Friday, August 12

A Friday Free

T.Bogg is on fire, even for him. Same with Wolcott. World O'Crap continues to hide her subtle brilliance beneath her overt brilliance with Wingnut Island. Tom Burka says everything that needs to be said with a headline. Fact-esque is on top of everything. Patrick Smith, Salon's Pilot you can Ask, shows just how sloppy and hysterical the mass media are even when there's no reason to be.

Chris Clarke brings a tear to my eye, and then he does it again, and then Professor Bérubé does it for good measure, all in a twenty-four hour period.

And one brave woman in Crawford, TX, reduces George W. Bush from a prick to a pinprick.

Me? I'm crackin' wise about Fried Twinkies and tossin' paperwads for a kitten.

I'm too old. I'm too comfortable. And I've got the love of a woman too good for me. I grew up in the birthplace of the John Birch Society, reading the crackpot-before-its-time Puliam family newspaper. I had tracts and letters from the corpulent and hate-filled bully Gregg Dixon, one of the founding licensed beggars of The Moral Majority, stuffed in my mailbox at the school newspaper on a weekly basis because I wrote against the war, against racism, and for rock and roll. I watched the descent of network news, the willful choice of comforting fiction over complex and mystifying fact, the ready acquiescence to the idea that reality needed to be balanced by appending the thoughts of the unhinged to every topic. I watched the glorification of a second-rate actor and dim-witted phony the way Ionesco watches his fellow citizens in "The Rhinoceros". I saw the shitty Soviet Heroic-Realist scupture the Right insisted on erecting next to The Wall because fake piety is preferable to real piety in its book.

Special pleading? Well, TBogg is nearly as old as I am, and he still walks into that alley every day to take on the likes of Malkin and Goldberg and Coulter. God bless 'im. But I'm just too tired of these fifteenth generation photocopies, they and the sorry gas-filled lawyers and basement dwellers who've turned xenophobia and poor potty training into a political crusade, who will gladly fight to the last drop of someone else's blood, who bravely pound the virtual lectern so long as they believe there's a mob at their backs to do the dirty work.

Well, it only takes one strong man to face down a mob. And today her name is Cindy Sheehan.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

You know what would make you feel better? A nice visit to a State Fair! Go see (and smell) the livestock, eat somehting on a stick, toss some darts and try to win a 50 cent teddy bear from Taiwan..... you'll come back refreshed...

James Briggs Stratton "Doghouse" Riley said...

Y'know, that was oddly comforting.

afb said...

stuff happening at camp casey. check my blog and spread the word.

thanks

Anonymous said...

Go get yourself a nice bottle of Boone's Farm, too.

Actually, I know you're more of a wine snob (i mean that in a good way) than a lot of people I know, but I wanted to ask if you've tried any of the NC Wines yet? It's becoming a pretty big thing for the former tobacco farmers down here, and I've heard good things (except for the Biltmore Estate wine.) If you've tried any, like Shelton Vineyards, what do you think of it?

Anonymous said...

You've got comment spam, you must be loved.

I dunno, Riley. I think we all have those times when we look around at the mess that's being made of the world and we've got no energy to even think about it.

So, hunker down a bit, and c'mon back out with your A Game when you get a chance.

Hell, everything you say is more comprehensible and less vapid than anything I say, so how bad could you be doing?

I'd offer further words of wisdom, but I still have one more bank to call before five and scream at because they don't think I exist. At this point, I'm considering just letting them convince me.

Anonymous said...

Look, Doghouse, a man with that many cool buttons has got something going on! And a smoking jacket - I've never heard tell of anyone with a smoking jacket!

Shoot, I'm going to be bold - I want to be you when I grow up!

Anonymous said...

don't worry, the comment about cindy sheehan reducing w from a prick to a pinprick is priceless.

it trumps any comments you want to make about fried twinkies.

sometimes, quality wins over quantity. remember, you just need one well-shot bullet to kill someone; often, a barrage isn't necesssary.