“I want Bush in there, because the other guy is like sending a boy to do a man’s job,” said Glenn Foldessy, 45, of Streetsboro, Ohio, outside Cleveland.
Dear Ken,
One of the sad things about old friends is that they seem to be getting older — just like you!
55 years old. Wow! That is really old.
Thank goodness you have such a young beautiful wife.
Laura and I value our friendship with you. Best wishes to Linda, your family and friends.
Your younger friend,
George W. Bush
Come And Get It, Little Heathers
Ok. I thought the Drudge “John-John” item was funny and I even posted about it. And it is. But if anyone thinks it’s just some sort of one-off joke, think again.
From Wes “wish I was in the land of cotton” Pruden, editor of the Washington Times:
The two Johns lock eyes frequently in deep contact and stop barely short of demonstrating what great kissers they may be. Monsieur Kerry might yet give us a demonstration of French kissing but, if he does, Mr. Edwards, a good ol’ Carolina boy after all, will be entitled to slap his face. (Secret Service bodyguards, take note.)
Over the past two days, since Monsieur Kerry introduced his running mate at his wife’s estate near Pittsburgh, “candidate handling,” in the description of the Drudge Report, “has become the top buzz on the trail.”
“I’ve been covering Washington and politics for 30 years [said one wire-service photographer]. I can say I’ve never seen this much touching between two men, publicly.” Indeed, editors determined to preserve the appearance of a little presidential dignity and campaign decorum on “the trail” are frustrated in their search for photographs suitable for a respectable mainstream newspaper. The photographers, keen competitors for the most startling shot of the day, naturally love it.
The candidates are giving the term “Johns,” heretofore familiar only in certain neighborhoods illuminated by the glow of dim red lights, an entirely new meaning. These buff and manly Johns are only following instructions to demonstrate warmth — cuddly warmth though it may be — to contrast with the chilly Republican images projected by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, who keep their legs crossed and their hands to themselves at all times. No one imagines George W. inspecting Dick Cheney’s cheek for razor burn in anticipation of a friendly kiss to greet the day. The president, after all, is the scion of generations of reserved and genteel WASP breeding, and the veep is a man from Wyoming, where the wrong kind of familiarity can invite a swift and fatal case of lead poisoning.
Besides, says a Kerry spokesperson, “I think we’re just seeing genuine affection between them.” But he adds nervously, “I hope we do not see them wearing matching outfits when they ride bikes together this weekend.” No one suggests that Monsieur Kerry, who sent the Viet Cong fleeing into wild retreat into Cambodia and Laos after serving just four months in Vietnam, is any less a man than John Wayne or Clint Eastwood. John Edwards’ smile makes even a feminist’s heart throb with erotic speculation. The carefully calculated “candidate handling” is merely a pose to reassure voters that Monsieur Kerry does, too, have a pulse. All that’s expected of John Edwards is that he learn to hug (but not kiss) in French. The rest of us will just have to grin and bear it, but from a distance. November is only five months away.
This theme is one of those snotty, RNC-fed bitch items designed to thrill the little mediawhores and make them subconsciously further the image of Democrats as “soft.” And, it’s about making the little tarts mindlessly portray Junior and Gepetto as the “real men” instead of the empty codpiece and the flaccid chickenhawk they are.
They are very clever with this stuff. The tone is nasty elitist, both frat-boy macho and cheerleader exclusive, the greater purpose being to plant the seed in the minds of Wolfie, MoDo, Timmy and the other Heathers, which is best accomplished by using this patented high school form of ridicule.
As the incomparable Sommerby wrote today:
Our modern press is itself a high elite; despite pious tales about Buffalo boyhoods, its opinion leaders are all multimillionaires, and even hard-charging young elite scribes know they’re on the millionaire track—and they’re careful not to blow it by getting outside the narrow confines of their elders’ world view. Most of these upscale scribes have little class perspective to suppress in the first place. But beyond that, they have no incentive to challenge their group’s perspectives, and that helps explain the nasty treatment Moore’s film has received in the press. After all, is there any elite more phony and fake than the one that is currently trashing Moore’s film? And make no mistake—these overpaid and pampered poodles tend to identify, not with Moore, but with the powdered phonies he mocks.
Republicans understand them because their lives have been shaped by the image of spoiled rich adolescence as well — an immature elitism, born of social climbing and emotional sado-masochism. They are of the same tribe.
The John-John thing is a joke, to be sure. But, there’s a message and they are confident that the mediaqueens will take the bait. They may not pass it on verbatim, but every time they get together they’ll be mentioning it with hushed giggles and raised eyebrows. No doubt everyone at The Note just howled when they read Pruden’s little screed this morning. He’s such a delicious little bitch, isn’t he? Pass it on.
Let’s Role Model
Kevin tells me that good, decent Americans are having prissy fits over last night’s descent into moral depravity in NYC. The shame, the decadence the…political hate speech!!! Dear Gawd, will they ever stop???
When asked this morning about the lewd, hate mongering Democrats, President Bush said solemly, “John Kerry is a major league asshole. Fuck him, we’re taking him out.” Dick Cheney added, “Big time. He can go fuck himself.”
God bless the grown-ups of the GOP.
Promise Keeping
In the spirit of the generous advice David Brooks gave to the Democrats on the issue of our lack of proper religiosity, I’d like to return the favor. I’d like to suggest that if the Republicans want to win this fall, they need to embrace this concept with everything they’ve got. The whole “women should be subordinate to their husbands” idea is one their caucus should run on all across the country. The time has come.
It’s true that this might, on first glance, seem counterintuitive considering that most women would burst into wild gales of laughter at the mere idea, but you have to understand that the idea hasn’t been adequately explained before. Just because the woman is supposed to “place herself under the authority of the man” doesn’t mean it’s a one way street. As Orrin Hatch says, “I don’t think anybody can read this without understanding husbands have tremendous obligations in order to gain the respect of their wives.”
See? It’s not like the man gets off scott free. He has to do a bunch of stuff too. That’s what these bitche…er ladies don’t understand. And that’s what our new federal judge, J. Leon Holmes, is going to help them understand — just like he helps 13 year old rape victims understand that they have to bear their father’s child.
Like I said, I think the GOP has a winner with this campaign theme. If the Democrats bring it up over and over and over again — after all, every single one of the Republican senators voted for it — it will be bad news for them. There are many tens of millions of women in this country who are just dying to vote for a party that thinks women should be subserviant to men. It would be a terrible mistake to try to hang this around Republican necks. Honest. I mean that. Don’t go there.
Wouldn’t You Know It
Talk about your bad luck.
Pentagon Says Bush Records of Service Were Destroyed
Military records that could help establish President Bush’s whereabouts during his disputed service in the Texas Air National Guard more than 30 years ago have been inadvertently destroyed, according to the Pentagon.
It said the payroll records of “numerous service members,” including former First Lt. Bush, had been ruined in 1996 and 1997 by the Defense Finance and Accounting Service during a project to salvage deteriorating microfilm. No back-up paper copies could be found, it added in notices dated June 25.
The destroyed records cover three months of a period in 1972 and 1973 when Mr. Bush’s claims of service in Alabama are in question.
The disclosure appeared to catch some experts, both pro-Bush and con, by surprise. Even the retired lieutenant colonel who studied Mr. Bush’s records for the White House, Albert C. Lloyd of Austin, said it came as news to him.
The loss was announced by the Defense Department’s Office of Freedom of Information and Security Review in letters to The New York Times and other news organizations that for nearly half a year have sought Mr. Bush’s complete service file under the open-records law.
There was no mention of the loss, for example, when White House officials released hundreds of pages of the President’s military records last February in an effort to stem Democratic accusations that he was “AWOL” for a time during his commitment to fly at home in the Air National Guard during the Vietnam War.
Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director who has said that the released records confirmed the president’s fulfillment of his National Guard commitment, did not return two calls for a response.
The disclosure that the payroll records had been destroyed came in a letter signed by C. Y. Talbott, chief of the Pentagon’s Freedom of Information Office, who forwarded a CD-Rom of hundreds of records that Mr. Bush has previously released, along with images of punch-card records. Sixty pages of Mr. Bush’s medical file and some other records were excluded on privacy grounds, Mr. Talbott wrote.
He said in the letter that he could not provide complete payroll records, explaining, “The Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS) has advised of the inadvertent destruction of microfilm containing certain National Guard payroll records.”
He went on: “In 1996 and 1997, DFAS engaged with limited success in a project to salvage deteriorating microfilm. During this process the microfilm payroll records of numerous service members were damaged, including from the first quarter of 1969 (Jan. 1 to March 31) and the third quarter of 1972 (July 1 to Sept. 30). President Bush’s payroll records for these two quarters were among the records destroyed. Searches for backup paper copies of the missing records were unsuccessful.”
I seem to recall that this used to be the kind of thing for which we assigned special prosecutors and held televised congressional hearings. But that was when we had a president who had no honor and integrity so it was different.
This is just one more of the hundreds of felicitous coincidences that have beset our Crusader Codpiece over the years. Just because people have been trying to get ahold of those records for ages and it’s only now that we find out that they were destroyed seven or eight years ago is no reason to be suspicious. I’ll bet Junior is just mad as heck about the whole business. The one thing he really wanted to do was clear this thing up before the election.
Drudge had to put down his little mouse and take a long drag off of Lucianne’s Virginia Slim Menthol 100 after putting that steamy montage together.
Does anyone smell the faint whiff of GOP flop sweat in the air?
Four More Years!
Be a Billionaire For Bush
They’re taking a Limo through the swing states to tell voters the good news …
I love these guys.
I’m Going To Hell
I am against this kind of thing. There really is no excuse for it. However, as I am a red-blooded American, brought up in a certain way at a certain time, I must confess that I sometimes cannot resist a little trip to the dark side.
I hope you all can forgive me. I’m weak.
Fools On The Hill
I would be with all the BigMediaBloggers on this except that I think having BushCo and the boyz spend a couple of weeks arguing about whether to amend the constitution to ban gay marriage makes them look so ridiculous at this particular political moment that it might just be worth it.
If it was 1998 and the wingnuts had the luxury of playing silly culture war games for fun and profit, I’d say it would be best to get the debate out of the way and off the radar screen. But today, I think there’s real value in having the Republicans on the evening news spitting and hollaring about something that ends up at about #733 on the average American’s list of priorities. (This is not to say that I don’t think the issue matters to many people, pro and con, but it just isn’t critical at this moment.)
It just seems to me that the more the GOP is exposed for their deep lack of seriousness, the better off we are. Seeing Inhofe, Frist and “Bowser” Santorum rail about slippery slopes and bestiality on the evening news strikes me as good politics. And it’s telling that at this late date they are still playing to their base when they should be awkwardly clapping and singing “Proud Mary” with african american kids and talking about their support for pre-natal care and puppies. Their necessary tack to the middle is seriously off schedule. Is it in our interest to help them get on course?
Watch What You Say
This is the kind of thing that makes me wonder if Bush, Ashcroft and Company haven’t already screwed this country up so badly that it will never recover:
“How are you?” asked the airport security person who popped up beside me on my way to baggage claim.
“Uh, fine — thanks,” I replied, wondering, why are you asking?
As if she’d read my thoughts, she told me there had been complaints about me on the airplane. Then she asked to see the crossword puzzle I’d been working on during the flight. Huh? I thought. Talk about being puzzled! Still, my grin was smug as I handed it over. I’d just completed the Friday New York Times puzzle, for the first time ever.
But the agent ignored the crossword, turning the paper sideways to read a line I’d scribbled in the margin: “I know this is kind of a bomb.”
She pointed to the sentence, her finger resting on the word “bomb.” “What does this mean?” she demanded.
Suddenly a light went on in my head. I remembered the passenger on my left leaning forward in his seat as I scribbled while we waited for takeoff. Seconds later, he’d clambered hastily over me without apology to make his way to the front of the plane. I’d assumed intestinal complications, but now that I thought about it, he hadn’t used the bathroom. He’d spoken briefly with the flight attendants and returned to his seat. As the security woman looked at me, I now realized the passenger had been about as interested in my puzzling prowess as she was.
“I know this is kind of a bomb” is what I imagine Bucky, my main character, would say to Julie, his love interest, in the critical scene of my novel. I explained to the security woman that this is what happens when a 42-year-old man who is to literature what a karaoke singer is to opera tries to put words in the mouth of a fictional 19-year-old.
I opened my laptop and showed her shining example after shining example of similarly awful dialogue. She understood that that word, b-o-m-b, was no reference to ordnance or terrorist weapons of any kind.
But my explanation wasn’t good enough for the three Dallas police officers who meanwhile had surrounded me — summoned, I supposed, for backup in case the dangerous character tried to write something even worse.
One took my driver’s license to run a fruitless background check (the closest I ever came to being in trouble with the law was accepting a beer at age 17 from the teen-age daughter of the Nantucket Island police chief). A particularly hostile cop asked me a strangely menacing question: “So, how many books have you gotten made?” I started my usual backpedaling answer to that query, honed to perfection in the Dallas bar scene, but he cut me off: “That’s not what I asked.” I told him I must have misunderstood. He responded, “You’re a writer and you don’t understand my words?”
[…]
…the honcho gravely warned me that while I hadn’t crossed the line, I had walked right up to it. And for that I would be on Homeland Security’s watch list.
Have we all just gotten used to the idea of a “Homeland Security Watchlist?” Do we have even the vaguest clue about who might be on it and what criteria are used? Is this one of those times when sage law and order conservatives tell you that if you’re innocent you don’t have anything to worry about?
Here we have a situation in which some nosy asshole sitting in the seat next to you sees that you wrote the word “bomb,” and reports it. And some person in authority says that you’ve walked right up to a “line” you had no idea even existed and are now on a list which means that if anything ever happens again — you are overheard saying “jihad” or perhaps “fuck Bush” — and you are “questioned” again, you are already in the database as someone who is being watched.
Perhaps this doesn’t happen often. But there are other stories of little things happening that make me begin to have doubts about our ability to withstand this threat of terrorism. For instance, there was this story last month about a British journalist’s dealings with American authorities:
Somewhere in central Los Angeles, about 20 miles from LAX airport, there is a nondescript building housing a detention facility for foreigners who have violated US immigration and customs laws. I was driven there around 11pm on May 3, my hands painfully handcuffed behind my back as I sat crammed in one of several small, locked cages inside a security van. I saw glimpses of night-time urban LA through the metal bars as we drove, and shadowy figures of armed security officers when we arrived, two of whom took me inside. The handcuffs came off just before I was locked in a cell behind a thick glass wall and a heavy door. No bed, no chair, only two steel benches about a foot wide. There was a toilet in full view of anyone passing by, and of the video camera watching my every move. No pillow or blanket. A permanent fluorescent light and a television in one corner of the ceiling. It stayed on all night, tuned into a shopping channel.
After 10 minutes in the hot, barely breathable air, I panicked. I don’t suffer from claustrophobia, but this enclosure triggered it. There was no guard in sight and no way of calling for help. I banged on the door and the glass wall. A male security officer finally approached and gave the newly arrived detainee a disinterested look. Our shouting voices were barely audible through the thick door. “What do you want?” he yelled. I said I didn’t feel well. He walked away. I forced myself to calm down. I forced myself to use that toilet. I figured out a way of sleeping on the bench, on my side, for five minutes at a time, until the pain became unbearable, then resting in a sitting position and sleeping for another five minutes. I told myself it was for only one night.
As it turned out, I was to spend 26 hours in detention. My crime: I had flown in earlier that day to research an innocuous freelance assignment for the Guardian, but did not have a journalist’s visa.
[…]
Finally, after much scurrying around by officers, I was invited into an office and asked if I needed anything before we began. I requested a glass of water, which the interrogating officer brought me himself. He was a gentle, intelligent interrogator: the interview lasted several hours and consisted of a complete appraisal of my life, past and present, personal and professional. He needed information as diverse as my parents’ names, the fee I would be paid for the article I was working on, what it was about, exactly, and, again, the names of people I was coming to interview. My biography was a confusing issue – I was born in one country, had lived in many others: who was I, exactly? For US immigration, my British passport was not enough of an identity. The officer said, pointedly, “You are Russian, yet you claim to be British”, an accusation based on the fact that I was born in Moscow (though I never lived there). Your governor, went my mental reply, is Austrian, yet he claims to be American. After about three hours, during which I tried hard to fight jetlag and stay alert, we had produced several pages that were supposed to provide the invisible person in charge with enough material to say yes or no to my request to be allowed entry. My interrogator asked one last obligatory question, “Do you understand?”
“Yes, I understand,” I sighed, and signed the form. The instant faxed response was an official, final refusal to enter the US for not having the appropriate visa. I’d have to go back to London to apply for it.
At this moment, the absurd but almost friendly banter between these men and myself underwent a sudden transformation. Their tone hardened as they said that their “rules” demanded that they now search my luggage. Before I could approach to observe them doing this, the officer who had originally referred me to his supervisor was unzipping my suitcase and rummaging inside. For the first time, I raised my voice: “How dare you touch my private things?”
“How dare you treat an American officer with disrespect?” he shouted back, indignantly. “Believe me, we have treated you with much more respect than other people. You should go to places like Iran, you’d see a big difference.” The irony is that it is only “countries like Iran” (for example, Cuba, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Zimbabwe) that have a visa requirement for journalists. It is unheard of in open societies, and, in spite of now being enforced in the US, is still so obscure that most journalists are not familiar with it. Thirteen foreign journalists were detained and deported from the US last year, 12 of them from LAX.
After my luggage search, the officer took some mugshots of me, then proceeded to fingerprint me.
Keep in mind, this was last month, not November 2001.
OK, maybe it’s silly for me to get so white hot, angry when I read these stories. It’s just one female journalist and she was in technical violation. It was only a misunderstanding about the word “bomb” written on a newspaper. Perhaps these are isolated cases. That petty bureaucrats use language that is remarkably similar to that used by our president and his political allies in comparing the wonderful treatment under our police state as compared with that under really awful police states is surely just a rhetorical coincidence.
But, after seeing the Justice Department issue opinions that the president has unlimited powers in wartime and that anything, including torture, is justified to “defend the homeland” it doesn’t really seem so silly after all. The stories begin to accumulate, each one a random intrusion by dumb, underqualified government authorities who seem to have watched too much television and have very little common sense.
If this keeps up, sooner or later we will all end up, in one way or another, on the “Homeland Security Watchlist” where anyone from a professional rival to a vengeful neighbor can be the instrument of terror in a way that bin Laden and gang can only envy. In fact, these little people with too much power scare me a hundred times more than the Islamic terrorists. The threat that lives among us is ourselves.