Or: Don’t knock Republican theocracy. It’s sex with someone I love. (possibly obscure allusion explained here.)
The title of this post is lightly stolen from the movie Broadcast News. A favorite movie for me, and the source of the most important political monologue outside Orwell’s Politics and the English Language. I’m talking, of course, about the Tom is the Devil speech:
Aaron Altman: I know you care about him. I’ve never seen you like this about anyone, so please don’t take it wrong when I tell you that I believe that Tom, while a very nice guy, is the Devil.
Jane Craig: This isn’t friendship.
Aaron Altman: What do you think the Devil is going to look like if he’s around? Nobody is going to be taken in if he has a long, red, pointy tail. No. I’m semi-serious here. He will look attractive and he will be nice and helpful and he will get a job where he influences a great God-fearing nation and he will never do an evil thing… he will just bit by little bit lower standards where they are important. Just coax along flash over substance… Just a tiny bit. And he will talk about all of us really being salesmen. And he’ll get all the great women.
That, to my ears, describes Paul Ryan. A good looking guy, and arguably one of the most slightly less-than-Hitler people on the planet. But, very polite, and as he reduces the more sensible teachings of Christianity to pablum, he does so with a certain élan: (my emphasis in the text)
Over the past few days, professional rabid wingnut blabbermouth Dana “Drop Trou” Loesch has been working herself into even more of a frenzy than usual. This time, it’s over allegations that somebody at the DOJ referred an enquiry from credibility-starved hack-hive startupThe Washington Beacon to a “site accused of antisemitism.”
The Beacon‘s edited by Bill Kristol’s underemployed son-in-law Matthew Continetti, the alleged “journalist” whose back copy includes The Persecution of Sarah Palin: How the Elite Media Tried to Bring Down a Rising Star. It’s quite possible that the DOJ has better things to do than help feed the Beacon‘s hysteria mill by responding to its request for a comment about a book with the transparently impartial title Fast and Furious: Barack Obama’s Bloodiest Scandal and Its Shameless Cover Up, but Loesch needs the page hits and something to do with her days now the boss is six feet under and evidently staying there. Her subliterate headline reads:
Loesch and her crew have been trying desperately to link the words “antisemitism”—a favorite of the Breitbartlets, an antidote to “raaaaacism,” if you will—and “Media Matters” in the same way that Jim Hoft loves to pair “thugs” with “union” or “OWS.”
Subsequently, Loesch enlists the help of “P.J. Salvatore,” the inhouse sockpuppet charged with defending her honor when she hasn’t got the guts or hutzpah to put her own name to her whining:
The “misrepresentation”—and yet again hilarious accusations of “selective editing”—in this case concerned Loesch’s remarks that Martin Bashir, being a furriner and all, should go back to jolly old England and keep his nose out of American politics. Loesch doesn’t seem to feel this advice should apply to her colleague, South African-born Joel Pollak, but then you may be gaining the impression that consistency isn’t really part of her makeup.
And now, dick-obsessed Lee Stranahan steps into the breach:
It’s been apparent for a while now that despite the vast wealth at his disposal, Mittens’ campaign is a few sammitches short of a picnic. Heck, all that money doesn’t even buy you any new ideas.
Witness the shameless “borrowing” of a legendary UK Conservative Party poster from way back in 1979—the fateful election that brought Margaret Thatcher to power. Here’s Mittens’ minions’ version above the original one:
The repurposed poster misses a few tricks in the original: the pun on “Labour” not “working” is replaced by a bland personalization and a revisiting of Romney’s recent theme that President Obama should forgo playing golf and family vacations at the locations of his family’s choice because too many Americans—Mitt Romney being one—are currently unemployed.
The original poster has been credited with winning the election for Thatcher, and Campaign magazine voted it “poster advertisement of the century.”
But there’s one little detail Mittens’ team has overlooked. What happened to unemployment in the UK once this magnificently clever ad won the election for the Conservatives? Here’s a little graph:
Oops.
Anyway, this is all so last century, Mitt. The word on the street in swinging London nowadays is “Austerity isn’t working.”
If Mitt Romney doesn’t become president (and I don’t really think he should), I think I’d like to see him in a Food channel program: On the Road Eating Stuff with Mitt. There has just been so much amusing footage of him interacting oddly with people in diners and eating breakfast and being weird with waitresses. I think it could be a hit. In the above clip, he is not digging the looks of those cookies. I can’t wait to see how he reacts when he’s introduced to scrapple (a real authentic Pennsylvania treat).
Poor Mrs. Mitt. After 40+ years of back-breaking momming, the woman has earned the right to kick back and take it easy. And she could, too, if it weren’t for her husband’s compulsive need to cross “Be President!” off his bucket list.
So Mrs. Mitt is forced to endure serial humiliations, one of the worst of which must surely be the obligation to interact socially with a vulgar, embarrassing blowhard like Donald Trump. Last night, Mrs. Mitt was obligated to paste on a smile and ride the elevator to the 66th floor of Trump Tower to join Trump, his wife Melanoma and 400 other crass rich people (the only kind willing to share airspace with Trump) to raise $600,000 for the Mitt campaign at a “birthday party” for Mrs. Mitt. (66th floor + $600,000 - $599,994 = 666!)
And, because even though Trump was born rich, he somehow managed to avoid acquiring the good taste and manners that often make our plutocrats seem less overtly monstrous than they actually are, he exposed poor Mrs. Mitt to maximum tackiness, including a sugary image of herself astride a sugary Austrian Warmblood dancing horse, thus inviting unflattering comparisons between Mrs. Mitt and Marie Antoinette.
The Cake Boss dude, who constructed the monstrosity, chose to surround the horse and rider with stumps. Why? A subtle protest of Trump’s desire to clear-cut ancient Scottish trees to build vulgar golf resorts? It’s a mystery. And an open thread.
I’m hauling myself out of the phlegmy slough of a joyful spring dose of 24-hour flu here and desperately playing catch-up on work and breathing and stuff like that, so consider yourselves apologized to for the lack of bloggy goings-on. Anyway, I decide to check out what’s eating the blogosphere at the moment, and yup—it’s that dog again.
The old adage goes, “When you’re in a hole, stop digging.” But it seems Mitt and Ann Romney just can’t stop doubling down on that infamous dog on roof incident from way back in 1983. I’ve known a few Irish setters in my time, and they’ve by and large been soft old things, albeit bonkers. Judging by the Romneys’ response when ABC’s Diane Sawyer used an “exclusive” interview to raise the issue yet again, that may be a family trait:
Mitt Romney told Sawyer that the Seamus attacks were the most wounding of the campaign “so far” ...
Well, Mitt, it’s only April. Buckle up.
“The dog loved it,” Ann Romney said. “He would see that crate and, you know, he would, like, go crazy because he was going with us on vacation.”
Yeah, so you’ve both been saying since the story first emerged. Look, it’s an Irish setter—its threshold for “loving it” is pretty damn low. As for “going crazy,” from my experience with the breed, how the heck could you tell?
And here comes the usual TMI:
Adding to the left’s narrative that Romney had little compassion for the animal is a detail from the 1983 trip that Ann Romney confirmed to Sawyer. The dog became sick, defecating all over itself and the windshield of the car, leading Romney to hose them both off before they continued on the drive to Canada.
“Once, he—we traveled all the time—and he ate the turkey on the counter. I mean, he had the runs,” Ann Romney said, laughing as she explained how the dog got diarrhea.
In a 2007 blog written during Romney’s first campaign for the presidency, Ann Romney said the dog rode “in an enclosed kennel, not in the open air” and compared the experience with a person riding on a motorcycle or roller coaster.
Remind me never to visit Disney World when the Romneys are there.
Mitt Romney, when asked by Sawyer if he would do such a thing again, said “Certainly not…,” which would have been a fantastic answer had he not been compelled to add a totally narcissistic qualifier, “...with all the attention its received.”
I repeat: “Certainly not with all the attention its received.”
My Rumproast co-blogger StrangeAppar8us used to do anoccasionalseries on One-Scoop Wonder Matt Drudge. I thought of Strange when I saw the OOGA BOOGA headline below, so I decided I’d revive Strange’s regular feature.
Here’s the story it links to, which covers Mittens’ NRA speech. In that speech, Mittens regurgitated the NRA’s own paranoid fantasy about Obama, which goes something like this: Obama does fuck-all about guns for four years as part of a fiendishly clever scheme to lull gun owners into a false sense of security and win a second term. And then, just as quick as his hand leaves the bible on his Second Inauguration Day, Obama orders jack-booted ATF agents to go door-to-door to forcibly disarm the populace.
Of course, Mittens himself was all for sensible gun control measures when he was running for and serving as governor of Massachusetts, and unlike the president, Mittens has actually signed gun control legislation. If the NRA were a bipartisan interest group, it would support the president over Romney for that reason.
But the NRA is actually a dismal, dishonest collection of Republican hacks and barrel-stroking, pinwheel-eyed lunatics who believe open-carry permits are required to protect them from rogue turkeys, so it’s entirely in the bag for Gun-Grabber Willard.
As for Mittens himself, who the hell knows what he really believes on the gun issue. He believes he should be president, and he believes there’s no lie too shameless to utter in pursuit of that goal. And his lies will be swallowed, digested and excreted as truth by fellow liars and hacks like Drudge, and the resulting turds will be polished to a high gloss by bottom-feeders like Halperin.
I don’t know how everything got shifted over to how one person who isn’t a campaign spokesperson for President Obama said one technically true thing that didn’t sound right and then suddenly everything was about how Lefties don’t love Mom, the flag or apple pie. I’m sure a bunch of people who are White House and campaign spox are going through Message Discipline Boot Camp right now (Drop and give me twenty talking points!) But I have my ideas. It seems like the only card conservatives can draw is the Defense of Traditional Womanhood Card, just like they play the Defense of Traditional Marriage Card in another respect of the culture war. In other words, they whinge, “Why are you attacking this tradition (by pointing out that others exist)?”
Thus, when Hilary Rosen made a specific point about Ann Romney’s privilege in being able to be a stay-at-home-mom, it was attacked as being about her choice to be a stay-at-home-mom. Honestly, I do not care if Ann Romney worked a day outside the home. It matters to me that Gov. Romney has decided that he will receive his communications from Planet Vajayjay from someone who is more familiar with Ladies Who Lunch than Ladies who can’t Catch a Lunch Break.
I got nothing but a question: Will outrage over Hilary Rosen’s infamous assertion that a gazillionaire with a household staff embedded in multiple mansions might not be the best economic adviser on the affairs of ordinary American women continue, or will the blind hogs find another acorn today?
One thing that’s always bugged the shit out of me is when a man says he has to “babysit” his children. It would annoy me if a woman said that too, but I’ve never actually heard a female use that term in reference to her own progeny.
I bet Mittens would have said it, had the situation ever presented itself. I can imagine a scenario back in the 80s in which the entire Romney Nanny Army was simultaneously stricken with food poisoning while the Missus was astride an Austrian Warmblood at some dressage (fancy horse-dancing) event and the kitchen staff, livery crew and gardeners all pretended not to speak English, leaving poor Mittens to “babysit” all five lads.
As yet another demonstration of his cool, crisis-free management style, Mittens may have simply lashed Snotleigh, Tagamet, Cumberbund, Fontleroy and Snoodle to the roof of his golf cart and kept his tee time with the Marriotts. This is all pure speculation, of course, but the Romneys provided a glimpse into their family life in a recent campaign clip titled, intriguingly, “Family,” and after viewing it, it’s easy to image such a madcap, screwball comedy ensuing.
Ruth Marcus over at Kaplan does a pretty good job of pointing out how the clip, meant to humanize Romney, might backfire with female viewers since it unintentionally portrays Romney as yet another hyperactive brat the long-suffering Missus had to tame between patronizing pats on the head about the importance of Motherhood:
“His consoling words were always the same: Ann, your job is more important than mine.”
This story is supposed to buttress Mitt’s bona fides as a supportive husband, and Ann is, no doubt, a more tolerant spouse than I am. But every time I hear that patronizing line, I imagine responding, “Great. If my job is more important, then you come home and do it and I’ll check into the nice room at the Four Seasons.”
Anyhoo, Marcus goes on to note that the contrast in styles between the Obamas and Romneys would tend to skew the female demographic in the president’s direction. True enough.
The gender gap has widened into a chasm, and because “Game Change” changed exactly nothing—people like Nicolle Wallace and Mark Salter are still running presidential campaigns—it wouldn’t surprise me if Mittens puts someone like Kay Bailey Hutchinson on the ticket. He badly needs an Ambassadress to Planet Vajayjay.
With Rick Santorum’s suspension of his campaign and effective withdrawal from the primary, where does that leave those Republicans who remain bitterly unconvinced of Mitt Romney’s ability to win the election, let alone govern in a sufficiently wingnutty way to pass muster among the base?
Most of the attention I’ve seen has focused on Newt Gingrich, last seen screwing up yet another state campaign by bouncing a check for $500 at Utah’s Elections Board and leaving nobody home to answer the subequent enquiries about it. Thus demonstrably clueless, reportedly at least $4.5 million in debt, with no sugardaddy to bail him out nowadays and next to no ground game, but still pledging to run all the way to Tampa, Gingrich claims the suitably ironic mantle of “the last conservative standing.”
After Rick Santorum ended his White House bid on Tuesday, Ron Paul’s campaign praised the former Pennsylvania senator, but said Paul did not have plans to follow suit.
“Congratulations to Senator Santorum on running such a spirited campaign. Dr. Paul is now the last – and real – conservative alternative to Mitt Romney,” Jesse Benton, Paul’s campaign chairman, said in a statement.
The oldest swinger in town still has game, as his campaign airs a new ad in Texas which is a bit of a hoot.
I guess it should be noted for posterity that theocratic homophobe Rick Santorum has bowed out of the 2012 GOP Best of the Worst competition after a morning of speculation turned out to be dead-on. From a purely blogular standpoint, I’m going to miss him, a little, but he’ll never really be gone. Whenever awkward tone-deaf metaphors for gay marriage are spoken, he’ll be there. Wherever “Did he or didn’t he?” vague racial comments are made, he’ll be there. Whenever Fox News decides they can afford to cut him a paycheck for doing his thing, he’ll be there. Whenever the earliest availability for scrounging up 2016 presidential interest appears—he will totally be there. Or, to employ a different cultural meme no less sacrilegious, where job creators defend their privilege, it’s there you’ll find old Rick.
I think the thing I admire most, if you can call it that, about Santorum’s campaign was that he actually made it this far and made Mitt Romney’s campaign spend lots of money to put him away. All things considered, it was right for Santorum to drop out now, after Romney made it clear he’d go full-on alpha-male and pee on every tree in Santorum country. So the Romney campaign is committed to a big ad buy in this market for a showdown that isn’t actually happening. Of course, if Santorum was sticking with his quest for the nomination as he indicated with his “half-time” metaphor, this was the right thing for Romney to do. After all, knock Santorum out in his home state, and he has no momentum and no resources left to go anywhere. But as it stands, Santorum gets to wind down his campaign having done some reasonable damage to the front-runner’s long-term chances in the general election with an escalatingly negative campaign prior to dropping out, and I note, without an endorsement for him, either.
You know what Charles Pierce calls Santorum? I don’t like to use gendered insults like that, but I concur with the sentiment. And I suspect Romney might, too.
James O’Keefe is apparently out of jail. For how long who knows. While he’s out his award-not-winning enterprise Project Veritas is hard at work attempting to commit voter fraud. See, the logic is that if he successfully commits voter fraud that’ll prove that liberals are wrong when they say that voter fraud doesn’t exist. Even if he’s the only example of voter fraud, that vindicates the belief that voter fraud exists.
A skeptic might point out that would be like somebody saying that no one wears a rhinoceros costume to church, and then O’Keefe wears a rhinoceros costume to church just to prove that somebody wrong. Yeah, that is pretty much what he’s doing. I know what you’re thinking: someone like that’s a real dick.
In this case no one is wearing a rhinoceros costume. But, O’Keefe is having someone impersonate Eric Holder. O’Keefe claims that he’s portraying Holder because Holder is challenging recently legislated voter id laws. (a wee bit more on that here)
People like O’Keefe think voter ID laws are a common sense way to prevent voter fraud; people like Holder say they address a problem that doesn’t exist, and the laws would give officials new pretext to keep legitimate voters from casting ballots.
Mike, who used to be active in grass-roots politics here in DC before getting the WaPo job, is being unbelievably generous by characterizing O’Keefe that way. No doubt he’s also trying to avoid the liberal bias label that got Dan Froomkin fired. But, Mike doesn’t know how O’Keefe thinks. Neither do I, but I’m willing to be less charitable than Mike. I would have said that People like O’Keefe think that voter id laws are an easy way to steal elections.
I also tend to believe that he’s impersonating Holder not because he’s the symbol of liberal oppression, but because Holder is virtually invisible as far as cabinet members go. If O’Keefe really had cajones, he’d impersonate Hillary Clinton. Not gonna ha pen.
Things are hotting up out there as Mitt “Captain Inevitable” Romney plows on toward a primary victory that will no doubt prove as pyrrhic as it will be indecisive.
Ann Romney’s remarks came during an interview with Baltimore radio station WBAL, during which the host asked her, “And one of the things, Ann Romney, that folks talk about with your husband, Mitt Romney, and I’ve seen him in casual conversation-He comes off very smooth and okay. But sometimes he comes off stiff. Do you have to fight back some criticism, like ‘My husband isn’t stiff, OK?’”
Laughing, Ann Romney responded, “Well, you know, I guess we better unzip him and let the real Mitt Romney out because he is not!”
Leaving her listeners feverishly trying to fight off the nausea and work out whether she’d just complimented her husband or cast deep aspersions on his virility, she swept on to praise his wit and sense of fun, but we’ve seen plenty of evidence of that already—like Herman Cain (allegedly no stranger to sexxxytime himself) before him, Mitt really needs to have a clown horn permanently attached so that people can be cued to roar along with him when he cracks wise with a “Corporations are people too,” or “I’m currently unemployed,” or a “my wife drives two Cadillacs” rather than tut-tutting like po-faced scolds because liberals are so famously humorless.
“The tweets have been addressed with Heather and she understands this was a mistake.” – Michael Clemente, Fox News senior vice president for news
Don’t bother looking for Childers’ tweets now unless you’re an old pal or family:
@heatherchilders’s account is protected.
Only confirmed followers have access to @heatherchilders’s Tweets and complete profile. Click the “Follow” button to send a follow request.
Yeah, Hannity et al. have the knack of coloring just inside the lines in their question-mark-punctuated musings about the President’s legitimacy and nefariousness, but since Beck went the way of all bloated flesh, speculating in public whether Obama is a mafioso mofo who can out-Vince Foster the Clintons is beyond the pale. Funny old country you got there: Those closer to Obama’s political views think he’s a wimp who caves in a puff of wind; those diametrically opposed think he’s a cross between Stalin and Dick Cheney.
Most of the media focus in this kerfuffle has been on Childers and Fox News, but what of Godfather Politics, a new kid on the block to me in the overcrowded depths of truth-challenged RW crazy? Since it seems so keen to attract attention, who am I to decline?
