Slow-Motion Train Wreck

The Barbecue Next Time

[NYT] WASHINGTON -- President Trump shared on Twitter a cartoon on Tuesday morning of a train running over a person with a CNN logo covering the person’s head, three days after a fatal collision in Charlottesville, Va.  Mr. Trump deleted his retweet minutes later.

His Tweet later ("Made additional remarks on Charlottesville and realize once again that the #Fake News Media will never be truly satisfied ... truly bad people! ") confirmed it -- See? Whatever I say will never be good enough -- intolerant! Sad!

Late Monday, Mr. Trump also shared a post from the account of a pro-Trump conspiracy theorist suggesting that the news media is ignoring violence in Chicago. The account owner, Jack Posobiec, is known for promoting false narratives such as the “Pizzagate” hoax and a conspiracy theory about the murder of a Democratic aide.

And then, we had Tuesday afternoon at Trump Tower. Ha ha ha.

For some reason, I'm reminded of a poem which a friend once told me about (which I've labored to find since): a circus tent, filled with people enraptured by watching a clown light matches with his toes -- so enraptured, that they are surprised when the roof of the tent is blown away, and they find the world has come to an end.

The only legitimate Brennenen Zeitfragenen these days are, How long does this particular sideshow go on? How many people will (to use a Watership Down reference) have to Go Tharn before we move to The Next Stage?  And, What Will that Next Stage be?

One possible answer: Over at The Soul Of America, there was a shared post which neatly summed up the Past-Is-Prologue we've been witnessing over the past seven-plus months.

A discredited ruling ideology, declining standards of living, the memory of lived prosperity and absolute despair for the future: this is as toxic a society as you can imagine. Now add to that waves of immigrants fleeing the storms and heat waves of South and Central America. An increasingly violent, increasingly militarized border, and an increasingly aggressive ICE. The continued decline of white Americans into a national minority. And a wealthy elite, controlling the most powerful propaganda apparatus in history, desperate to find a scapegoat for the country's ongoing deterioration.

Any questions? See you at The Barbecue Next Time !

____________________________

Historicalositude

Eight More Years

Smeagel Rejoices At Recovering The One Ring

HC: What's that new post supposed to be? You just put up photos of Hillary that look bad. Pretty juvenile.

DOG: Not true. The one I posted of her being led away by police was tasteful, and she looked groomed.

HC: Still going to throw your vote away?

DOG: Actually, I have a jury summons. And I have to wash my hair.

HC: That's just one more vote for Trump.

DOG:  Eight more years. Eight more years.

HC: What do you mean?

DOG: [Affectless Stare]

HC: [Walks Away]

 ___________________________

Cleveland: Where The Hot Wind Blows

Greg Stillson Unchained

Greg Stillson, Crazy Idiot Loser Unsuccessful Republican Candidate,

Shares His Private Aspirations At The RNC In Cleveland (Photo: CheeseStar)

Grand TurtleBear Greg Stillson of the Church Of I Kill You !! was unsuccessful against Il Duce in the 'Race To The Bottom' primary contests. Little Greg, accompanied by his wife, Irgrud, promised their supporters smaller government, that Lloyd Blankfein would be made secretary of the Treasury; a written guarantee signed by the lord and savior (well, somebody's lord 'n savior, anyway) that they would be transported to heaven "at a date and time of their own choosing";  and, that they "shall taste man-flesh!"
 

 Loser's Night: Greg And Dashboard Jesus Appeared
Before The Multi 'Tudes

None of it worked. Trumpo was too powerful. He had big hands. Greg had a big big sad, because the lord of Hostess© did not live in his pants. The night ended in terror and shame, and the Grand TurtleBear blubbered like a five-year-old, accompanied by his close campaign advisor, Dashboard Jesus -- who made meaningless Who's Awesome? You're Awesome gestures to the multitudes while firing random spitwads at them.

As a consolation prize, Greg was offered an opportunity to speak to the Republican convention, with an understanding that in the name of party unity, Greg would stay on his meds (400mg of Thorazine every 4 hours) and endorse the apotheosis of Trumpo, Clown-Emperor of Dealdom.

Greg was sly. He palmed his meds. He smiled, slyly. He walked to the podium, smiled again his trademark sly smile that says, Take it from me: the earth is 6,500 years old; and I am One Of Youuuuuu!! Then he delivered a speech.  In the process, he showed his pudgy, cheese-dimpled butt to all America and the world, the teevee broadcasting these images to as yet unknown alien races in galaxies not yet catalogued, for all time.  When these aliens see it, they will seek us out and eradicate all life on our planet. Because Freedom.

We may not have gotten it all down exactly, but we're pretty sure Greg said something like this.  Or he wanted to, really bad.

Thank you. Irgrud and I are honored by Lebron James tonight. And as I'm convinced America is going, I congratulate Donald, right over there (nods), on taking the nomination..

Conventions are excrement. But you'll listen to me before we burn you at the stake for your apostasy in not allowing me -- me -- to fulfill my destiny before god and my pants.

Just a while ago, a carefree Texas summer was destroyed by my loss of primaries to Mister Trump, over there (points). On that day I was martyred, Irgrud hugged me and said we still had friends at Goldman, wink, wink. But I had been murdered. I was in tears. How could anything ever be OK again? I feel things that happen to me deeply. To ME!

Then I had the chance to come here and force you ungrateful, spiteful, stupid agents of Satan to listen, to me. Me! ME!! And as I thought about what I wanted to say tonight, it's that we live in a world where lives are destroyed by evil, just as mine was. Not that you care.

Maybe it is because of a simple yet powerful idea: freedom from is greater than freedom to. And, were I the leader of this great Nation, all America would know that from Day One.

I want everything I've ever seen in the movies. I want to make you love me, and to love Jesus too when you have time, though I would keep you busy. Never has that message been  needed more than today. You owed me that. You all owed me so much.

Of course, Clinton, and Trump over there, will tell you I am crazy. Crazy! Me! Well, they don't know about my visions -- visions for the future. They don't know my dreams. They would run screaming in fear and pain and awe, if they could but see what I have in my pants. God is there. Let me show you.  [Exposes hind parts] Thank you.

Hillary Clinton deals heroin and has a house full of children to service her. It's true! And all dictated out of Washington. But something powerful is happening. Voters are rejecting cement lawn gnomes. They are symbols of Satan, of government, of a corrupt system that benefits the elites, instead of working girls and Feed Lot maintenance personnel.

I tried to tell you. I deserve so much. And you could have given it to me. America put a man on the moon. Surely you could have given me this, but no. No!

You deserve leaders who cast aside principle, and untie us behind a Principal. Who have anger for love. That is the standard you should expect -- punishment, and secret forbidden love, and television Jesus. No less.

And to those listening, please, don't go and do things in your kitchens where you think I can't see you. I know you stay home to do them, but you are wrong. And bad. And badly wrong. You must be punished, but you will learn to love the rope.

We must make the most of our moment. We must sieze and choke and drive and shave. To fight for me was to fight for freedom, to protect your god-given right to acknowledge me. Me! And I give those I love one final lingering deep kiss goodbye, with tongue. As I curse all those who were foul betrayers, I will say, "I am something beautiful".

Thanks. And bless me. You had your chance, but you fucked it up !!  Now you're going to get almost a decade of She Who Must Not Be Named, when you could have had ME !!!

__________________________________

True Colors

 To Mitzy, Chances Are ~ 50% That You're Lazy, Irresponsible, And Don't Matter

We can’t get very far if we’re just writing off half the country as a bunch of victims, or presume that somehow they want to be dependent on government or don’t want to take responsibility for their own lives.  --  President Barack Obama, September 21, 2012

When the now-infamous Cellphone Video surfaced a week ago, I wasn't at all surprised by Mitzy's comments (You can read the full transcript at Mother Jones online).   After all, he was speaking to a crowd of his people. They all share the same perspectives on America, its population, and what should be done to ensure a top-down, trickle-down vision dominates the future.  Aber natürlich he didn't bother to censor himself.

This One Per Cent notion of our country and culture was highlighted in a short Los Angeles Times article this past July about a traffic jam of wealthy donors, making their way to a gated estate in the Hamptons (don't know about the Hamptons? Go here) where Little Mitt Romney was going to speak to them -- and, oh yes; take their checks.

A New York City donor a few cars back, who also would not give her name, said Romney needed to do a better job connecting. “I don’t think the common person is getting it,” she said from the passenger seat of a Range Rover stamped with East Hampton beach  permits.“Nobody understands why Obama is hurting them. We’ve got the message,” she added. “But my college kid, the baby sitters, the nails ladies — everybody who’s got the right to vote — they don’t understand what’s going on. I just think if you’re lower income — one, they’re not as educated; two, they don’t understand how it works, they don’t understand how the systems work, they don’t understand the impact.”

Mitzy made his remarks on May 17th at the Boca Raton, Fla., home of Marc Leder, co-owner of the NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers, founder and co-CEO of Sun Capital Partners, a Boca Raton-based private investment firm which (according to the company’s website) focuses on leveraged buyouts -- the tactic, along with outsourcing, that made Bain Capital under Romney so successful (for workers in the impacted companies Bain took over... not so much).  Leder's estimated net worth is $400 million.

This is the same Marc Leder who rented a home in the Hamptons  last season, for one month, to throw a long string of "parties" -- real Roman-style, sybaritic, public sexyorgytime, and apparently quite popular with the moneyed set.  Marvelous Marc's rental cost of the house for that 30 days was $500,000 (I don't know if this included the hookers).

That's $16,000 per day -- and  $16K per year is just a little more than the Federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour, about the mean average wage (according to Wikipedia) of Farmworkers, Laborers; Crop, Nursery, and Greenhouse workers; Ushers, Lobby Attendants, and Ticket Takers; Cafeteria, Food Concession, and Coffee Shop attendants -- Gardeners, and 'Personal Grooming' attendants.  That is, the Nails Ladies. 

So Markie's 30 Days Of Fuckpad cost him the annual salary of thirty Americans, working in what usually gets referred to as the 'service industry'. I've had a few of these jobs, and relative to what I do now, I can tell you the work is hard. But, you know; those are the 'lower income' types who "don't understand".

(Obligatory Cute Small Animal Photo In Middle Of Blog Rant)

And. the minimum wage is one of the legacies of FDR's New Deal -- which the One Per Cent would like to drown in a bathtub, with the help of Little Grover. That, and replacing Social Security with a Stock Market Casino and Medicare with Vouchers For All, would be part of Austerity For America -- what Little Paulie Ryan likes to call the "sacrifice", the "pain" that they intend to force on the American people. But not on the One Per Cent, aber natürlich.

So, Romney told people in Boca Raton what they already believe:  47% are Liberals -- lazy, stupid, wanting nothing but government handouts, taking no personal responsibility for their lives. They're serfs,. They lie; they steal and they smell. You have to keep them in line and watch what they're doing every minute.

Audience member: For the last three years, all everybody's been told [by the Obama administration, i.e., 'the government] is, "Don't worry, we'll take care of you." How are you going to do it, in two months before the elections, to convince everybody, "You've got to take care of yourself"?

Romney: There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. 

And they will vote for this president no matter what... These are people who pay no income tax. Forty-seven percent of Americans pay no income tax. So our message of low taxes doesn't connect. And [Obama will] be out there talking about tax cuts for the rich. I mean, that's what they sell every four years. 

And so my job is not to worry about those people—I'll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives. What I have to do is convince the 5 to 10 percent in the center that are independents...

Also, one attendee at the soiree told Mitzy:

The debates are gonna be coming, and I hope at the right moment you can turn to President Obama, look at the American people, and say, "If you vote to reelect President Obama, you're voting to bankrupt the United States." I hope you keep that in your quiver because that's what gonna happen. 

 Mitzy replied, "Yeah, it's interesting," then proceeded to tell the room that the Federal Reserve is keping the economy afloat by printing money, "just making it up. The Federal Reserve is just ...saying, 'Here, we're giving it.'  It's just made up money."

[A]s soon as the Fed stops buying all the debt that we’re issuing—which they’ve been doing, the Fed’s buying like three-quarters of the debt that America issues. He said, once that’s over, he said we’re going to have a failed Treasury auction, interest rates are going to have to go up. We’re living in this borrowed fantasy world, where the government keeps on borrowing money.

 Paul Krugman, one of the smartest people on Earth when it comes to economics (certainly smarter than Mitzy), posted on Thursday in the New York Times that Romney was as usual spouting nonsense that had stuck in his head. If you follow the link, The Krug Man will explain why this is so, but the short version is, Mitzy is spewing an urban myth; the Fed purchased large amounts of Treasuries from Q2 of 2008 through Q1, 2009 -- and interest rates still went down.

 I was half-watching Washington Week In Review this evening, but my ears perked up when I heard one of the Beltway guest journalists mentioned that a complaint about Romney, even from people who support him, is that as a person Mitzy is an awkward, hazy cypher: People "just don't know him", or he "doesn't connect" easily with others.


 What the cellphone video showcased, the reporter said, was the real and unvarnished Romney, with all upper-class prejudices and crippled vision on display. His crowd of one-per-centers see the world in near-feudal terms -- it belongs to them, and the unwashed peasantry of "nail ladies", gardeners and salespersons which populates it are lazy good-for-nothings who don't work as hard as the Owners and Makers, like Little Mitt.

And other reporters are seeing the same thing, as Mitzy travels the country, endlessly fundraising as he attempts to bury the Obama and the Democrats under a sea of SuperPAC cash (In fact, some of his Romney's advisors have told him to stop raising money and concentrate in the last six weeks before the election on 'connecting' with voters).

With "His" people, he easily tosses off comments like those in Boca Raton -- however, the problem in Florida is that he was caught on video. This was Mitzy's "Macaca" moment, so politically harmful because it confirmed everything people already knew or suspected about him.

At 10PM Eastern time on Monday night, over a day after the video was released by Mother Jones, Mitzy gave what was referred to as a "shotgun presser".   Romney's campaign had already been hit earlier in the day by a story at Politico, reporting on confusion and disarray. It was expected Romney would offer some explanation or to apologize a seriously embarrassing gaffe.

Romney didn't. As a campaign reporter noted afterwards, 

[I]t would have helped if Romney had said something that… helped.  [A]ll he really did was say the same thing that got him in trouble, but in a wordier fashion, and with a Church Lady delivery. Even given the chance to explain what he meant, Romney still equated unemployment with a deficit of personal responsibility.

 
 He did not apologize or retract a single word captured on the video. He didn't attempt to address it's real message about the twisted values and lack of principle which define his candidacy --  I represent personal wealth, influence and interest, and if elected will do all I can to aid wealth and people like myself.  

We own or control everything. The rest of you are serfs who don't matter a damn; you all work for us one way or another. When I'm elected, you can shift for yourselves. If you can't pull yourself up, when it gets too tough, you can hang yourself by your own bootstraps. Life is for those who have, and those who don't shall lose.

Well, you know, it [Romney's message in the video]'s not elegantly stated, let me put it that way. I’m speaking off-the-cuff in response to a question, and I'm sure I could state it more clearly and in a more effective way than I did in a setting like that. And so I’m sure I’ll point that out as time goes on...

But it’s a message which I’m going to carry and continue to carry, which is, look, the President’s approach is attractive to people who are not paying taxes because, frankly, my discussion about lowering taxes isn’t as attractive to them, and therefore I’m unlikely to draw them into my campaign as effective[ly] as those in the middle. This is really about the political process of winning the election. Of course, I want to help all Americans, all Americans, have a bright and prosperous future and I’m convinced the President’s approach has not done that, and will not do that.

 Any questions?

________________________________________________________________________________

The Return Of Crazy Lady

Somewhere, Joe McCarthy Is Drunk And Smiling


In A Different Job Life, A Conversation With Crazy Lady
Would Begin With I Need You To Step Out Of Your Vehicle
And Move Directly To A Field Sobriety Test

After running a campaign utterly devoid of sane ideation for the Rethug presidential nomination which came apart like a cheap bikini (something we wouldn't necessarily mind in Little Michele's case, as we continue to say she is Hotish -- insane; but, hot), Grand Turtlebear Bachmann of The Church Of I Kill You! has returned to warn everyone of a terrifying conspiracy which threatens all life.

To the extent that Crazy Lady can focus on anything, since returning to her anti-environment bunker in a remote deforested area of her consciousness, Grand Turtlebear Bachmann has focused on the Islamic threat -- and recently contacted federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies, asking for an investigation of infiltration of the U.S. government by the Muslim Brotherhood.

Bachmann’s accusation came in a handful of letters to intelligence and national security agencies raising questions about the Muslim Brotherhood. The letters [were] also signed by four other Republicans...

The other four Chtulu worshipers signatories were Arizona Rep. Trent Franks, Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert, Florida Rep. Tom Rooney and Georgia Rep. Lynn Westmoreland. Franks in particular has a history of signing letters supporting bizarre points of view.

Most prominently, Bachmann focused on an accusation that Huma Abedin, deputy chief of staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, was influenced by the Brotherhood. Abedin, she said, had three family members (her deceased father, her mother, and her brother) "connected to Muslim Brotherhood operatives and/or organizations." Abedin's position with Clinton's staff "affords her routine access to the secretary [sic] and policy-making."

She also cast similar aspersions on a Democratic colleague in the House, Keith Ellison, who is Muslim. Ellison wrote to Little Michele on July 12th and asked for details supporting her allegations, and Crazy Lady responded almost immediately -- in fact, her response came the next day.

Beginning, "Dear Representative Ellison" it went on for 16 pages and 59 footnotes. Nowhere did it mention her suspicions about Ellison's alleged ties to the Muslim Brotherhood...

In her... letter to Ellison, Bachmann cited as evidence reports in Arab-language media, including Al-Jazeera. She also cited a 2002 law review article that referenced Abedin's father, who died two decades ago, as a founder of the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs in Saudi Arabia. That group allegedly had "quiet" but unspecified support of the then-general secretary of the Muslim World League, a group with "a longtime history of being closely aligned" with the Muslim Brotherhood.

Her letter closed politely by thanking Ellison and offering to "revisit" the issue once she got the answers to all her questions. "It is my intention to wait for the investigations to be completed to comment further," Bachmann wrote.

One can imagine Crazy Lady sitting up all night to type that 16-pager, thinking I'm speaking for white America and for Jesus; praise god, yes I am...


Grand Turtlebear Bachmann Channeling Norma Desmond
(Photo: MNProgressive Project)

Almost a week later on July 19th, she appeared on the radio show of Little Glenn Beck, four years old, and repeated her accusations. She also took pains to share with Glenny that Congressman Ellison had "a long record of being associated with CAIR [the Council on American-Islamic Relations] and with the Muslim Brotherhood."

"All we're doing is asking questions," Crazy Lady told Glenny -- a nod, I suppose, to Beck's similar, signature line (After delivering an incendiary tirade of accusations against 'The Left', Beck has asked if what he's just said is true, adding, "I don't know; I'm just asking the question").

The leadership of her own Rethug party responded as if she were a leper out of the Dark ages, wandering into their little Potomac village wrapped in rags with a bell hung around her neck, and ran as far away from Crazy Lady as they could. It's an election year.

Though the Republicans are the party of gutter-crawling Poll Tax racism and violent intolerance, its leaders in Congress had to be seen publicly repudiating Grand Turtlebear Bachmann. Senator John McCain (who already had his own experience with the deranged Moose Lady) appeared on the floor of the Senate and all but declared Little Michele a public Loon.

"When anyone, not least a member of Congress, launches specious and degrading attacks against fellow Americans on the basis of nothing more than fear of who they are and ignorance of what they stand for, it defames the spirit of our nation," McCain said...

Behind the scenes, [Congressional Rethug] leadership aides said they were shaken by the comments from someone as prominent as Bachmann.

Senator Guy Says Grand Turtlebear Should Only Say Specious
And Degrading Things About Obama

A 'prominent' Republican claims, in the spirit of long-dead-and-thank-god Tail Gunner Joe McCarthy, that our government is riddled with Commies terrorist-supporting Islamist sympathizers? And here, 'prominent' means The media will present her as the unstable nutter she is. Quelle Horreur!

In a season when the GOP's sorry excuse for a presidential candidate is an überrich empty suit with an expensive haircut, Crazy Lady is a reminder that the GOP is the party of Batshit Crazy. She's an unwelcome spectacle -- like a deranged aunt (whom they keep locked upstairs when company comes visiting) suddenly bounding into the living room, demanding that god purify the world of sin and cheese, while she urinates on the carpet.

In response to the avalanche of criticism about her remarks, Grand Turtlebear Bachmann said only that her letters were being "distorted" by the media.

I'd like to say this is an election year, and so, the 'Silly Season'... but Crazy Lady's pathetic attempt to grab the spotlight for another few minutes by pandering to hate and fear (so typical for persons like her), trying to divide Americans instead of finding ways to unify us around something other than consumerism... is frightening, despicable, and wrong.

---

MEHR: An earlier version of this article noted that also, too, Grand Turtlebear Bachmann had accused the wife of former Representative Anthony Wiener of New York as being influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood.

What I was too stupid to know at the time is, Huma Abedin, Secretary of State Clinton's deputy chief of staff, is Anthony Wiener's wife.

Police and federal officials have placed security around ex-Rep. Anthony Weiner’s wife, Huma Abedin, after a New Jersey man threatened her, law-enforcement sources said.

An individual, described as a Muslim man, made the unspecified threat after Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) last week claimed Abedin’s family had ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and asked for a probe to see if she is helping the Islamist organization.

The man was questioned by the NYPD and the State Department and has not been charged, sources said.

But, the Grand Turtlebear can't be bothered with such little details. She has a country to save!

People like Crazy Lady are never held accountable for what they set in motion. Never.

---

Noch Einmal, Mit Schwein: Frank Bruni in the New York Times Opinion section, reminds us of the wonders of The Grand Turtlebear:

What I find most fascinating about Michele Bachmann — and there are many, many more where she came from — is that she presents herself as a godly woman, humbly devoted to her Christian faith...

Does [Bachmann's faith] call for smearing people on the basis of flimsy conspiracy theories? That’s what Bachmann just did to Huma Abedin, an aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, by essentially suggesting she might be a mole for the Muslim Brotherhood.

Does it endorse scaring young women away from immunizations that could spare them serious illness? Bachmann did that during her memorable presidential campaign, when she blithely drew an unsubstantiated link between a vaccine for the human papillomavirus and mental retardation.

Does it encourage gratuitously divisive condemnations of Barack Obama as “anti-American”...? And does it compel a war against homosexuality waged with the language and illogic she uses?

She has said that gay men and lesbians are dysfunctional products of abuse and agents of “sexual anarchy”... when the singer and songwriter Melissa Etheridge was battling breast cancer years ago, Bachmann helpfully chimed in:“This may be an opportunity for her now to be open to some spiritual things, now that she is suffering with that physical disease. She is a lesbian.”

Bachmann’s concept of Christian love brims with hate, and she has a deep satchel of stones to throw. From what kind of messiah did she learn that?

...Most of us distinguish, rightly, between Muslim extremists and other followers of Islam. Perhaps we should start noting the difference between Christians of real compassion and those of exclusionary spite.

Bachmann’s on to something: dangerous fundamentalists have indeed set up camp deep inside the capital. She can find one in her office. She need only look in the mirror.

---

Kulturschande *

John Derbyshire's Public, Total, And Irreversible Loss
Of Bowel And Bladder Control

John Derbyshire, a conservative pundit and gadfly at the National Review (originally founded by William F. Buckley, and later run by unindicted war criminals), author of several books, including We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism, provided us with a spectacle last week: Virtually dousing himself with gasoline and lighting a fantasy match, via this post at the Takimag website: "The Talk: Nonblack Version".

Apparently, John-Boy had read several articles that referenced a "talk" which at least some Black parents purportedly have with their children about living in a society dominated by non-African Americans (I've preserved some of the links to them from Derbyshire's original below):

[Derbyshire quotes:]“Sean O’Reilly was 16 when his mother gave him the talk that most black parents give their teenage sons,” Denisa R. Superville of the Hackensack (NJ) Record tells us. Meanwhile, down in Atlanta: “Her sons were 12 and 8 when Marlyn Tillman realized it was time for her to have the talk,” Gracie Bonds Staples writes in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

Leonard Greene talks about the talk in the New York Post. Someone bylined as KJ Dell’Antonia talks about the talk in The New York Times. Darryl Owens talks about the talk in the Orlando Sentinel.

Yes, talk about the talk is all over.

There is a talk that nonblack Americans have with their kids, too. My own kids, now 19 and 16, have had it in bits and pieces as subtopics have arisen. If I were to assemble it into a single talk, it would look something like the following...

Herr Derbyshire said, to paraphrase, Blacks are generally less intelligent than Caucasians or Asians, whom Blacks simply lump together as "white"; are more likely to be undeservedly promoted into management positions in the workplace; and are prone to violent behavior against "whites", if only on the basis of statistics. All this, and more like it, is what he tells his own children.

He tells this to his children. And where, pray, do people like him believe that racism comes from? Not only in the images and attitudes children unconsciously absorb from the world around them -- but because someone teaches them.

It's What They Do

Some pundits with a large soapbox to stand on, or their own site -- precisely because they publish lies and drivel, and use the Net to sling their own feces beyond their cages -- deserve to be ignored, vilified; to have their IP addresses blocked and sent to dwell in the land of Little Rupert, East of Podhoretz, with the crying, and the wailing, and the gnashing of mandibles (and the hey hey hey, as Professor Frink might tell us).

A few obvious examples of public masturbation are Drudge, Malkin; Goldberg, Erikson; and Breitbart (a Grand Public Masterdebater); but it's a long list. Thinking human beings recoil from the junk that spills out of their addled minds and into the rinse-cycle whirl of the Intertubes (Or, we laugh our asses off. Or both). They deserve our contempt, and receive it -- but they won't leave. They won't perform a swan song -- a GBCW! post: Good-Bye, Cruel World!.

However, the GBCW doesn't tend to happen in Right Blogostan, where the operative principle is to lie, and outrageously. As (for example) Breitbart and O'Keefe have shown us, don't just strain credulity, piss on it. And, Right bloggers have automatic support among a large community, willing to swallow every wingnut, asshat, echo-chamber fantasy of the moment.

Because, you see, the Right must stand in solidarity. They see a hostile world, dominated by elite Liberals and their Media; Jews; non-white people; and the undeserving poor and undocumented aliens, all supported by the taxes of honest working Americans (Also, there are giant radioactive scorpions being trained by the UN to bring about a one-world government headed by George Soros).

So You Wanna Be One Of The Kool Kidz

Sometimes, the GBCW is purely voluntary. At some level, the Blogosphere -- Left or Right -- mimics high school. Bloggers and regular commentors tend to affiliate, and like any other association of humans can be exclusionary. On occasion someone appears whose style in posting comments is grating, awkward. They insist on being right, on dominating a thread; they just don't express ideas well. They may be off-topic, and are thin-skinned when teased -- as they will be (humans are humans, and anonymous ones even more so).

Usually, these people have a blog of their own. They want to be one of the Kool Kidz, too, and have lots of site traffic -- to be popular. To "be someone". The problem is, they already are someone, and that they've confused the raison d'etre of their blog, or commenting on someone else's post, with wanting to appear on something like the old Gong Show.

So, when no one reads their amazingly important, detailed, lengthy blog posts; and they're ignored when adding to threads on other sites... finally, they may write that GBCW post, clomping off the Internet stage with a final, long soliloquy explaining ad nauseum why they are right and the rest of the world is wrong, wrong, wrong; and also, bad. If they are religious, they may hint darkly that god (somebody's god, anyway) will punish everyone for not eagerly lapping up their vomit.

(For some reason, I'm reminded of R. Crumb's Everyman character, Flakey Foont, constantly looking to Mister Natural for enlightenment, befuddled; angry at his mistreatment in life. In one final panel, Foont weeps as, in a thought bubble, he imagines his tombstone's epitaph: Here Lies Flakey Foont / A Beautiful Soul / Crushed By An Uncaring World..)

Wingnut Self-Immolation

Then, there's the other category of GBCW, almost unique to the Right, where a Rightist pundit's mask slips and the true reptilian horror is shown for all to see and wonder at. This sort of thing happens all the time -- you can't get through a week without a Rightist politician, or self-proclaimed pundit like Lard Boy, saying something insulting or incendiary.

So, when a wingnut pundit like Derbyshire can't maintain the Right's cherished fiction of bipartisan cooperation, or that they believe non-white persons are their equals, for anyone on the Right to take notice their outburst has to cross a line that is damaging for conservatism in general -- particularly in an election year.

A recent example: Lard Boy's public ridicule of a young woman as a slut and a prostitute, over her appearance before Congress on the subject of contraception. After enough heavy-hitters on the Right strongly hinted he'd stepped over a line, El Fathead reluctantly made a self-justifying half-apology -- as good as you'll get from a pathetic bully like Rush.

Trent Lott Flies The Bonny Blue Flag

But an example more to the point is then-Senator Trent Lott's fulsome praise of Strom Thurmond at his 100th birthday party in 2002: "When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him," Said Trent. "We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over the years, either".

Thurmond had run for president in 1948 as a 'Dixiecrat', expousing what Wikipedia notes as "an explicit States' Rights platform that challenged the Civil Rights Movement and later, the Civil Rights Act as illegally overturning the Separation of powers under the United States Constitution." In other words, Antebellum 'Southern values'.

In the appropriate storm of criticism that followed, Lott was forced to resign as Majority Leader of the Senate in 2003, and blamed the evil nasty Intertubes bloggers for keeping the story alive (Lott resigned from the Senate in 2007, and opened a lobbying firm a block from the Senate offices).

Missy Laura Talks To The Nation

On August 10, 2010, Laura Schlessenger, right-wing radio commentator "Doctor Laura", had an exchange with a Black woman who had called in to her syndicated program to speak about a personal issue: Occasional racial slurs her husband (who is Caucasian) and his friends would make in front of her.

CALLER: I'm having an issue with my husband where I'm starting to grow very resentful of him. I'm black, and he's white. We've been around some of his friends and family members who start making racist comments as if I'm not there or if I'm not black. And my husband ignores those comments, and it hurts my feelings. And he acts like --

SCHLESSINGER: Well, can you give me an example of a racist comment? 'Cause sometimes people are hypersensitive. So tell me what's -- give me two good examples of racist comments.

CALLER: OK. Last night -- good example -- we had a neighbor come over, and this neighbor -- when every time he comes over, it's always a black comment. It's, "Oh, well, how do you black people like doing this?" And, "Do black people really like doing that?" And for a long time, I would ignore it. But last night, I got to the point where it --

SCHLESSINGER: I don't think that's racist.

CALLER: Well, the stereotype --

SCHLESSINGER: I don't think that's racist. No, I think that --

CALLER: [unintelligible]

SCHLESSINGER: No, no, no. I think that's -- well, listen, without giving much thought, a lot of blacks voted for Obama simply 'cause he was half-black. Didn't matter what he was gonna do in office, it was a black thing. You gotta know that. That's not a surprise. Not everything that somebody says -- we had friends over the other day; we got about 35 people here -- the guys who were gonna start playing basketball. I was going to go out and play basketball. My bodyguard and my dear friend is a black man. And I said, "White men can't jump; I want you on my team." That was racist? That was funny.

CALLER: How about the N-word? So, the N-word's been thrown around --

SCHLESSINGER: Black guys use it all the time. Turn on HBO, listen to a black comic, and all you hear is n----r, n----r, n----r.

CALLER: That isn't --

SCHLESSINGER: I don't get it. If anybody without enough melanin says it, it's a horrible thing; but when black people say it, it's affectionate. It's very confusing. Don't hang up, I want to talk to you some more. Don't go away.

I'm Dr. Laura Schlessinger. I'll be right back.

It continued in the same vein after "Doctor Laura" returned. "Yeah," Frau Schlessenger said; "We've got a black man as president, and we have more complaining about racism than ever. I mean, I think that's hilarious". When the caller disagreed, the good doctor responded, "[You've] got a chip on your shoulder. Can't do much about that."

Frau Schlessenger spent much of the next week trying to defend herself on air, and on August 17, announced on Larry King Live that she was leaving commercial AM radio, moving to subscription-only Sirrus to continue her special brand of joy without "some special interest group deciding this is a time to silence a voice of dissent."

Old School Dog-Whistle

Derbyshire is originally British, a naturalized American citizen; well-educated; his wife is Asian, and his sons are mixed-race Amerasians. You'd think he knew exactlywhat was about to happen as he clicked "Send" to upload his article to 'Takimag', and it did: The National Review terminated Derbyshire; the NROnline's editor, Rich Lowry, posted:

[Derbyshire's] latest provocation, in a webzine, lurches from the politically incorrect to the nasty and indefensible. We never would have published it, but the main reason that people noticed it is that it is by a National Review writer. Derb is effectively using our name to get more oxygen for views with which we’d never associate ourselves otherwise. So there has to be a parting of the ways.

(I so like Lowry's use of the nickname, "Derb"; it smacks of Groton or Andover, of lacrosse or crew at Yale. Just kind of tone the NR likes to have amongst its own; so "Our Crowd".)

I don't agree with Lowry that Derbyshire's views are such that the NR "would never associate ourselves otherwise". I believe the Right perpetuates racist perspectives, the common assumptions that Derbyshire is so willing to teach his children -- but assumptions only admitted to quietly, between the "right sort" of people.

One Cardinal rule of the wingnut tribe is not to embarrass the Right by admitting to its true shared values, particularly about how icky Blacks and The Poor are (they're so -- well, so Black, and so poor). Derbyshire's irretrievable sin was to say so, openly and in public.

But in calling him 'Derb' (both affectionate and dismissive at once), Lowry showed he didn't repudiate an old friend and member of his class; only that he was uncomfortable with Derb's statements. Lowry will meet Ol' Derb, buy him a drink and say, "What were you thinking, Derb? I mean, we all know about 'Those People'; but you had to go and say it. I had to cut you from the NR; you didn't really give me a choice, old man."

(Think this is a stretch? Possibly. But I doubt it.)

The Right is eager to play the race card with a sitting Black President, but they have to do it through innuendo, metaphors, verbal allusions. I understand that I'm offering no examples, but I believe Lowry and people like him on the Right tacitly support Derbyshire's "views" concerning the comparative intelligence, aggression and "otherness" of Blacks in America. And, so they can't be accused of overt racism, they'll just make oblique references. They'll use the dog whistle.

Race is an issue in America. There's been a tremendous amount of racist garbage, blog posts and comments, crudely-drawn cartoons, aimed not at Obama's policies but at his race (One of the first comments I heard after the 2008 election from someone at work was, "Guess we can't call it the 'White House' anymore!").

And Right blogostan has never stopped baying about the 'conspiracy' around the legitimacy of his birth certificate. Breitbart's last super-secret, stop-the-presses video was about Obama giving someone a hug -- proof of his radicalism, that he is (hint, hint) a Black man first and an American second.

You can barely hear the National Anthem any longer for all the dog-whistling on the Right that's been going on since 2008. And none of the Good Ole Boys repudiates it; I see Sessions, Haley Barbour, and Saxby Chambliss (who crawled into office by calling a triple-amputee Vietnam veteran a traitor) whining on television and want to puke. People like this are a shame on my country.

We're a badly polarized society -- possibly more so than at any time since The Great Depression, certainly since 1965 -- and at a time when we can least afford to be so divided. Asshats like Derbyshire (aber natürlich, only for the purest of reasons) have pushed and escalated our society's divisions and put us at each others' throats. They'd like to keep us there.

Race is an issue in America. Electing Barack Obama as president didn't solve it. I'm not happy with Obama as a president, or a Democrat -- but it would never cross my mind to believe his public policies or decision-making are the product of his being Black.

The Right, on the other hand, seems to think that is the case -- and while Derbyshire will be publicly repudiated by conservatives for his remarks, many of those same people on the Right will attempt to perform a quiet, virtual lynching as they attempt to 'save' America from ... the Justice in Equality, I guess.

Auf Nicht Wiedersehen, Derbyshire, you Lumpenhund nutter.

---

( * "Kulturschande" Is more than just bringing shame upon one's culture, because the concept in German of Kultur encompasses much more than that. But, trust me; it's pejorative.)

---

The Collect Call Of Chtulu

Lil' Michele Continues Channeling Chtulu: Ia! Ia Ftagn Iowa !!!!
(Is It Just Me, Or Does She Look Like Cameron Diaz?)

As Evan McMorris-Santoro noted in TPM this morning, the collapse of the Crazy Lady Pain Train For Aremica Campaign beneath the weight of its own irrelevance is nearly complete.

On Wednesday, Bachmann took time off the campaign trail to accuse Ron Paul of bribing her Iowa chair into switching teams. State Sen. Kent Sorenson (R) publicly flipped to the Ron Paul campaign in a surprise announcement at a Paul event Wednesday night...

Lost in the back and forth is the news, of course, that Bachmann lost her Iowa campaign chair just days before the caucuses. And that follows news that a pro-Bachmann Super PAC switched allegiances to Mitt Romney the other day.

And that comes after the story of a leader of the base Bachmann has courted so closely — the Iowa evangelical vote — asking her to step aside. And that’s just Iowa.

It would be truly amazing, watching the Rethug party eat itself, if the collateral damage to the rest of us wasn't potentially so severe. Their front-runner at the moment is a dwarfish paranoid; then Mitzy; and then that morally-compromised, overly-intellectual Guy. Then Le Gouvernour Placard Perry, who will say anything to be elected; and finally, Grand TurtleBear Michele Bachmann of the Church of Crazy Lady™.


Obligatory Cute Small Animal Photo In Middle Of Blog Rant

I will be the first to say that Michele is hot. Hot, hot, hot. I'd do a weekend with her in an apartment above a video store in downtown Bangkok in a heartbeat -- plenty of up-close, uh, 'quality time', and I'd be cooking on a hibachi on the balcony.

But, aber natürlich, this assumes that her head would have to be in an exceptionally different place than it is today. It's just as true that Michele is deranged, possibly Botoxed to the gills; almost certifiably crazy -- but, Hot. So, I'm holding off on buying that pair of tickets on Air Thailand.

And, if you're a candidate for the Rethug nomination as presidential candidate, and the polls have you at the bottom of a pack of fools like Paul, Perry, Mitzy and The Newt and Little Ricky... that's really saying something, isn't it?

In South Carolina, Bachmann’s campaign recently asked for and then touted the endorsement of a progressive Democratic leader who only wants Bachmann to be the nominee because it would guarantee a second term for President Obama.

Well, The End is coming soon. I hear the sound, far-off, like the wet slapping of tentacles against rocks by the sea -- and it sounds like the Call Of Chtulu. In fact, it sounds remarkably like the voice of Ron Paul.

Meanwhile: Auf nicht wiedersehen, Michele, you nutter.

---

Sale Away

As reported by Andy Newbold at Media Matters, Glenny Beck, former astrologer to the Stars, has shaken his 8-Ball Of The Future once again, and seen the triangular fortune All signs point to you're in overtime bob up in the little window. On today's broadcast of his syndicated radio show (all he has, after being, uh, "let go" by Little Rupert), Beck spoke of himself in near-biblical terms:

On his radio show today, Beck told his audience that he doesn't know why he has "been given the gift, the blessing, or the curse of being able to see slightly over the horizon." He went on to say that this "is not something that I take lightly" but that he is "grateful" for this ability. As if it wasn't obvious enough that Beck was declaring himself a prophet, Beck listed examples of his visions that have come true.

"I don't tell you these things [Beck said] -- and I don't have to say this to you -- I don't tell you these things because I am going to make money. I don't tell you these things for any other reason other than I believe them with everything in me... And it is my responsibility, just like it is your responsibility when you know something, to say something."

I know a lot of things, for a Dog, but I have the sense not to bark about them all, because sometimes I am wrong. Humor, not necessarily in the best of taste, is my shtick.

I'm not a foreign policy wonk or a financial analyst (not here, anyway); I'm not a cultural critic or prognosticator of the future. I don't believe what I have to say is earth-shaking or even particularly special. I'm enjoying myself when I make Teh Funny, and I've succeeded when it makes the four or five people who read these things laugh. I'm only in it for the Entropy, folks.

Glenny, on the other hand, does think he has earth-shaking and very serious things to say. In fact, he appears to believe he's exactly what he's occasionally alluded to in nearly three years of appearances on Little Rupert's Fox -- divinely inspired, a clarion for the nation to lead them to a bright future. A golden future, you might say (heh). In short, A Prophet For Our Times.

And he's truly proven that he can see more clearly, and farther, than mortal man with unaided vision. Hasn't he? Newbold went on to list some of Glenny's prior predictions, all of which have so too come true:

• Beck floated August 22, 2006, as a possible date for Armageddon;
• America's "Weimar moment" is coming on November 3, 2009;
• Protests scheduled for February 26, 2011, may lead to global unrest;
• March 31, 2011, might be Day One of the new Islamic order in the United States;
• Beck predicted the perfect storm was arriving (eight separate times)
• Beck has said the "Archduke Ferdinand Moment" may be here (seven separate times)
• In October 2010, Beck said there was a "77 percent chance of a [stock market] crash within the next 30 days," the second time he had predicted such a crash within a couple of months.

Think about it: There are very few public crazies on the Left. Only on the Right do you find people who combine the faith of an Erich-Fromm-style True Believer with an amazing sensitivity to personal criticism, and the serious desperation of a Kirby door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman -- Coulter, Malkin; Mikey Wiener, Lard Boy; Bill Kristol, Davy Brooks; Krauthammer!; the list is long. When their worldview is seriously challenged, when their credentials as serious Wingnuts are put in question, they begin to melt down.

Sometimes, they have enough sense to muzzle their desire to spew Crazy all over everything -- but sometimes, they just can't help themselves, because the Crazy is integral to their shtick. As is the case with Beck.

So, with his departure from Fox looming, Glenny joins the crowd of conservative social critics scheming for just five more minutes on the stage of world recognition to prove to themselves (since that is what this is all about) that they are too relevant, before their careers head for the remainder sale bin along with the Elizabeth Gilbert self-help videos and selections from Oprah's book club.

Auf nicht Wiedersehen, already, Glenny; you nutter.

---

Michele Bachmann Hears The Call Of Chtulu

Wingnut Sweetheart™ No. 2 Gets Closer To Declaring A Run For The Presidency

As reported by TPM, Representative Michele Bachmann (R - Delusional) went on public television in Iowa last week, and when asked about her Xtian faith, replied [Paragraphed For, Uh, Clarity, Of A Kind]:

Bachmann: Well, every decision that I make I pray about as does my husband and I can tell you, yes, I've had that calling and that tugging on my heart that this is the right thing to do and because it's such a momentous decision, not only for myself, my husband and our 28 children, it is a momentous decision what ideas will I bring to bear? What are the resources that I have to marshal in terms of people, assets, the message and also the finances, the amount of time this will take, what this will mean for the nation. Am I the right person for the job?

Every decision and every endeavor my husband and I have made we think it through, we're not rash people. We make a plan because we want to succeed, we don't want to fail and so we've been very deliberative in this process and that's why we're now coming to the culmination and next month, as I announced last night, I'll make that decision right here in Waterloo [Iowa] and the world will know.

Twenty-eight children? Well... you see, this is Teabagger logic, where numbers don't really mean anything; they're just numbers after all, and what counts is faith. And heart, and the spirit of America, and how you "feel" about things, and whether you believe in a particular vision of America through evangelical fundamentalist Xtian glasses -- if you're not an evangelical, that might be a difficult perspective to swallow.

Bachmann gets to "28 children" by taking the five children she has actually given birth to, and adding in 23 different foster children, who all lived in her home for some period of time over a span of many years but were not raised to adulthood by her and Mister Bachmann. But this is the kind of logic Michele has used throughout her political career -- a little half-truth, and a pinch of wishes, and plenty of illogical mean-spiritedness.

You need to understand that Grand TurtleBear Bachmann has done this "Call Of Chtulu" routine before: As TPM reports, "... in 2006, when she was a state senator running for an open U.S. House seat, she famously told a mega-church audience that she had communicated with God, receiving through fasting and prayer the command to run":

And in the midst of that calling, God then called me to run for the United States Congress. And I thought, what in the world would that be for? And my husband said "You need to do this." And I wasn't so sure. And we took three days, and we fasted and we prayed. And we said "Lord, is this what you want? Is this Your will?" And after -- along about the afternoon of day two -- He made that calling sure. And it's been now 22 months that I've been running for United States Congress. Who in their right mind would spend two years to run for a job that lasts for two years? You'd have to be absolutely a fool to do that. You are now looking at a fool for Christ. This is a fool for Christ.

Get the good Caramel popcorn before you watch how this plays out. Treat yourself. Only, watch carefully what kind of utterly insane, irrational and totally faith-based crazy falls out of her mouth, and how the Media (The Little Rupert Channel in particular) plays it. Will they show Michele for the Raving Loon © she is, or as part of an attempt to court a new audience of Xtian believers, will they treat her seriously?

Enjoy the popcorn, anyway.

---

Glenny's Ready For His Close-Up, Mr. Ailes

Strangely Long Trip, Its Been, Yes

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I am turnin' into a friggin' televangelist.
--Little Glenn Beck, Four Years Old, 2010

---

It was announced today that Little Glenn Beck, who speaks for god and Goldline, will be leaving Fox's "Glenn Beck" for more multitudinous media outlets -- some with Fox, some not -- which will allow Glenn Beck to be more.... well; more of what he has shown himself to be.

It's amazing, isn't it? And, predictable, too: Little Glenny, less than a year ago the organizer and headliner of a Teabagger rally at the Lincoln Memorial (really, just an extension of his Poxed Network show); and now, Little Rupert and his Blimpy employee, Roger Ailes, have decided to part ways with The pudgy Beck Man.

What happened? Glenny misjudged the reality around him -- Er hat uns vermessen: (A)He believed his own press; and (B)Didn't understand that he was working in the entertainment business.

When Glenny was pulling in viewers, and before he began sounding like Robert Anton Wilson on steroids, Little Rupert and Roger The Dodger loved him. When his audience shrank, and advertisers (not eager to host a man who suggested that a Holocaust survivor had lived by being an opportunistic collaborator of the nazis, for example) dropped away, Glenny wasn't useful to Little Rupert any longer.

Big Roger also wasn't willing to treat him like a divinely-inspired diva -- which made Glenny sad, because aber natürlich it says in the bible, somewhere, that people are supposed to be nice to him and give him treats and listen with rapt attention to whatever pours out of his mouth.

---

[Obama] has a deep-seated hatred for white people, or white culture; I don't know what it is with this guy...
--Little Glenn Beck, 2009

---

The New York Times noted: "Mr. Beck is a hugely popular figure on Fox News, averaging 2.2 million viewers each weekday, though his ratings have fallen somewhat in the last year. He is beloved by his fans for speaking out against what he sees as threats from progressives, socialists and people he deems 'radicals.' His opponents — and there are many — condemn him for his conspiratorial views and apocalyptic predictions."

---

That -- my little girl would -- would be forced to die if this [i.e., Healtcare legislation] passes -- (Breaks down crying)
--Little Glenn Beck, 2009 (?)

---

What Digby Said:

Beck was the king of the Tea Party and the Powers That Be no longer find him useful. They need to tame their nutballs before 2012. Luckily for them, their nutballs are easily led, so it's probably not as much of a challenge as one might think.

Adieu,Beck: Your influence was great even if short lived. You brainwashed millions and made a fortune doing it. You are an All American success story.

What will he do now? Beck has carved out a niche for himself in the fringe landscape (only, as Little Rupert's fantasy machine keeps spewing misinformation into the world, that 'fringe' has slowly become the Right's 'mainstream'). He's followed the same business model as Lard Boy, O'Reilly, Mikey Weiner and Little Annie The Horse's Fanny. For a while, he will keep sucking up money on the Evangelical-Right Gravy Train.

He will continue his radio and teevee additions to the public vomitorium -- but like all has-beens, there's a point at which fewer and fewer people will tune in; while Glenny will always be respected by most Wingnuts, they'll want to see and hear the next big Right-Wing Commentator, and Glenny will have to make do as an "elder statesman" of the Right.

I predict an eventual faux run for political office a la Sarah Palin (except, there is that rumor which won't go away...), in a pathetic attempt to grab the limelight and show everyone: I am big -- it's the Media that got small!!

If he actually ran, it would end in defeat -- but he could keep people in suspense by founding a PAC, making coy remarks to the media; even a speech or two. That would keep the dollars rolling in -- because in the end, that's the point.

For the Little Sarahs, the Little Annies, and Lard Boys and Little Glennys of the world, it's all about being the center of attention; about being someone, and using their influence to settle personal scores -- and, about the money.

They don't believe much of what they say. Their lives and careers aren't any more nuanced or complex. They really are that pathetically narcissistic and simple.

Auf Nicht Wiedersehen, Glenny, you Nutter.

---

Where The Hot Wind Blows

Chunks

Steve Benen, who does the column, 'Political Animal' at The Washington Monthly, noted on Tuesday that "Glenn Beck has lost about a third of his audience, which is a pretty significant drop, and may very well lead the deranged media personality to think of ways to bring viewers back."

One way, for example, may be for Beck to be even more creative when sharing crazy visions of global affairs. Yesterday, the strange man did his best to explain events in Egypt with a take that really has to be seen to be believed.

And you can see it, right here:



"I believe that I can make a case," Little Glenny said, "that there are three powers that you will see really emerge. One, a Muslim caliphate that controls the Mideast and parts of Europe.

"Two, China, that will control Asia, the southern half of Africa, part of the Middle East, Australia, maybe New Zealand, and God only knows what else.

"And Russia, which will control all of the old former Soviet Union bloc, plus maybe the Netherlands. I'm not really sure. But their strong arm is coming. That leaves us and South America."

Marxist Commies Are Not Like Un-Marxist Commies

Benen observed that, for Glenny, the current disparate wars and popular uprisings that appear on our big LCD teevees are "the fault of 'Marxist communists' -- as opposed to, say, Marxists and communists -- Muslims, and progressives. Indeed, Beck insisted that the events only he can see are 'coordinated.' "

While pointing to Egypt on a map of Africa, Beck told the weak-minded gullible Marks in his con game his audience, When you take the Marxists and you combine them with the radical from Islam, when you combine those forces, which is exactly -- we'll show you this week -- what is happening here, the whole world starts to implode.

Bad Teevee Waves Made Me Do This

Glenny reminds me of a story I heard from someone raised in the Bay Area, years ago: in the late 1950's or early 1960's, there was a local children's television show built around a host who made simple sock puppets (One was a Beatnik, wearing a small beret, who spouted gentle nonsense poetry) and used them in a Punch-and-Judy style, box-shaped Proscenium stage. The show was very popular with the kids.

One day, a piece of black electrician's tape appeared, running diagonally across one corner of the archway of the stage. The host used his puppets to perform their skits; nothing seemed out of place. Then, the next day, another piece of black tape appeared, running diagonally beside the first.

Over the next week or so (the person relating the story recalled), more pieces of tape appeared. At the same time, very slowly, the host began using his puppets to make nasty comments about Mrs. Host, and perform skits which mentioned things like alimony, and infidelity -- which, of course, mystified the children.

Finally, after a couple of days of this, pieces of electrician's tape had covered the upper half of the puppet stage. The Beatnik puppet became stuck in the tape, and began thrashing wildly; "I'm caught in the teevee waves, man! Caught in the teevee waves!"

The channel cut to a cartoon. Then another, and another, until the time slot for the host's puppet show had ended. The host was apparently fired, and the show (my friend recalled) was canceled and never returned to the air.

Glenny's End

That's what I expect from Glenny -- an on-air meltdown. Except Little Rupert will continue to treat his on-air babbling as if he were Howard Beale, in the film Network ("Are they yelling in Chicago, Fred?").

In any rational culture, Glenny would be fired for what he's already vomited over the airwaves. However, here in The Land Of The Brave and the Home Of The Hip, he's given even more of the spotlight. What does that tell you?

At Washington Monthly, a commenter at Benen's site, ComradeAnon, drew the correct inference from watching Little Glenny's spiel, and asked the obvious question: "How many gold coins are we required to buy?"

---

Little Annie: Time's Almost Up

Little Annie Coulter, Bearer Of Light And Reason

Ann Coulter has been engaged (by her own count, in 2005) at least three times over the past twenty or so years (not counting the stalking by the sort of obsessives who like an 'Ilse, She-Wolf Of The SS' type of woman. In each case, the Manchild she bonded with was able to recognize that, after mating, Coulter would paralyze them and lay her eggs in their still-living flesh. They left; so sad, but predictable.

She's been a buzzing, insectile noise on the American cultural scene for almost twenty years. Her shtick is predictable, too: Show up, wherever they'll have her; then, say something so offensive that even her hosts are taken aback; and thereby guaranteeing some buzzing and chittering in the media about that terrible person Ann Coulter... until the next time she does it. It's a merry-go-round of insult and excess that has made her a good deal of money.


Billy And Annie: Kamaraden Of The Rethug Reichskanzeleri

She frequently makes incendiary, insulting references about - well, anyone she wants to: Muslims, Liberals (whom she seriously believes should be tried for treason and executed (“Whenever the nation is under attack, from within or without, liberals side with the enemy... liberals are always against America," she wrote), Gays; Blacks; and anyone else who strikes her fancy at the moment. She suggested that suicide bombers should detonate a truckload of explosives outside the New York Times offices.

In a string of books (most of them making best-seller lists only due to a standard tactic: Bulk purchases, by Right-wing organizations, who then have to sell them to secondhand bookstores as remaindered) and a continuing column -- like Lard Boy and Little Mikey Weiner do on radio -- Coulter vomits out an unending tirade of hatred and insult.

Apparently, she enjoys it. When confronted about what she's said, or written, Coulter claims that she was only being 'funny', that she is really the victim -- of not being "politically correct" -- and simply misunderstood.

However, she hasn't been too successful with her shtick lately. Unless the Lumpen Right do actually take over, her fifteen minutes may be up, because the country appears to have little time to notice Annie's antics, as they're more concerned about keeping their jobs, feeding their children, not having to live out of their cars; you know -- what's now the usual for most of us.

And even if the Teabaggers eventually do run the country into the ground -- a proud, rising, angry Tea Party nation doesn't want overly-intellectual, leggy blondes as poster girls and leaders. They want evangelical, can-do optimistic, faux-frontier types... like Little Sarah Palin, Plain 'n Tall: She wouldn't be caught dead in a roomful of Those Whom Sin Against Man And Nature.


A Proud, Rising Teabagger America Is Conway Twitty's America

Even so, last night at HomoCon, the convention for the gay conservatives, Coulter was one of the featured speakers (And, addressing a roomfull of "them" didn't sit well with other Rethugs). True to form, she stood up and told them (as reported by Megan Carpentier of TPM Media), ' "Marriage is not a civil right. You're not black." It was part of a larger argument on which she later elaborated, telling the crowd that the 14th Amendment only applies to African-Americans and that it does not, in fact, apply to women, LGBT people or other minorities."

(A curious note: One of Coulter's ex-fiancees, conservative talentless hack writer Dinesh D’Souza (author of "The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11"), once penned at article in 1981 while at college, outing his campus' gay alliance leadership -- most of whom hadn't come out of the closet even to their families. Imagine the fun and hilarity that ensued from that. Currently, Little Dinesh debates famous Liberals and Agnostics about the existence of god, and god's morality, since Little Dinesh is a righteous xtian.)

Coulter also suggested that the conservative gay community should drop support of any equality-of-marriage issue, and join forces with those who oppose abortion, because "As soon as they find the gay gene, you know who's getting aborted."

(Coulter neglected to mention that it is conservative evangelical christians, and conservative Catholics, who are the primary opponents of abortion -- and who believe homosexuality is a sin [the Old Testament indicates is punishable by death] and that the lesbians and gays who were listening to Coulter are damned, living a lifestyle "against god and natural law", predators of children; and worse. I'm sure they'll jump at the opportunity to join forces with America's Taliban.)


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...in addition to her comments about civil rights [Carpentier reported], she also accused single parents of breeding muggers and blamed the decline in marriage in the African-American community on welfare, "the subsidization of single parenting" and overly liberal child support laws. Coulter's comments about civil rights being "only for the blacks" rubbed many people the wrong way as well.

However, Coulter made an ironic joke about oppression, and the amount of money in the gay community -- compared to other minority communities. "Blacks must be looking at the gays saying, 'Why can't we be oppressed like that?'" Coulter quipped, and the comment "garnered plenty of laughs from the well-heeled crowd."


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Yeah... I bet people living in Bedford-Sty, the South Bronx; Detroit; Cleveland; Baltimore; Central L.A. and the Oakland Flats, would all get a chuckle, too, out of a humorous comparison between the experience of a bunch of predominantly white and rich people, with their experience of being Black in America.

To be discriminated against and made to feel shameful, because of who you are, hurts -- but African-Americans aren't in a Closet about who they are. It's not possible. And most of the people in the HomoCon crowd could have no concept of what discrimination because of the color of your skin feels like... which made Coulter's joke a bitter, self-serving, throwaway line.

In the comments section following Carpentier's TPM article, someone else noted (changes only made for proper usage and punctuationt) that they weren't sure they could expect any other sort of performance from Annie,

... but Ms. Coulter is no fool and she clerked for a Supreme Court Justice no less; she knows very well that the 14th Amendment applies not just to black Americans but to a whole host of other classes, including classifications of gender and alienage. It is true that the Supreme Court has not yet recognized homosexuals as a protected class for 14th Amendment purposes, but it is obscenely disingenuous for Ms. Coulter to assert the 14th amendment only protects black Americans. Equal protection means equal protection - the language of the Amendment itself has no qualifiers.

So -- Little Annie will have spent all this time being someone who is publicly (and, according to some who've commented to the media, privately) angry, insulting; done everything to live up to the persona of outrageousness she's created. She'll continue the same pattern: Making execrable comments, grabbing media attention in Left and Right Bolgistan, again, for a while; then, yet another book contract, followed by a speaking tour; and after a time, that will lead to yet more execrable comments...

That will go on for a few more years (she's still a fairly fit, if anorexic, fifty). I don't think she can compete with the Sarah Palins -- Coulter's not an evangelical; she's not working-class. She's not a Populist Wingnut -- she's worked to be one of the pampered, wingnut Elite, and I don't believe that's who is lining up to 'lead' the Teabaggers. Glenn Beck comes off as a The Really Smart Guy Next Door Who Hearts Jesus, and cries, and gets big ratings Market Share -- and that's what those manipulating the Rising New Right want.

Annie comes off as Too Smart -- the cool blonde in High School who would never even look at a full-of-the-lord (or something) Regular Guy. Annie doesn't have Regular Girl-next-door, Xtian-pinup appeal like Little Sarah... and she knows it. Coulter will always have some niche on the Right -- but the new mainstream being courted is vibrantly, decisively evangelical, fundamentalist, and intolerant in a way only True Believers can be.

As her influence in the Rightist community fades, Coulter will no longer be what she labored to become -- a "marketable commodity". She will age. Without the adrenaline high of notoriety, the constant reaffirmation that she is someone, what will she fall back on? Most people confuse their true selves with some adopted persona; people who have "made it" have agents, publicists, secretaries -- a whole structure to support the false notions celebrities create about themselves.

As a result, Coulter may not be able to relate to others outside that created self, or to establish relationships of any real intimacy -- and so gets to spend her declining years as a sad, older parody of someone who used to be famous for a while.

If I were Annie, and knew that "Obscenely Disingenuous" could be my epitaph, I'd work overtime to make sure that never came true.

But I'm only a Dog -- and, oddly, I seem to know better than Annie.

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UPDATE (10/9/10): Well, it's nice to be agreed with, even in part.

She calls herself "the right-wing Judy Garland", now.

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