Monday, September 26

I ♥ Charles Pierce, Vol. Six Thousand Something

DUE to various weekend and peri-weekend events--marathon, ecstasy-fueled debauchery, the crying jag that inevitably follows (mine, of course), an unrelated head injury, cats--it was Sunday morning before I got to see the redacted, broadcast version of Jon Stewart's interview with sometime Indiana Governor Mitch "Check That Book Cover Glamor Shot" Daniels, and I've yet to get through the full, online version while taking notes. It was no surprise, and only a tiny bit disconcerting, that Stewart referred to the man who raised Indiana's most regressive tax 17%, slashed the state budget using the bed of Procrustes as a template, then dumped the bleeding stumps on local governments, as "fiscally responsible"; even assuming the nationals researched this sort of thing, what would they do with it? Ruin a perfectly serviceable script? No, the remarkable thing, for any Hoosier, certainly, was that Daniels had to sit there and take it, because Holy Commerce was at stake. Back Home Again, when he's merely the democratically-elected chief executive of the state, he tells anyone who disagrees with him that the sty isn't gonna muck itself, nor their closest girl relative impregnate herself, and to quit wasting time questioning their betters.

Meanwhile, we get acid reflux, Charlie Pierce gets insights:
Jon Huntsman, poor dear, truly is a lost soul. He came here this weekend, for the Florida presidential debate and the ensuing straw poll, running what appeared to be a complicated simulacrum of a national presidential campaign. This placed him in a subcategory of Republican contenders along with Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, and, oddly enough, Rick Santorum, who is running a show not unlike Huntsman's, although Huntsman appears to be trying to get elected leader of the United States of America while Santorum seems to be angling for the job of patriarch of Antioch. Most everybody else — the rising Herman Cain, the faltering Michele Bachmann, and Ron Paul, who's always been really good at it — seems to be content with fashioning a cult of personality. And then there's Newt Gingrich, who is actually on an extended book tour.

Read, as they like to say, the whole thing.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

During the interview , you could see our "esteemed" governor literally squirm. But it's too bad Mr. Stewart didn't peruse this website for some really good material. I swear, this website is the only thing that keeps me from screaming so thank you for that.

ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said...

...slashed the state budget using the bed of Procrustes as a template.

Thank you!

Now who will be the Theseus this lonely nation might turn its eyes to?
~

tony in san diego said...

John Stewart may be an american treasure, but he is a terrible interviewer. He can't get through a single complete sentence....by the time he reaches the end of his question, it has completely changed from what it started as....and they are usually nonsensical questions, anyway.

Kordo said...

That article is a thing of beauty. May I quote?

"(Since he took his act national, Mitt's finest moment may well have been telling Brian Mooney of The Boston Globe that, when he was doing his Mormon mission in France, he really wanted to be fighting in Vietnam. In other words, rather than pestering wine-growers in Provence, Mitt really wanted to be humping the pig across the Central Highlands. This is so stupefyingly fraudulent as to be goddamn close to immortal.)"

If I had known you could spout that sort of trash in public, and not get your ass beat by the citizens forced to hear it, I would have gone into politics.


"Kristol, of course, is the yeast behind the intellectual ferment that has produced, in order, Dan Quayle, George W. Bush, and Sarah Palin. A sane country party would be wondering at this point about a party that takes this person seriously as a political thinker and a public intellectual. If Bill Kristol went to the track, he'd bet on the fucking starting gate. Nevertheless, he is what passes for a wise man in a party that has surrendered utterly to its intellectual Id."

Riley, you should do a column about some of your favorite writers. You have pretty good taste in the field, I think. Holy shit, C. Pierce is funny. Thanks for the tip.