One of my favorite games as a kid was to have my dad read me the headlines of op-ed columns and let me guess what the writers were going to say. We used to call it “The Great American Thesis Guessing Game,” and we’d pass many joyful hours this way, usually as I waited for my various spelling bees and model U.N. to begin or on the train to an educational weekend trip to Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, or Colonial Williamsburg (where I learned all about early American trucker hats). It was my absolute favorite game after memorizing every state comptroller and listing all the elements on the periodic table in weight order.
Maybe I was feeling nostalgic for those bygone days (the humdrum accomplishments of being an “adult” are so boring compared to the achievements I enjoyed as an adorable, opinionated child genius), since this morning I decided to play my favorite game with John “Norman’s Son” Podhoretz’s latest New York Post opus (Popus?), BUSH’S BIGGEST FLAW.
Ooh, ooh! I can guess! I can guess!
·He loves too much?
·Lips move when reading?
·Adult-onset backne?
·Doesn’t like cats?
·Cannot—simply can not—change printer toner?
·Obsessed with reality TV?
·Lacks “salty” taste-buds?
·Memory wipes clean every three minutes like a goldfish?
·Never washes hands after going to the bathroom?
·Right so often, he makes everyone around him look bad?
·Loves Maroon 5?
·Never cries at the end of Titanic?
So, Pod-man, what’s Bush’s “biggest” flaw?
“His capacity for complacency.”
Damn. How could I have missed that one? My dad’s gonna be so disappointed when we go to bird-watching this weekend.
Author: matt
We hold these lies to be self-evident…
Several prominent psychologists speculate that if Bush wins the election, the national suicide rate will increase by as much as 35%.
George Bush wrote a poem in high school called “Little Me, in Poppy’s Shadow.”
Teresa Heinz was a back-up singer for Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue tour.
As a young man, Donald Rumsfeld used to run numbers with Malcolm X, then known as “Detroit Red.”
John Kerry keeps all of his kids’ baby teeth in a satchel in his pocket. He rubs them when he’s nervous.
The Bush twins were conjoined at birth, sharing a liver. This is why they get drunk so easily.
John Edwards‘s battle with a childhood illness formed the basis of the 1976 after-school special, The Boy in the Plastic Bubble starring John Travolta.
It has been proven that electronic voting machines are essentially the same technology as the Simple Simon light game.
Condoleezza Rice had a small speaking part in the film version of Hair.
Laura Bush is allergic to most root vegetables.
Categories
Why… Is Michelle Malkin the New Jadakiss?
Malkin and Kiss… Why?
The many questions of Michelle Malkin:
How… many hate crime anecdotes does it take before the mainstream media spot a trend?
But what… happens when the targets are the wrong kind of victim?
What… happens when conservatives and Republicans are on the receiving end of discriminatory threats or harassment or worse?
Hello…, reporters?
Is… anybody home?
Is… it my imagination or do I hear pins dropping in the grievance corners of America’s otherwise victim-friendly newsrooms?
Can… I get a hair appointment and pedicure before appearing on Scarborough Country on Friday?
Will… The pedicurist be an immigrant?
Should… I cancel it if she is?
Why… is my Amazon rank so low?
The Internets are on fire today, man. As they say in Latin, ¡en fuego, hombre!
First comes this excellent article from a newspaper called The New York Sun that not only tells us about blogs, but finally—finally!—explains that “jumping the shark” phrase our 15 year-old cousin always uses. (It has something to do with Happy Days.) There’s also an excellent little primer about a show called Oz, which we’re definitely gonna watch this week.
The article, by a writer named Eric Wolff (remember that name!), is all about a website called Gawker, which we plan to check out after we have our morning coffee! It also answers the age old question: Who gives the best soundbites, Condé Nast editorial assistants, or ‘cyber-hostesses‘? (It’s a draw! They both bring the noise and the bite!)
Then there’s this Tom Scocca piece from The New York Observer about a guy who runs a site called The Minor Fall, The Major Lift (definitely gotta check his stuff out) who was once annonymous but is now going by his real name, Alex Balk! Plus, he’s now writing for The New York Times! Like other bloggers! (Memo to self: Pick up the Times this weekend on the way to brunch!)
What’s exciting about this (and warrants all these exclamation points!!!) is that we can now see that far from being an annonymous wag, this Balk fellow was actually hiding in plain site all along, submitting to a website called McSweeneys and playing along on the Slate News Quiz with Emmy-winning TV writers and producers! Next Major Lift, Hollywood!?!
Phew! This entry has fairly knocked us out (we topped off our exclamation point quota in the second paragraph!), and now we’re off to go figure out how to get one of these blogs set up. Our 15 year-old cousin is great with computers, and we think the “domain” JackieHarvey.com is still available!
As they say in Latin, Excelsior!
Once, years before a hyperbole-prone Graydon Carter pronounced “the end of the age of irony“, the more astute Tom Lehrer remarked that Henry Kissinger’s 1973 Nobel Peace prize rendered political satire obsolete.
One wonders what Tom Lehrer thinks of today’s announcement that the the Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the perverted Austrian novelist Elfriede Jelinek. While not an act of cosmic irony on par with Kissinger’s Peace Prize, it is, if nothing else, the last nail in the coffin for kinky books. Even if you are inclined to enjoy nauseating, degenerate art-smut like this (and if you are, you should be ashamed), you have to acknowledge that the authors of these nasty things should not be rewarded for writing and promulgating them. Most of Sade’s horrid output was written in prison, and rightly so. Georges Bataille published the shockingly perverse “Story of the Eye” under a pseudonym and spent his wretched life as a creepy librarian, unwilling to face the well-deserved umbrage that even his fellow Frenchmen would have unleased upon him had he taken responsibility for his “work.”
Of course, we here at low culture regard this kind of cultural output as not merely beneath contempt, but in fact a danger to our American way of life and values, the sort of pernicious decadence that leads to the downfall of great civilizations. But even if we did care for this kind of thing, isn’t it a fundamental element of these naughty books that they and their authors are “transgressive”, that they are breaking the rules of society? And shouldn’t society respond to transgression with censure and condemnation, not fancy medals and prizes? Indeed, in a year in which the world was appalled by images of grotesquely sadistic acts, is it not poor timing — if not a bit perverse — for the Swedish Academy to award its Literature prize to a pornographic writer who celebrates perversity?
From the New York Times:
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who donned a tan cowboy hat, joked that he was working on a song called “Mamas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Mayors.”
Number of jokes made by Mayor Bloomberg about writing country songs: at least 1.
Additional number of such jokes desired by New Yorkers: 0.
Total number of such jokes desired by New Yorkers: 0.
“Fallon, who has zero screen presence, flounders around, dribbling forth what can only be improvised dialogue in the most embarrassing SNL vehicle since Pootie Tang.”
‘TAXI’ DRIVEL, by Megan Lehmann, Oct. 6, 2004
Age under which commercial composer and tea salesman Moby says every celebrity seems like a “half-wit”: 23
Year Harvard educated action figure model Natalie Portman was born: 1981
Categories
Biting the (Invisible?) Hand
It’s often observed of George W. Bush that, per the old saw, he was born on third base but he thinks he hit a triple. On the other hand, like him or loathe him, Dick Cheney came from humbler circumstances, and must be given some credit for the sharp elbows and all-American ambition that led him to success. But don’t let’s get too misty-eyed prasing Dick for his enterprise, because he’s not all that different from Dubya when it comes to admitting that he may not have done it all by himself.
As we await the vice-presidential debate, this exchange from the 2000 VP debate comes to mind:
LIEBERMAN: I think if you asked most people in America today that famous question that Ronald Reagan asked, “Are you better off today than you were eight years ago?” Most people would say yes. I’m pleased to see, Dick, from the newspapers that you’re better off than you were eight years ago, too.
CHENEY: I can tell you, Joe, the government had absolutely nothing to do with it. (LAUGHTER) (APPLAUSE)[emphasis added]
Oh really? This lone-wolfish insouciance comes from a guy who has been working in government since the late 60’s and whose father and father-in-law were both federal civil servants. He seems more than happy to accept the largesse that comes with being a public servant, including free, world-class health care, a government pension, and free trips in a Gulfstream jet to go duck-hunting with pals. Now, all of these goodies probably don’t mean much to a man with a net worth of $50 million, but as far as we know, he hasn’t forsworn any of these perks, nor has he offered to pay for them himself. Guess big government isn’t always so reprehensible. (But maybe he can’t help it — it’s just that pernicious “culture of dependency“…)
Most of Cheney’s fortune, of course, comes from his tenure at Halliburton, and while we must all tip our hats to the chutzpah of a man who appointed himself to the positions of CEO and running mate, could Halliburton’s abrupt decision to hire Cheney — who had no prior experience in business management — have had anything to do with the Cheney’s work in government, or, specifically, the fact that, as Secretary of Defense, he’d awarded lucrative contracts to Halliburton as part of a program to outsource military functions to private contractors?
Nah.