Howard Fineman's head ironically framed by two people (inexplicably) holding up "Bush/Cheney '04" signs in the background.

7. Tweety and Fineman insisting that the Democratic platform "doesn't repudiate" Bush's policies.

8. The physical presence of Bob Dole. Can Viagra cause massive stroke followed by catatonia? At what point in the male aging process does dyed hair make one look indisputably corpselike?

9. Dole: "The Democrats don't recognize the catastrophe of 9-11..."

10. The "comedian" "Mo Rocca." Who is this idiot and why is he suddenly all over the TV and radio? Has there ever been a less funny comedian--ever? Is he actually a personified plague sent by the RNC to infect and debilitate the convention?

Best

1. Clinton--amazing.

2. Carter:

--He was in the Navy under Truman and Eisenhower, "both of whom had faced their active military responsibilities with honor."

--That those two presidents "would not mislead us on matters of national security."

--That John Kerry "showed up" for duty.

--How the post-9-11 global goodwill has been squandered by "a virtually unbroken series of mistakes and miscalculations."

--That the U.S. "cannot lead if our leaders mislead; you can't claim to be a war president one day and a peace president the next based on the latest political polls."

--"At stake is nothing less than our nation's soul."

3. Woodward (on Larry King): "The Bush message is national indestructibility; do something to us and we'll come blow you up."

4. Of course, Jon Stewart. It's amazing to see what happens to humanoid court jesters like Brokaw and Russert when faced with the profound embarrassment of a person of normal intelligence who makes simple, (mostly) honest observations about things.

In honor of President Bill Clinton's marvelous speech at the convention tonight, I recur to one of my old themes in giving to Clinton the highest praise I can give to any actor operating within the constraints of the current political system:  my assertion that he is not human shit. 

The rules of the system are simple:  shit rules because it has the power to be shit and rule.  A Republican stands before the nation as a piece of shit that is not even worth ruthlessly exterminating, and he is treated by the press as a leader; this inexplicable response from the press to the Republican's manifest, inescapable, undeniable, and known-to-everyone status as a piece of shit confers upon the Republican a magical aura:  if that palpably shitty piece of shit, the people think, can be treated as a real human being--indeed, as a leader of men--then that piece of shit must already occupy a position of power, must have already received the blessing of a supreme and incomprehensible power.  Thus Bush runs for President as the piece of human shit who is supposed to be President.  Thus the idea of being "Presidential."  Thus Bush is currently enthroned shit. 

In a system that works this way; in a system where the naked assertion of power--always asserted by the assertion of the right of the powerful to be shit--is always rewarded by a demented and coprophagic press corps; in such a system, a human being--a human who is not human shit--is at a serious, almost insurmountable disadvantage.  The fact that Bill Clinton is such a human being, and that he nonetheless won the Presidency twice, attests to his immense skill, and even to his heroism.  As this superb review of the Clinton autobiography by Hendrik Hertzberg makes clear, the President was able, heroically, to out-shit the shitters at their own obscene game.  This involved doing any number of things, policy-wise, that he probably did not want to do.  It involved at times making himself appear like a piece of human shit.  And yet he somehow could always maintain his sense of the difference between what he was and what, occasionally, he had to appear to be.  He could turn himself into shit if he had to, and then he could, at the right time, seize the opportunity to behave as a normal human being would like to behave.  Those moments were, again, few and far between--for Clinton was operating in a system where being human shit was required for political success.  But he managed to steal a few human actions in behind the backs of the shit-eaters.  What Hertzberg helps us to see is that without his repeated masquerades as a piece of human shit, Clinton would have been able to do nothing at all worth doing in the White House.  And those few things that he did do--those few human as opposed to excremental acts--mattered. 

They didn't change the whole system.  They didn't reduce our shit-diet.  But they produced fewer corpses than a piece of actual human shit (like Bush) would have produced had he been President from 1992 to 2000. 

Those of us outside the excremental political system can avoid behaving like human shit more often than can the system's compromised participants.  And so we have our own obligations.  But when we consider the deeds of someone who has taken upon himself the cross of simulating human shit, we should recognize the sacrifice involved, recognize the severe constraints on his action, and recognize that slipping a few human actions into a system dominated by human shit does mark a small victory for humanity at large.

When one looks at Bush, and then at the hatred nurtured for him, it is very hard to grasp the connection. Why? Why do they hate him so?

There is something so innocent, direct, fresh-faced, open, Tom Sawyerish in George Bush's manner--something so western, Christian, decent, even kind. And there is such candor in his eyes and behavior that the ferocity of the hatred aimed at him seems completely out of proportion. The hatred is a suit that ill fits him.

Nevertheless, George W. Bush has been re-conceived and re-wrought into everything that the sophisticated Leftist absolutely hates about Americana: Its innocence. Its boyishness. Its Christianity. Its unpretentiousness. Its heedlessness of all the shibboleths the Left most highly values.

Repository of filth.

Kerry's prospects just got much brighter.  It appears that there will be all-star rock concerts throughout the swing-states in October of this year.  The headliner will be Bruce Springsteen.  Neil Young, R.E.M., and Pearl Jam will also appear.  But Springsteen is huge, and footage of him on local news stations denouncing Bush will carry a lot of weight.  His authenticity is beyond question for a lot of people.  He does not talk much about politics.  His announcement will seem to come from beyond the political realm entirely, and will therefore, perhaps, seem more like an annunciation.

But why does this matter so much?  Why are Americans so stupid?  And why is Kerry is so weak?  Why can't he find a way to convince people to vote for him as opposed to a failed abortion, a "man" who was never even born?

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