Main Contents
Archives: 'Politcally Incoherent'
21 February 2010 | 9:58 AM
Even though I’m a big fan, I hardly ever get to watch Jon Stewart on The Daily Show these days – I’m relatively sure my television only receives children’s channels. But I did happen to catch his monologue about the how overly dramatic blog pundits are, and thought it was fabulous:
Kudos to him for sprinkling some shame in this regarding on the rabid blogging left, who are almost as crazy and foaming-at-the-mouth as the rabid blogging right (I say “almost” because at least they believe in evolution). A lot is made these days about how the political discourse in Washington has become beyond uncivil, and while I agree with that, I think that the people making that charge (whether it’s in the supposed “Heartland” or in cyberspace) should take a good look in the mirror first. After all, while reasonable people can disagree, unreasonable people can only scream at one another.
Posted by Andy in Politcally Incoherent |
Comments (0)
18 February 2009 | 2:54 PM
Bristol Palin – the eldest, baby-making daughter of once and future winker-in-chief Sarah Palin – might want to watch it. After all, now that she’s gone off half-cocked about abstinence-only education and reproductive rights, she’s probably a marked woman around the family compound.
Remember, Bristol: your mom thinks it’s cool to hunt from airplanes: you’d best start running, girl, and pronto.
Posted by Andy in Politcally Incoherent |
Comments (0)
25 January 2009 | 11:23 PM
When I was a middle schooler, learning about the crafting of the Constitution in social studies, I remember one of the things which affected me the most was a painting, Howard Chandler Christy’s Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States. It’s like an American version of DaVinci’s The Last Supper, and the piece always struck me as the sort of All Star Game of American revolutionary history: why, there’s Thomas Jefferson shagging flies in left field, Ben Franklin’s behind the plate, and I’ll be damned if they didn’t get George Washington to bat cleanup! Even though it was well after-the-fact and not necessarily historically accurate, it conveyed to me the immediacy and, more importantly, the momentousness of the occasion in a way that hit really close to home. I mean, to a twelve year old, if literally every person you know of from 1770’s colonial America is gathered in one room hovering over a piece of paper, you can bet your tetherball-playing ass that it’s a pretty fucking important event.
Last week’s presidential inauguration created a similar opportunity for us to be singularly aware of an event’s significance as it was going down. These days, we don’t have to wait 170 years for someone to come along to capture the moment for us: technology means it can indelibly retain its visceral impact. The crowds were huge, sure, but what struck me most as I pored over this 1474 megapixel composite image of the event is the star power of those in attendance. Now, inaugurations generally feature the luminaries of government, both past and present, in their galleries – it’s sort of the nature of the beast. But typically the rest of the country (and, by extension, the world) has been content to watch the event on television, sometimes not even live. It’s not that the peaceful transfer of power from Harrison to Tyler to Polk (or Reagan to Bush to Clinton for that matter) isn’t important: it’s just that it’s all become rather routine, which I suppose is what our nation’s founders might’ve intended it to be. After all, a hum-drum succession generally means no coup d’état or military junta is rattling around in the captiol, so the quieter the better, right? Still, everyone knew that this inauguration was different. Do you recall the nation grinding to a halt in the same way when Jimmy Carter was sworn in? Or for George H.W. Bush’s inaugural? Of course not. Add to that the fact that today’s media has turned even the bit players of Washington’s political scene into household names, and the inaugural becomes a sort of Oscar ceremony for our nation’s capitol.
In any case, after being appropriately impressed by the size of the crowds and the pomp and circumstance of it all, I got over my patriotic pride and began scouring the image (thanks to its wicked zoom and pan ability) for a who’s who of American society. While I didn’t find any James Madisons or Alexander Hamiltons, it was striking who turned up. And so, here’s a little scavenger hunt for you, call it Obama Bingo – see if you can find:
- Dubya giving the ol’ sour-puss golf-clap.
- Poppy looking as if he’s attempting to reprise Ernest Borgnine’s role from Ice Station Zebra.
- Denzel Washington standing next to someone who appears to be Sidney Poitier, with Sean P-Diddly-Dang-Doodily Combs just behind him.
- Antonin Scalia daydreaming about new and exciting ways he can misinterpret the Constitution and trample our democracy.
- Dick Cheney looking like the lost lovechild of Jack Abramoff and Dr. Strangelove.
- Some dude in the left gallery representin’ in a Packers hat.
- Dan Quayle trying to remember if “freezing” is spelled with one “z” or two.
- Clarence Thomas nodding off, murmuring “affirmative action my ass” in his sleep.
- Hillary preparing to give her husband a look that says, “Bill, I saw you staring at Michelle Obama’s ass during the oath.”
- Jenna and Barbara Bush looking like they’re attending a funeral.
- Al Gore pondering the carbon footprint of the ceremony.
- Chief Justice Roberts wondering if anyone noticed.
- Yo Yo Ma taking a picture of the proceedings (and patting himself on the back for bringing his outdoor cello with him).
- Morgan Freeman taking things in, just a few rows deep, reverse Kangol and all.
- Aretha Franklin and her new-Lexus-ribbon hat.
- Newt Gingrich, looking as if his blood pressure is rising 10 points for every stanza in the President’s speech.
In all seriousness, it’s pretty awesome to be able to peek into this amazing moment in our history. And all seriousness aside, I’m a little pissed that I can’t find Oprah anywhere.
[Via Geekologie]
Posted by Andy in Politcally Incoherent |
Comments (2)
22 January 2009 | 4:45 PM
If this clip is to be believed, Dr. Terri Orbuch – née ” Detroit’s “Love Doctor” – has managed to wangle her way into some extremely exclusive access inside our new president’s inner-most circle:
I have to wonder what Pastor Rick Warren thinks about that?
[Via WWTDD]
Posted by Andy in Politcally Incoherent |
Comments (0)
5 January 2009 | 10:35 AM
Say what you will about Al Franken’s political acumen (and it looks like it’s Senator Franken, thank you very much), but there’s no disputing that the man can toss out a zinger like nobody’s business. To wit, I direct you to Franken bustin’ a rhetorical cap in the metaphorical ass of conservative harpie (and total waste of a C-cup) Ann Coulter:
Well played, Senator. Well played.
(And for some more recent, Franken-less Coulter stupidity, peep this.)
[Via BoingBoing]
Posted by Andy in Politcally Incoherent |
Comments (0)
15 December 2008 | 9:51 AM
So, President Bush paid a surprise visit to Baghdad over the weekend. It went exceedingly well, as you can see:
It’s good to see Dubya greeted as a liberator.
Posted by Andy in Politcally Incoherent |
Comments (0)
4 December 2008 | 12:11 PM
One of the things that’s been most disappointing to me about the aftermath of the presidential election is how little attention was paid to the passage of California’s dehumanizing Proposition 8 legislation. Thankfully, just about every funny person in Hollywood has paid attention to it. To wit:
I don’t care what the cause is: if you put Jack Black in a Jesus costume and force Darrell from The Office to don a priest’s outfit and sing, that’s guaranteed comedy gold.
Posted by Andy in Politcally Incoherent |
Comments (0)
26 November 2008 | 4:17 PM
Forgive how brief (and, I’m sure, poorly-worded) this post is, but I’m having trouble stopping myself from trembling with waves of jubilant laughter ever since I found out that Ann Coulter’s jaw has been wired shut. Go on, say that sentence aloud a few more times – it’s like eating PopRocks while drinking soda!
Yes, it’s due to some accident (actually, I believe the word is “karma”). No, it isn’t permanent. But still, is it not the best news you’ve heard all day?
So it would appear that this Thanksgiving we’ll all have something to be truly thankful for after all.
Posted by Andy in Politcally Incoherent |
Comments (1)
10 November 2008 | 12:06 PM
Now that the election’s over and the nation has been saved from the prospect of having the dude who wants to bomb Iran and the woman who thinks charging sexual assault victims for their rape-kits is acceptable as the tag team in charge of things, liberals like me can finally take some time to reflect on the campaign a bit. While the conservative pundits continue the finger-pointing game, trying to pin their loss on this quarter of the Republican party or that one, I choose to look back at the good things that came out of this election. By my measure, the best thing to come out of this campaign was Sarah Palin. Not “best” as in “fit to govern”, but rather as a cultural phenomenon and a cult of personality.
For a while now, there have been rumblings on the right that Governor Palin would be a great pick for the top of the ticket in 2012. While the citizen side of me cringes at the thought of her being the nominee, the gawker in me can’t help but watch. President Bush has spent the past eight years leading from the gut rather than the head, and while I think that most level-headed people would agree that this spells disaster for us as a republic, at least it’s been entertaining at times. Sarah Palin holds the same promise, I think. Let’s face it, the woman is a ticking time-bomb, waiting to explode in a white hot flash of grammatical and factual mis-statements and nationalistic hooey. She lacks the intellectual curiosity to ask important questions, nor the critical thinking to process any of the answers she might get if she did. In short, she’s a dullard. However, she’s a dullard who, for some reason, resonates with a great many people, so to my mind she warrants my attention. To quote Sun Tzu:
“It is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but do know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle.”
Anyway, because this is me, rather than someone who actually takes this shit seriously, my version of “knowing my enemy” involves reading Sarah Palin erotica. To paraphrase Linda Richman, it’s neither Sarah nor Palin nor erotic, but that’s beside the point. I mean, come on, does it get any better than this?
“She rarely knows what city she’s in and she likes that sense that she’s really nowhere at all. When Todd is fucking her, and her thighs are pressed against his hips, and her hands are tearing at the skin on his back he’ll say, ‘I’m fucking the next president of the United States.’”
Sure, it’s not even remotely erotic. And yes, it’s actually even a little icky, if you were to close your eyes and actually visualize it. But to me it’s great, especially since the stories ascribe a sense of existential angst and emotional turmoil to the woman, which is funny since this is a person who’s so empty and cynical that she glibly called people “unpatriotic” merely because they lived in Boston or New York.
If we imagine that Sarah Palin actually has inner conflict (not to mention kinks involving sex with strangers and a thing for religious dirty-talk), then we can humanize her a bit more. And that will be important if and when she does run for office again, so she can be discredited on the merits of her inabilities and intellectual shorcomings, rather than merely for being a vapid trophy wife with a flair for riling up a crowd.
Although, to be fair, this similar experiment has yet to humanize Ann Coulter in my eyes, so maybe it’s all a fantasy. Then again, I guess that’s the point.
Posted by Andy in Politcally Incoherent |
Comments (0)
7 November 2008 | 10:30 PM
It’s no secret that conservative commentator, Adam’s apple sporter and total waste of a C-cup Ann Coulter is a red hot bucket full of crazy. I used to anxiously and angrily pore over her wack-a-do columns or vitriolic visits to Fox News, feeling my blood pressure rise and that vein popping out on my forehead until eventually I’d storm off in disgust, unsure whether to write an angry screed in answer to her or merely revel in visions of her cast as Prometheus for eternity. But I’ve mellowed a lot since those days, and I’ve come to realize that in the end she’s just a bitter, Cornell-educated harpy who will say or write anything to sell her books. Maybe she believes what she’s saying, or maybe she’s just a cynical pseudo-intellectual capitalizing bottom-of-the-barrel nationalist sympathies: either way, she’s an irrelevant crank. The fact is, the Republican party has done so much over the last eight-to-twelve years to repudiate (and eradicate) intellectualism that Coulter is all they’re left with, lobbing grenades and cackling at all of attention it brings her.
Anyway, even though I’ve managed to largely avoid her for the past couple of years, I explicitly sought out her first post-election column, along with the perspectives of other nutty right-wingers, just to get a flavor for how they were handling the Obama win. She’d been surprisingly quiet (for Coulter, at least) in the months and weeks leading up to the election, so I wasn’t exactly sure what I’d find: would she be silent and chastened, or would she be strident and impassioned? As it turns out, she’s neither: she’s just bat-shit fucking crazy. It’s not so much a column as it is a collection of hastily-composed insults, the journalistic equivalent of a “your mama” jokes, only without any of the cleverness. I’m sure she envisions it to be a call-to-arms for conservatives, a rallying cry to stick to their guns (literally) and shove America back to the right through a sheer force of their collective will. Instead, she just sounds like an insolent, attention-starved kid, stomping her feet and clucking her tongue loudly and hoping we’ll notice.
Sure, on one level, the shit she says is scary, if you take it seriously enough. I mean, look at what she had to say about our erstwhile former Miss Alaska runner up and vice presidential hopeful:
Indeed, the only good thing about McCain is that he gave us a genuine conservative, Sarah Palin. He’s like one of those insects that lives just long enough to reproduce so that the species can survive. That’s why a lot of us are referring to Sarah as “The One” these days.
“The one”, Ann? Really? The person who doesn’t know that Africa is a continent, not a country? Oh, I forgot, Africa doesn’t matter to you. OK, my bad. So, Annie, what do you think the Grand Old Party should do to regroup?
How many times do we have to run this experiment before Republican primary voters learn that “moderate,” “independent,” “maverick” Republicans never win, and right-wing Republicans never lose?
See, on the surface of it, shit like that is almost enough to make your blood boil. However, when you think about it, the truth is she’s beyond irrelevant: she’s a museum piece, a vaguely-trans-gendered dinosaur who just happens to be into both the Grateful Dead and Mein Kampf in the original German. The country’s not buying the shinola she’s selling, this “real America” and every-black-person-is-a-terrorist bullshit. She’s an anachronism, just like Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly and all of the other blowhard cranks on the right. Their time has come and gone.
America’s great because complete fucking lunatics like Ann Coulter can write books, get on the television and say whatever they want to. Knock yourself out, Ann. No, seriously: I’d like you to punch yourself in the face. Zing! Or, um, maybe you should just pay Henry Rollins a visit?
Posted by Andy in Politcally Incoherent |
Comments (0)