Category Archives: Things that Piss Me off from The NY Times

Bialystock, O’Donnell and Bloom

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Perennial failed Delaware senate candidate, Christine O’Donnell, is now facing a federal investigation to determine if she used campaign contributions to pay off personal expenses.

The investigation should come as no surprise.  Questions about her finances and use of previous campaign funds were raised during last fall’s run.  O’Donnell has a shaky financial history, including filing for bankruptcy. The 41 year-old, not only had never won a general election, but also did not have much of an employment record.  Other than her infamous long-ago guest television appearances as a “youth abstinence advocate”, her services as a pundit were not often called upon.

But what if O’Donnell is really smarter than we all could have imagined?  What if she not only never had any intention of winning, but didn’t even want to come close?

And what if the mastermind behind her scheme was not some notorious Republican strategist?  Perhaps she came up with the plan herself, inspired not by the writings of Sun Tzu, but by the work of one Melvin Kaminsky, better known to the world as Mel Brooks.

Imagine O’Donnell, sitting around her modest home sometime in 2009.  She’s waiting for the phone to ring, hoping Bill Maher will finally return her calls and invite her on his HBO show, which would at least give her an appearance fee and some exposure.   She’s ignoring the umpteenth phone message left by her father, telling her once again it’s not too late to enroll in clown-college and learn an honest trade.  She goes through her bills, while absently flipping the channels and leaves on some old movie.  It’ll only be days before she loses even her basic cable.

The movie has just started.  She’s seen it before, and is only half-watching. The down-on-his-heels producer is playing sexy games with some old lady.

The whole scene reminds Christine of the Tea-Partiers, whom she has lately been trying to cultivate.  None of them under eighty!  Yeech.

Now the accountant is auditing the books, asking the producer about some discrepancy.  The producer, points out that the show lost money anyway, so what does it matter?

“Been there, honey,” Christine says aloud, remembering how bad things had gotten in 2008.

And suddenly there’s a spark in the accountant’s eye, and he mentions that under the right circumstances a man could make more money with a flop . . .

An idea pops into Christine head.  She had started out as an acting major and had long been aware that politics is theater.

Re-energized she thinks about an office she probably wouldn’t win.  It’s obvious.  The senate seat she’s lost twice before!

“You can do this, Christine!” She tells herself.

The beauty of it is she doesn’t even have to win the primary. If she can paint Mike Castle as an elitist, she should still be able to bring in the bucks for a write-in with the support of enough old ladies and grumpy old men.   She’ll just have to “dabble into” Tea Party Land for a while.  And like the movie, the worse she does in the election, the less likely anyone is to look into where the money went.

She sets things in motion — hires inexperienced staff, manages to alienate even previous conservative supporters, avoids the press or messes up when interviewed — and yet in a surprise upset, she wins the primary.  While she’s still a long-shot, things are getting scary.  She’s not in it, to win it.

But then her old secret-crush, Bill Maher comes through with those long ago guest appearances, releasing them to youtube where they go viral.

“What a moron, I was!” Christine mumbles, watching a clip.  She laughs at her own inanity.  Meantime the dollars keep rolling in, and the best part is Bill Maher’s new found desire for her.

“Who’s sorry now, bi-atch?” she says watching him plead for her to make an appearance on his show — a show she can finally afford to watch on HBO.

She thinks of a line from the movie that inspired her candidacy, “Flaunt it baby! Flaunt it.” She buys herself new clothes — mostly designer suits like the kind Sarah Palin bought with RNC funds, even gets herself designer eye-glasses though she still has perfect vision.  Then she shops for a condo.

Now, even Rove is a reluctant supporter.  They can’t stop talking about her on MSBNC where Pat Buchanan enthusiastically outlines a scenario that involves the libtards overselling the old anti-masturbation rants, while Tea-Party fever propels her into the Senate.

She nearly panics.  Winning the election would mean actually having to work as a senator, plus all those contributors would be expecting her to do something for the money.  It would be worse than the old days, where a guy would buy you dinner and expect S-E-X.  And if the Dems see her as a real threat, they’re more likely to investigate.

So she decides she has to take it a step further, and she comes up with the “I am not a witch,” commercial.  Comedy gold!

“Those fools,” Christine says to herself while watching an actress imitating her on Saturday Night Life.  “You can’t parody a parody!” Then she becomes aware of what her left hand is doing while her right is holding the remote. She turns off the set and takes a cold shower.

Election night comes off without a hitch.  No need for a recount!  Her concession is perfect.  She wonders if she just should have stuck with acting all along.  Everyone said she was a real Sally Fields-type and could have done well.

She realizes she’s taking a risk.  In the movie, they were going to take the money and run off to Brazil, but she loves her country too darn much to leave.  Besides she doesn’t even know how to speak Brazilian, and any day Fox will call and offer her a show.  If she gets a Fox contract, then even if the feds come after her, she can pay back the campaign money with change to spare.   Hadn’t Palin proved that losing could legally be so much more lucrative than winning?

But the call from Fox never comes.

“That damn Rove.  What a hater!”  It makes her cry, realizing her dreams of shopping with Sarah or maybe even babysitting her kids will never come to pass.

Disgruntled campaign staffers are talking, and the feds are moving in.  Still, she can’t help giggling as she recalls  how they attempted to blow up the theater in that movie. She knows violence is not the answer, and decides instead to issue a press release blaming Joe Biden.  Though she hopes her fellow Tea-Partiers will come to her aide, in her heart, she fears the jig is up.

“That wasn’t supposed to happen,” Christine laments. “I picked a seat I couldn’t win, ran the worst campaign, and even lost as planned!  Where did I go right?”

Another Letter from America

Politics and Culture, Things that Piss Me off from The NY Times, ,

Dear Rest of the World,

I’ll keep this one short. In your blogs and editorials please remember that the wingnut Pastor of Hate with the Monty Python name has a tiny trailer-park church that no one had heard of till a couple of weeks ago. He still has a tiny church, though no doubt countless angry rubes have been filling its coffers since he became famous on the internets for threatening to burn a bunch of books that promote the idea that someone else’s imaginary best friend is better than his imaginary best friend.

This guy isn’t even Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell. He represents at most a few dozen people or did until the media made him a sensation and the state department started to fret about his antics becoming a recruiting poster for jihad. As if the jihadees couldn’t make enough hay out of the continuing presence of American troops in Iraq, the US support for a corrupt unpopular government in Afghanistan, the stealth bombings in Pakistan, the continued support for the blockade in Gaza, etc.

The pastor does not represent America. He has never been elected to any office. He is a grifter whose past includes a criminal conviction for insider trading and who like many has found a great way to combine fear and God to create a nice little revenue stream.

Even the usual suspects on the right — Rush Limbaugh, Alan Keyes, Sarah Palin have denounced him though of course their followers haven’t. That was inevitable. An old story of demagogues firing up the crowd only to have the crowd turn on them, though in Sarah’s case I suspect her condemnation of the burning was pro forma, a way of saying to whatever sane people are left in the Republican party, “See, I can act like a grown-up,” while still winking to her followers and sending them the secret message, “I have to say this, but we all know my true feelings.”

We can’t stop someone from burning books even when the act is clearly meant as a provocation because our laws supporting free speech and expression are very clear about that. That doesn’t mean his actions are somehow indicative of the pulse of the country or anywhere near the sentiments of a majority of its inhabitants. When “America” went to the polls two years ago we rejected McCain and Palin in favor of something else. Obama represents us, not Pastor Mustache or the ex-governor of Alaska.

Best regards,
Marion

PS This week’s recommended reading for any of you still trying to understand us is from the op ed pages of a newspaper not owned by Rupert Murdoch.

Letter from America — Part 1

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As America continues to decompensate (and yes I am qualified to use that word clinically thank you very much Hunter College School of Social Work), I find myself spending more and more time on facebook explaining stuff to my virtual friends who live in magical places where people are still sort of rational.

So I’ve decided to add a new category to this blog. In honor of Mr. Alistair Cooke, I will now post “Letters from America” in which I try to explain what the hell is going on here to people who may not be watching 18 hours of cable news a day while surfing the Internet.

I will be starting this work in earnest next week, but meantime I have to meditate and cleanse in preparation for the upcoming International 3 Day Novel Competition, which begins at 12:00 AM on Saturday, September 4.  It would also be a good idea if I maybe wrote an outline or something (which is legal) prior to the contest, but because they actually invited me to enter this year (as a prize for making the short list last year) and I didn’t have to shell out the fifty bucks, I am completely unmotivated.  This probably has to do with my being an American. If something is offered for free, we don’t value it. Charge us, however, and we will line up like the born suckers we are.

Meantime for those of you wondering why Sarah Palin is still in the news, who Glenn Beck is and what’s all this about mosques on hallowed ground, not to mention why a sizable number of Americans are convinced the President is a secret Muslim from Kenya, I’ll leave you with some reading material.  Last week’s New Yorker offered a brilliant article  by Jane Mayer, Covert Operations exposing the shadowy billionaire brothers Koch  who along with Rupert Murdoch are responsible for a lot the disinformation being spread around.

I also blame the Internets and cable television. It’s becoming increasingly apparent that many people no longer get even slightly credible news from the networks or newspapers or magazines, but instead rely on Fox News and right-wing blogs.  These gullible saps swallow whatever swill they are given no matter how ridiculous. Even mainstream news outlets such as CNN have taken to inviting wingnut bloggers with no legitimate credentials or expertise to lie freely on their airwaves.  A good source for anyone wishing to find out more about this is Media Matters.

Finally, Obama was wrong about at least one thing. There is not one America.  There used to be a North/South divide, but Dixie culture is spreading.  There is a racist element that has felt disenfranchised ever since the end of slavery and for whom the election of a black President — even one with a white mother who was mostly raised by his white grandparents who were both from Kansas (Kansas for Chistsakses!) has proved to be too much.  Many of these people haven’t been involved in the political process before and are being brought in by the likes of Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin.  While it’s hard to imagine that they have anywhere near the numbers to elect her president, it would be foolish to underestimate the possible damage rousing this rabble can cause. It’s already enabled a virtual shutdown of congress and there have been several incidents at mosques and other hate crimes.

This ignorant element was called the “boobswasie” by H.L. Mencken, an American journalist best remembered today for his quip that “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people” — which I believe Palin may be adopting as her campaign slogan.  As a journalist, he covered the Scopes Monkey Trial, the first time that the teaching of evolution was on trial.  The trial was a pivotal event in American history because Clarence Darrow defended Scopes and Williams Jennings Bryan took the prosecutions’ role.  Evolution lost by the way, but Scopes got off on a technicality.  Years later there was a play dramatizing the trial and later a well known film. Inherit the Wind. Gene Kelly played the Mencken like character in the movie.  It’s more than a bit dated, but I’d recommend it to anyone trying to a handle on the current situation.  Here’s a clip:

Al Qaeda Determined to Attack US Through Right Wing Sleeper Cell Plot

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You all do realize that Rick Scott, Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin and Rudy Giuliani are all sleeper agents working on the orders of Al Queda as part of a plot to stir up incidents against Muslims in the US leading to both internal dissent and external condemnation, right?  By using highly placed Al Queda “assets” like Palin and Gingrich, they were able to draw out the President, forcing him to make a (mild) statement defending the constitutional right to build a community center in lower-Manhattan. Once Obama went on record about the subject, they moved to step two, distorting his remarks and reframing it as “Obama’s Mosque,” while dropping not so subtle  reminders about the President’s “exotic” background. This has further stirred up Red State hate and could lead to their ultimate goal — assassination and  suspension of ALL constitutional rights.

This deal with the devil was predicted in the original film version of The Manchurian Candidate when Angela Lansberry finally explains to her son the plot that will lead to her sides’ being “swept into the White House with “such powers that will make martial law seem like anarchy.”  That’s one way to prevent socialism and thwart the liberal agenda.  (Anyone know if Pam Geller has kids?)

Here’s the proof: