Cultural Concerns

Pop or Soda?

When you want a carbonated soft drink do you ask for a soda or a pop? There’s really no right or wrong answer but don’t tell that to the soda people. People who say soda give people who say pop a hard time, even to the point of ignoring the pop person altogether. Meanwhile soda people can travel deep into the heart of pop country and order a soda without getting so much as a cross stare. Soda people say it’s because pop people are stupid but it’s really because we wiped boogers on the rims of the cans.

The sheer variety of carbonated soft drinks makes ordering one by a generic moniker a risky proposition. Most sane people don’t like Dr. Pepper or his ne’er do well cousin, Mr. Pibb. Mountain Dew is not the same thing as Fresca and there are people who still insist that there is a difference between Coke and Pepsi even though a recent Mythbusters episode proved that they are the exact same product. With so many options, be they real or imagined, one must be specific. Even if you don’t care what you get, the person retrieving the product needs to know which ball park to reach in.

So the debate is moot except for when a person is explaining where they’re off to.

There is another debate that seems to be raging and this one has serious implications:

Wal-Mart vs. Target

I’m a Target person and I say that with pride. Not because I actually think that Target is better or simply less evil that Wal-Mart. They’re both soulless retailers who offer low prices at the expense of exploited foreign workers. I get that. I do believe Wal-Mart is slightly more unscrupulous than Target but only slightly. And I believe Target does offer nicer stuff but that’s only because of demand.

Shoppers make the difference and that’s why I firmly plant myself in the Target camp. Wal-Mart shoppers are just creepy. I don’t know if it’s the inbreeding, bad water or a combination of both but the pale, morbidly obese rednecks who shop at Wal-Mart make me feel like a black panther at a NASCAR event. Actually, I just feel like a moderately intelligent white guy at a NASCAR event which is about as out of place as a person can feel.

I really wish I could stomach the experience of shopping at Wal-Mart because I love having my ego stroked. It’s nice to be the smartest guy for two square kilometers but the sense of superiority is always overwhelmed by the sickening feeling that there’s a collective mind conspiring to undermine me, like something out of a bad science fiction movie.

What I like about Target is the fact that the brand doesn’t imprint itself on me. Wal-Mart people always stand out even in weird places. On a recent camping trip I was able to pick out the Wal-Martians by the gargantuan Ozark Trail tents they were setting up. My suspicions were confirmed when everybody with the hideous Ozark Trail tent turned on their radios in unison to follow that weekend’s NASCAR race. As the frantic cadence of the announcer repetitively washed over me I could feel brain cells wither and die. I remain convinced that my brain physically smoothed over just a bit and that some of my higher cerebral functions, such as completing this phrase with something witty, were permanently incapacitated. It’s interesting because on the few occasions I’ve been to Wal-Mart I actually felt myself getting dumber.

Maybe Wal-Mart and NASCAR are using the same device. Both organizations rely heavily on stupidity...it’s their number one demographic. I bet Wal-Mart probably stumbled upon the benefits of stupid customers when they were experimenting with ways to dumb down their employees. How else do you explain those big idiotic grins on the faces of the greeters? Welcome to Walmart. Do you suppose the real them is trapped behind the facade or are they just dead inside? Anyway, the mind-numbing had an impact on customers and Wal-Mart quickly realized that if they put a smiley face next to a price people would buy it. If you track the trends you'll notice that NASCAR's popularity has grown with Wal-Mart's increasing market share. People go into Wal-Mart for low prices, but they come out race fans.

As for NASCAR, you’re talking about a bunch of cars driving in a circle for three hours. A race is one thing but a bunch of yahoos turning left for 500 miles is painful. Unless you’re the kind of person who can end up missing the exit to work because the car in front of you had one of those crystals hanging from the review mirror, NASCAR is something you lose interest in after about 30 seconds. That’s why NASCAR needs stupid. It's also why NASCAR is so popular in the South.

You know, that's an interesting point to make in the whole dry heat argument. The next time somebody from Arizona gets upset because you dismiss their triple digit temps as dry, mention the strange correlation between humidity and stupidity as witnessed in the Deep South. It might not have any scientific merit but I bet it ends the argument. I guarantee it ends the argument.

Cracker Barrel is another place that seems to attract that crowd and it’s the sort of place where stupid hangs in the air like cheap perfume. You might even be able to smell it if not for the cloying scent of cheap perfume. Cracker Barrel is where Wal-Martians go after Tony Stewart flips whoever won the race off. People say it exudes Southern charm. I think it looks like the clubhouse at a fancy trailer park. Look, Maude, they made a wind jingly thing out of forks and spoons.

Feeling Groovy?

I was born in 1970 which means I’m pretty much the backbone of Generation X. I don’t really know what that means but thanks to our society's endless need to label everything that’s the way it is.

I grew up listening to my grandparents congratulate themselves for surviving the Great Depression and winning World War 2 while the Baby Boomers patted themselves on the back for the 60s. They were revolutionaries, man. Meanwhile everything important had been handled and the world was going to end in THE YEAR 2000 but I was still getting grief for being such a slacker.

Now the center mass of the Baby Boom Generation has turned 60 and American Consumerism is succinctly illustrating just how lame they are. No generation of senior citizens has been coddled and catered to quite like these rebellious movers and shakers who claim to have set the world on its axis.

I don’t mean any disrespect but in addition to Dennis Hopper schilling some sort of investment portfolio designed to help Boomers go gently into that good night while they pretend to rage against the dying of the light by spending money, there are numerous marketing campaigns that make it clear that this generation is a lot more Baby than Boom.

Take the Jitterbug. This is a cellular phone marketed to the AARP set. In fact they invest heavily in AARP advertising. Jitterbug’s gimmick is that there are no gimmicks. They’ve eliminated all of those dad-burned buttons and features like cameras and full color screens. It’s easy to use because, after all, old people are stupid.

Trek has followed up on that angle by marketing a three-speed bicycle that automatically shifts. It hearkens back to one of those clunky old cruisers, has a big springy seat and promises to help you “feel like a kid again”. Believe me, once Alzheimer's sets in...you will any way.

Trek is trying to keep its options open and does market the bike to a younger crowd as well but considering that when I was a kid we actually wanted as many gears as you could cram on a sprocket, I think it’s safe to say the target demographic is the 60 and over crowd. The extra wide seat won’t rip a hole in your Depends and there’s a convenient storage compartment for your spare teeth.

What happened to I hope I die before I get old? How can it be that the generation that was once defined by something as wild as Woodstock is now hobbling gleefully into the bliss of senility? I know that you can’t stay young forever but do you have to embrace the cliché of being old?

What really irks me is the fact that I can’t seem to get a break. Growing up I was bombarded with movies about Vietnam and television shows about hippies turning 30. Now I’m getting hit with movies like the Bucket List where a couple of geezers try to live it up before they keel over. At least my grandparents had the decency to step aside and let the faster train roll on by. When life got to be more than they could handle they checked into Sunnyvale Acres and got by on cards and the occasional visit. Baby Boomers are turning the whole world into a retirement community. It’s OK is you want to be lame, just don’t drag the rest of us down with you. Pull over to the right and let the rest of us by.

Get out of the way, Gramps

Contrary to what John McCain says, Hamas has not endorsed Barack Obama. That’s just not something Hamas would do. Even if they thought Obama might give them an audience, no Hamas leader would risk his neck by publicly endorsing an American Presidential candidate. Of course in the modern era of politics facts aren’t important. Photo ops and sound bites make or break you. There is one fact that nobody can escape: John McCain is old. We’re not talking older McCain is just plain old.

I know, we aren’t supposed to discriminate based on age. Well that’s a great idea but when it comes to elected officials we already do. Nobody younger than 35 can serve as the President of the United States. Apparently people under the age of 35 are too naïve and inexperienced to grasp the nuances of public policy and foreign relations. It doesn’t matter that our current President might have an IQ under 35 giving him the mind of a hamster, age is more important than smarts.

So why should we leave the other end of the lifespan open? When that phone rings at 3:00am do you really want Pappy fumbling around for his dentures? I don’t. I also don’t want him nodding off during cabinet meetings or regaling important foreign officials with highly inappropriate stories about his days in the Navy. Morocco? I knew a great whore from Morocco…

Even if McCain is all there, which doesn’t seem to be the case, There is the simple inevitability of the cycle of life. McCain is practically knocking on death’s door. He could go gently into that good night any day now. Granted, life doesn’t come with any guarantees…other than the fact that it will end which is really the point. In addition to the everyday risks we all face (car accidents, plan crashes, meteors, killer bees, flesh eating bacteria, Glen Close…) McCain’s on the edge of his own mortality. It's like we're all playing Russian Roulette excpet he's got five chambers loaded.

Making matters worse is the fact that McCain’s logged more mileage on that wrinkled old carcass he calls a body. He was tortured in Vietnam for five years. You have to respect the price he paid to serve his country but if smoking can shave 10 years off your life what does torture do? It’s a virtual miracle that the old coot is still breathing but his luck won’t last forever. In fact, it probably won’t last through the first year. Presindets are expected to put in long hours, and naps during Matlock at 1400 hours just won't cut it. Can McCain put in 16 hour days? I know Bush didn't but we see how that's turned out.

We’ve seen signs that he’s slipping. Erroneously crediting Hamas with endorsing Obama is just a cheeky error in judgement but this guy got the players in the Iraq mess mixed up. Sure, most people have trouble keeping Sunni and Shiite Muslims straight but McCain’s talking about keeping troops over there for another 100 years or so. It would be nice if he had some idea who they’ll be fighting and why. If McCain can’t keep the friends and foes straight we’re going to see things get worse before they get better.

Don’t get me wrong, old people are great but there’s a reason we send them off to nursing homes as soon as we can get the power of attorney form signed. McCain might be fit to serve a term as the president of his shuffle board club, but I’m not so sure about the White House. Age might be nothing but a number but so is a golf score. When it comes to keeping this country on the green McCain is a few strokes over par.

She's just being Miley

Fatherly Love?

(photo by Annie Leibovitz...Vanity Fair)

Apparently Miley Cyrus didn’t know that posing in the nude is sexual. Now that her spread in Vanity Fair has stirred up controversy among the puritanical core of her fan base, Miley is playing the role of the victim. She’s embarrassed by the photos and feels betrayed by the photographer, Annie Leibovitz.

To use the vernacular of Miley’s typical fan: What-ev.

Look, sweetheart, you took all your clothes off and wrapped yourself up in a satin sheet. What did you think that shoot was about?

Of course Miley knew damned well what she was doing. She’s only 15 but she’s been an international superstar for the past few years. Disney’s been selling her sex in that plausibly deniable way they'vemastered in all their years of pimping kids, so don’t tell me Miley didn’t go into this shoot with eyes wide open.

And that’s OK. At 15, Miley should want to shed the Hannah Montana persona and be herself, which happens to be a cornpone country singer with decent looks, a great body and average vocals. Combine that with schmaltzy chicken-fried bloodlines courtesy of achy-breaky Billy Ray and you’ve got a CMT sensation on your hands.

Speaking of Billy, he’s in the shoot with his daughter. In fact he’s in one of the most disturbing photographs in the history of pop culture. He’s staring wistfully in the distance, wearing another regrettable hairdo and a cheesy post-Eurotrashian leather vest while Miley lies across his lap staring into the camera with bedroom eyes. It would be a great sensual picture if not for the heaping helping of incestuous ick. Annie Leibovitz might be innocent of misleading Miley but she did snap that nasty picture. It made me think back to the story about Miley attending a so-called “Purity Party” with her dad where she promised to protect her cherry for him. Ewww!

EWWWWWW!


EWWWWWW!

If you want to blame anybody for the shoot blame him. He’s supposed to be her father and most fathers would have blown their tops the minute their daughter was asked to remove hers. Of course, Billy’s parental credentials were already in question before the shoot. While we don’t know the whole story we do know that Miley got cast as Hannah Montana a few years ago, Billy packed up the family and moved to Beverly…Hills, that is. Somehow he managed to parlay Miley’s role into a supporting gig playing Hannah Montana’s dad and the rest is history. Billy turned the shows popularity into a couple of recent hits for himself and, if he’s half as cunning managing his career as he’s been with his daughter’s, he might avoid becoming a pop culture punch line for the second time in his life.

In all honesty there’s nothing wrong with Miley’s coming out party. Some of the pictures were a little sexy. As a guy who’s far too old to be ogling girls Miley’s age it’s a little unnerving because it forces me to draw an internal line somewhere between acknowledging that she’s a cute kid and sneaking off to the men’s room for a midday flogging. I think I’m mature enough to handle it.

The people freaking out are the hoards of idiot parents out there responsible for selling out every Hannah Montana concert. They have daughters that worship Hannah/Miley. What will this do? Well, if Miley has that much of an influence over your child you were probably screwed long before Miley got naked.

Even if you’re a decent parent who has done a good job of keeping the whole Hannah Montana craze in perspective there’s a pretty good chance that your daughter was going to develop a sexual appetite some where in the middle of her teenage years. Don’t blame Miley, Annie, Billy, or Liberals. There’s a little thing called biology that triggers sexual behavior around the same time the baby-making bits start working.

Rather than hide your kids from sex and throw wild tizzies whenever the next Lindsay/Hilary/Miley starts to get her freak on you might want to engage in a realistic discussion about sexuality. Instead of laying down mandates such as: NO SEX UNTIL YOU’RE MARRIED, perhaps more realistic parameters are in order. After all, we’ve pretty much established that religion and Purity Pacts simply don’t work. If anything those alternatives to reality prove to be counterproductive. Sure, kids might not be engaging in traditional baby-making vaginal intercourse but they’re doing everything else you can think of and quite a few things you probably can’t imagine. Have gun will holster. Where there’s a hole there’s a lay.

Miley’s got no reason to feel embarrassed or ashamed of those pictures. She doesn’t have to apologize for wanting to feel sexy. At 15, her parents have the ability to sign off on things like the Vanity Fair piece so if you want to blame anybody blame Billy Ray, but be careful with doling it out. Incestuous pictures notwithstanding, Billy Ray probably knows his daughter and might have felt that she was mature enough to handle the adult context of those pics more importantly, Billy Ray doesn’t have to consider what impact his daughter’s career path might have on millions of girls around the world.

It’s disappointing to see the Cyrus family turn tail and run from the outrage. Billy Ray’s claiming that the more illicit pictures, such as the seductive baby in a bed sheet shot that’s got everybody fuming, occurred after he left. Maybe that’s true but there’s still the one where he’s got Miley, in skin tight jeans and a belly shirt, apparently writhing on his lap. He was there for that, wasn’t he?

Pope Bless Us...Pope Bless Us Everyone

Pope Benedict is one hell of a guy. He recently expressed embarrassment over the Catholic sex scandal that seemed quite prolific a few years ago. He also vowed that pedophiles would not be allowed to join the clergy.

So does that mean they were allowed to join before?

That’s all fine and dandy but the fact remains that the church conspired to sweep the problem under the rug. Families were coerced into secrecy and repeat offenders were transferred to other positions within the church. Furthermore, Catholic officials stonewalled legal investigations by playing the separation of church and state card. How does Benedict feel about that?

I haven’t read anything about the Vatican launching an investigation into the scandal and holding people accountable and Benedict hasn’t explained how he plans to keep pedophiles out. I guess you could roll through a few slides of naked boys during the third interview and see if the prospective priest pitches a tent. Chances are most bishops probably have a stash of porn right out of the NAMBLA catalogue.

The reality is that you can’t stop pedophiles. They’re sneaky which is why they gravitate toward positions of trust like priests, teachers, scout leaders and the US House of Representatives. The only thing you can do is take their opportunities to pray/prey on children. That’s hard to do for the Catholic Church seeing as how they think God’s got it all under control.

Of course the only reason this is even an issue is because Pope Benedict is visiting the US. Now why is it he gets to have dinner at the White House and bend the President’s ear while other religious fundamentalists are characterized as terrorists?

Catholicism is funny. Prayers are really chants, many of which are mumbled in Latin. Services are orchestrated events where people stand, sit and kneel according to a strict routine practiced over years and years. You can’t walk around a Catholic Church without running into a collection box for one thing or another. I’ve even seen churches that have different price points for various candles. A little helpful hint: the big candles have more praying power.

Catholics don’t do a whole lot of bible thumping which makes them much easier to get along with than your average evangelical Christian who thinks they’ll get better seats in heaven if they can convert you but Catholics do tend to exude a sense of arrogance about their faith. They just don’t know why. The church starts in with religious programming so early that Catholics can’t express any point at which they made a choice to believe. It’s not faith, it’s ritual. Even the E & C Catholics fall victim to that weird spiritual signal that grows stronger around the major holidays. Everybody practices lent, gets ashes smeared on their foreheads and goes to midnight mass even though they would set foot in a church any other day out of the year.

Catholics will even throw the term “cult” around to describe other religions. They’ll mock the snake-handling hillbillies of Eastern Kentucky, and dismiss the practice of speaking in tongues as nonsense even though they’ll sing an entire hymn in an ancient language they don’t even understand.

Then you have the Pope. One day he’s just a guy who happens to be a Cardinal, then some smoke belches out of a pipe in Rome and suddenly he’s better than everybody else. Catholics practically worship the guy which seems to be a bit of a violation of the 10 commandments. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

Catholics also have saints which are supposedly people who are in heaven designated to perform specific miraculous functions. Saint Christopher is the patron saint of travelers so you pray to him that those fumes you’ve been driving on for the last ten minutes hold out to the next gas station. Saint Peter can help you with your erection; St. Paul is the patron saint of people who are overshadowed by their more popular twin; St. Peter Paul comes with or without almonds. One of the Saints Mary is the blessed virgin and the other is a blessed whore.

It’s all very confusing and more than a little frightening. Catholics even practice a gruesome ritual of eating the body of Christ and washing it down with his blood. And we think Wiccans are weird. Wiccans don’t eat Jesus, promote NAZIs to the highest rank in their organization or harbor pedophiles. Yet every time the grand Pooh-Bah of Catholicism comes to town in his wacky little bubble-mobile everybody lines up to pay their respects.

Too Black, too strong

I’m confused. Ever since Barack Obama through his hat into the presidential race people have been trying to convince me that he’s not black. I’ve seen pictures of him decked out in East African attire and I’ve been reminded over and over again that his middle name is Hussein.

My brother's middle name is Vernon, so you'll forgive me if I sypathize with Obama on that one. Parents make mistakes and middle names are where you can find most of them.

I’ve had trouble with that because my eyes tell me that Obama is black. He might not sag his pants and use cool words like Fah-shizzle but he’s definitely black. In fact I would guess that most white people would take one look at him walking down the street and immediately lock their doors but that didn't stop his opponents from trying to dilute his ethnicity.

Now I’m being told that Obama is, in fact, as black as they come. He might even be too black. He goes to a church that was once run by a pastor who sometimes expresses a little bit of anger about this country and the way it’s treated minorities. This, of course, makes him a racist and anybody in his church must be as well.

Never mind the fact that Jeremiah Wright has never called for anything as outlandish as segregation, nor has he affiliated himself with any organization that seeks to do harm to others. Wright is angry with white society and that makes him a racist. Because Obama goes to his church, that makes Obama a racist too.

Where does Jeremiah Wright get off? How dare he insinuate that the attacks of 9-11 were the tragic result of a misguided foreign policy that pressured Middle Eastern leaders to keep oil prices low? What right does he have to question the difference between the way the federal government responded to New York after 9-11 and the manner in which it handled Hurricane Katrina. There is no comparison…one was a sneak attack and the other was a well-documented distaster that unfolded with tedious predictability.

Obama even has the audacity to make excuses for his Pastor. As if living though segregation and the violence associated with the Civil Rights movement of the 60s gives an old black man reason to have a chip on his shoulder.

Sean Hannity made a great point: Wright’s comments don’t necessarily mean that Obama is a racist and an anti-Semite, but what if he is? Can we take that chance? I would be inclined to say no.

Of course that would be if the Republican Party hadn’t already established precedent.

Think back to John Ashcroft, a man who was appointed to the office of Attorney General by George W. Bush. He stood up at Bob Jones University and complimented them for enforcing a rigid moral code of conduct that included a ban on interracial dating. That’s not much of a surprise coming from a President who signed off on a smear campaign that falsely accused John McCain of being father to an interracial child, but it’s still pretty scary.

Even before Bush played the Good Ol’ Boy card with the inbred Wal-Mart shoppers in the Deep South, the Republican Party carefully crafted a method for pandering to bigots. Nixon curried a lot of favor in the South by actively campaigning against affirmative action and implying that the states should determine whether or not to be segregated. A few years later, Ronal Reagan played the same card, touring the South with a complex assortment of winks, nudges and handshakes with Grand Wizards. Reagan even supported the Apartheid Government in South African and called Nelson Mandela a terrorist.

Think about that: a terrorist. And these conservative pundits want to question Obama’s integrity because his pastor can get a little worked up about what this country has done to people of color?

I’m not buying it.

Of course conservatives aren't alone. Geraldine Ferraro actually had the gall to say that Obama is in the position he's in because he's black. She even stated that he's lucky he's black. Really? This coming from a woman whose claim to fame is being a gimmick to help Walter Yawn-dale score points with the female vote. Isn't that the trinket calling the token cheap?

After suffering through a righteous flurry of criticism, Ferraro stepped away from Hillary's campaign but she stands behind what she said. Then she added "I think they're attacking me because I'm white."

And we wonder why Jeremiah Wright's got a chip on his shoulder.

Lying: It's What we do best.

Andy Pettite, in case you don’t know, is a professional baseball player who happens to be BFFs with Roger Clemens. Both were named in the dreaded Mitchell Report as performance enhancing drug users. Clemens initially bit his tongue while he waited for his attorneys to craft a defense while Pettite confessed that he did use Human Growth Hormone to recover from an injury. Clemens has proven himself to be one of the biggest assholes on the face of the earth as he clumsily points the finger at everybody but himself.

Both of them are lying. Pettite doesn’t think he’s a cheater and he even tossed the GOD card out during a press conference. Somehow GOD told him that it was OK to take HGH, apparently as long as he didn’t try to throw a perfect game or break any records because then it would count as cheating. It’s nice to see that GOD has the time to advise Andy Pettite but can’t seem to clear his schedule off for issues like poverty, famine and the Bush Administration. Nice work up there, big guy. Pettite apparently doesn't know that every great lie starts with those three little letters: G-O-D. When people pray on someting it means they conspired. If somebody claims that they're at peace with Jesus it's because they know the rest of the world is going to see them for the deceitful frauds that they are. Sure, use Jesus as a character witness, it's not like he'll refute it.

Pettite even testified that Clemens told him that he used HGH too. Now Clemens is calling his lover..I mean butt buddy…everything just short of a liar. Andy don’t hear so good, and he miss-remembers things. My mom told me to take b-12 shots. My wife takes HGH. Sure Rocket, we believe you.

This is just the latest in a long line of losing arguments. Why do people try to save face when the shit has hit the fan and splattered everything thing they own? You made the bed, go ahead and lay in it.

I think about Roger Clemens stumbling over his words and deflecting blame like Wonder Woman bouncing bullets off of her bracelets and wonder why he didn’t throw the high heat. Just admit that you took steroids. Take this imaginary transcript:

Shameless Congressional Bully: Did you take performance enhancing drugs. Mr. Clemens? And I remind you that you are under oath.

Roger Clemens’ big fat face: Yep.

Flat-chested Congressional Harpy: I’m sorry, can you repeat that?

Fat Face: Yes. I took performance enhancing drugs.

Bald, rat-like Congressional troll: Why did you take them?

Clemens: To play better, stupid.

Aside from a lot of gaveling and other elected officials rephrasing questions to get more face time on ESPN rather than CSPAN, the whole ordeal would have ended right there. Other than a lot of stupid posturing there’s nothing more to say. Roger Clemens doesn’t care if some 15 year-old in Pottsville takes steroids and he shouldn’t. As long as the league was looking the other way and the criminal justice system put steroids somewhere below counterfeit Groucho Glasses on the list of enforcement priorities Clemens did what any other aging athlete would do. That doesn’t make him a hero but being honest about it would have.

Brutal honesty is the best policy. I love Mel Gibson as an actor but I was really disappointed with his response to the whole anti-Semitic rant ordeal. Rather than meeting with Rabbinical leaders and asking for forgiveness Mel should have just admitted that he doesn’t like Jews:

By now you’ve all heard about my drunken rant in the back of a cop car. Let me just state for the record that those Malibu cops are just a bunch of glorified meter maids who don’t protect anything other than a front row seat at Krispy Kreme.

I’d also like to say that I don’t like Jews. I believe that Jews killed Jesus and I’m harboring a grudge on that one. It’s not personal, it’s theology. Hitler was way out of line with the Holocaust but I kind of get where he was coming from. Sorry if that offends you, that’s just how I feel.

That’s harsh stuff and I don’t agree with the sentiment but I’d have to give the guy props for being honest. It’s more refreshing than running to the nearest rehab clinic to hide behind substance abuse.

Bill Clinton dodged a qualified bullet when he said he didn’t inhale. What he should have said is that he ate it in a brownie instead. And that line about not liking it? Please. Everybody likes it. Bill should have said:

Dude, I play the Sax….of course I use marijuana. I only went into politics because I got tired of smoking shake and scraping resin out of my bong. I’m gonna be smoking that endo, baby. All the way to the White Hizzie.

If he had been honest about his love affair with ganja he could have easily altered his testimony when asked about his affair with Monica Lewinsky:

I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky but I was so stoned I could have been raped by Rush Limbaugh and I wouldn’t have noticed.

And speaking of Rush, I would have been forced to give him credit if he would have had the nerve to face his drug scandal with a little candor:

Ladies and Gentlemen it’s true that I, Rush Limbaugh, am hooked on narcotics. I like to get low. I know I’m on record as stating that drug addicts should be locked up in prison and I still believe that. I also believe that an exception should be made in the case of all rich white men. I didn’t think I had to clarify that being a Republican but there it is. Now if you’ll excuse me I’m going to have my illegal immigrant housekeeper score me an ounce of Afghan Gold and I’m going to melt away in the corner.

Imagine how refreshing it would be. George W. Bush could admit that Dick Cheney’s calling all the shots, except for the one that hit Harry Whittington in the face of course and Dick Cheney could admit that they stopped thinking about 9-11 on 9-13. Where do you go from there? There’s no story when the truth comes out.

What would we do if OJ Simpson came out and admitted that he did kill Nicole and Ron, then stuck out his tongue and said nyah, nyah? Yeah, I killed the bitch and that little boy toy of hers too. So kiss my black ass. Hard core? Yes, but how do you deal with it? We can’t do anything about it and the closure of him finally putting any speculation to rest would allow OJ and the whole stupid saga to fade into sweet anonymity. Nobody really cares that he’s free...nobody outside of the Brown and Goldman families cares about the victims. The only reason this case is still an issue is because of OJ, but if he fesses up we’ve got nothing to fret over.

Of course it’s never going to happen. We’re born to lie. We learn at a very early age that honesty is only the best policy when somebody else is to blame. Think about it, do you remember that first time your mom coaxed the truth out of you by promising she wouldn’t be mad? That was the last time wasn’t it?

Republicans trim roster, but what game will they play?

Mitt Romney closed out his presidential campaign stating that he needs to step aside so the Democrats don’t win. What really happened is that the big cronies in the GOP camp promised him a spot on the ticket. He had a great run but there’s only room for one religious crackpot in the presidential race and the people have spoken. They’d rather have a freak who actually believes the world is 6,000 years old in the White House than a Mormon.

It figures. After all, Mormonism is just a much older version of scientology. The religions were created in very much the same way. We know that Scientology was invented by a mediocre-at-best science fiction writer who concocted a bogus religion in the midst of a year-long bender. Amidst a haze of drugs, alcohol and unsavory women, L. Ron Hubbard drafted Dianetics. What started off as a joke between friends morphed into a very serious cult that has attracted people rich and powerful enough to put the kibosh on public mockery.

Mormons didn’t have Tom Cruise and John Travolta on their side way back when Joseph Smith claimed to have translated religious texts from ancient golden plates back in the early 1800s so the handful of people who read the Book of Mormon and actually believed it wandered westward until they ended up in the middle of Utah next to a big salty lake that smelled like sulfur. Now, most people in their right minds wouldn’t think of taking up residence down wind of what can only be described as a cesspool but we are talking about people who gave up everything to follow a religion some washed up hack of a writer created. Nobody in that wagon train was in his right mind. And if you ever visit Salt Lake City you might be inclined to agree that they still aren’t .

Of course, in defense of Mormons and Scientologists, is Christianity really that much different? Look at the brand of religion Mike Huckabee practices. This guy will look you straight in the eye and tell you that God created the world in seven days and it all took place about 6000 years ago. Archeological evidence that provides proof to the contrary is nothing but tricks buried in the ground by the devil. That’s why Huckabee won’t win the nomination. Most conservatives like a man who talks a good god but they don’t want somebody who actually believes that crap. McCain and Romney are a match made in heaven.

Of course Romney might want to stop pointing the moral finger at Democrats. We’ve had 8 years of Republican dominated leadership and I’m not sure the country is ready for more of that brand of morality. Is gay marriage still an issue? I find it hard to believe that gay marriage made Larry Craig feel the need to solicit a love connection in an airport men’s room. Ted Haggard didn’t smoke a blend of crystal meth and man meat because Ohio State University chose to extended healthcare benefits to homosexual partners. The ACLU didn’t force anybody to have sexual relations with congressional pages.

Romney’s preaching from a pulpit of moral piety but he’s standing and thin ice. The Republican Party seems to embrace a concept of strict social discretion but they don’t have a concept of personal morality. That’s really the underlying theme in spirituality. The Bible is not intended to be a blueprint of how to run a country but rather how one person should tend to his own affairs. And Republicans have proven that their notion of morality doesn’t work. Conservative leaders frothed at the mouth over Janet Jacksons nipple getting 0.27 seconds of air time during a Super Bowl halftime performance but when Mark Foley got caught dipping his wick in teenaged boys those same leaders conspired to sweep the mess under a rug.

Now one would not be out of line to dismiss the Republican Party as a band of hypocritical pederasts who seek to codify morality into enforceable legislation for the sole purpose of enhancing the sexual tension of their perverted indulgences but let's not go overboard and call them closet homosexuals. It’s wrong to categorize the acts of Mark Foley and Larry Craig as homosexual because the vast majority of homosexuals don’t go to such extremes. That’s more or less a Republican thing. They aren’t gay, they just enjoy kinky sexual encounters with other men, or boys. Sometimes sheep but in Rush Limbaugh’s case he thought that ewe had eaten his bottle of Oxy. Say, didn't he once have some pretty good ideas on how to deal with addicts?

That’s why McCain’s in the lead. In a world full of angry white men who can’t get enough penis McCain might be the one guy with clear vision. Even if he can’t decide what that vision is. Back in October of 2004 the man was practically endorsing John Kerry, then he did a complete 180 and threw his enthusiastic support behind George W. Bush. McCain even met with Jerry Falwell, a man he once called a divisive zealot, and kissed his wrinkled butt to pander to the wild-eyed, snake-handling Christians Karl Rove coaxed to the polls. It threw them off because the fundamentalists weren’t used to going to church on Tuesday...that’s wife beating day...but it worked and they kept things close enough for the rigged ballots in Florida and Ohio to do their thing.

McCain learned a lesson but maybe it came too late. He used to be a bulldog who grabbed hold of the important issues and wouldn’t let go until his party dealt with them. The guy had balls. Now they’re gone. And in a party so infatuated with male genitalia it really doesn’t come as a surprise.

Caucuses?

Caucuses. That doesn't sound good. I think I've been hacking up a good bit of caucus lately. All I know about them is that they happen in Iowa and New Hampshire and they play a roll in who the next president will be. That's unsettling.

Most people have never been to Iowa and if they have their way it will stay that way. Those same people were probably quite surprised to realize that New Hampshire is still a state. I know I was. It's hard to pick two states more obscure than Iowa and New Hampshire which is probably why both states clamor for attention by holding early primaries. It's like gymnastics and track, people only care about them once every four years. And then interest is marginal at best. Now if Hillary would get on the balance beam and do a few splits....ew. Sorry, that was wrong. Let's see if Fred Thompson and Dennis Kucinich can get their wives to do some splits for us. That would be better. In fact, if Fred and Dennis were the candidates this summer Their wives might actually get into a good old fashioned cat fight. One of those sexy cat fights where they rip off each others clothes and end up making out. That would be awesome.

It's funny that a handful of marginally literate sod farmers and the six people who live in New Hampshire have so much clout in determining who will represent the major parties in the upcoming election. Not only do these states represent a fraction of the electoral votes necessary to win the White House, they harbor the strangest people. New Hampshire is notable for it's motto: Live Free or Die. Sadly, residents tend to die. Mostly because of Lyme disease as New Hampshire is infested with deer ticks. Surely that affects voting.

Don't confuse Lyme Disease with Key Lime Syndrome. Key Lime Syndrome is a disorder that compels people to drink frozen cocktails and wear ugly shorts. Lyme Disease is a horrible affliction that makes people forget how to enunciate the letter "r".

Corn is Iowa's state motto. Interestingly enough corn is also Iowa's state flower, state tree, and state bird. You might be think corn doesn't fly but if you happen to visit Iowa during tornado season (February through December) you'll be proven wrong. Iowa is known as the Hawkeye State but that's because of the dirty look they gave Nebraska when Nebraska copy righted the term corn husker. It's true.

These are states that simply don't matter. The US Government put a bunch of missile silos in Iowa so the Soviets would target most of their missiles there. They didn't care about Iowa then and still don't as many of the missiles hidden in Iowa have been left to deteriorate and ooze radioactive sludge into Iowa's water table. New Hampshire is even less important. The only reason it was created was to cut Maine off from the rest of the country. For Some reason people from Maine get lost in New Hampshire and can't get out. New Hampshire is like a geographical roach motel.

I've been to both states. New Hampshire is mercifully brief but Iowa is like a treadmill. It doesn't look that long but it takes about two day to drive through it. If not for the deer ticks New Hampshire might even be charming but take one step out of your car and you'll find your body covered in tiny bloodsuckers hell bent on boring into your vascular tissue and laying eggs in your brain. I don't like the idea that these people have an influence on who Florida and Ohio will foist on us.

Lead Story.

I’ve grown a little weary with the tainted toy tales proliferating the news lately. Maybe unscrupulous manufacturers are cutting corners at the expense of our children, perhaps China is implementing a complex plan to achieve world domination, or maybe it’s just easy money for the pampered talking heads who call themselves news reporters. I don’t really care.

Lead paint is supposed to be bad. Apparently the consumption of lead can lead to mental defects but I don’t know if I buy the science behind that theory. Does lead cause cognitive problems or are the people inclined to eat lead a little slow in the first place? I was a kid once and of all the idiotic things I did munching the stray paint chip wasn’t one of them. I also don’t recall eating too many toys. Maybe spoiled rich kids have so many toys that they eat some out of boredom and extremely poor children eat them out of hunder but I was middle class. We had enough food but few toys. Even if we had enough toys to eat I don't think I would have. None of them seemed to appealing. My little brother also had a tendency to stick things up his butt so you really didn't know what you'd get. If it would fit in your mouth you could bet it would fit up his ass. Even without such a deterrent kids shouldn't eat toys. What kind of inbred little monsters are out there gobbling Thomas The Tank for breakfast?

The way I see it we should use lead paint more often. What sort of world are we creating for ourselves if we eliminate all of nature’s checks and balances? Idiots must die. It’s for the betterment of the species. Do we really want the sort of children who eat toys growing up to clog the gene pool with their moron mojo? I think not.

That is of course assuming that lead is bad in the first place. I think we need a better case study on this matter. Run down a list of the essential nutrients and you’ll find plenty of metals. Do you expect me to believe that Iron, copper, zinc and magnesium are essential nutrients but lead is bad? Please. I take chromium supplements but a little lead might turn my brain into mush? Get out of here. Sodium and magnesium are hazardous metals that will react dangerously with water and they're so good for me I take them in a multivitamin but lead, which has no reaction with water aside from sinking, is bad news. I think we might be giving lead a bad rap.

I’m not a scientist but I know enough about the process to understand they are often wrong. Sometimes a scientist becomes a slave to a hypothesis. They’ll see a fat man eating bacon and eggs and assume that bacon and eggs cause obesity but it’s not until they feed a fit and healthy man bacon and eggs that they realize obesity might be better attributed to cheeseburgers and candy bars. Could this be the reason we think lead is bad? Have scientists been depriving us of another essential nutrient just because a handful of inbred paint eaters scored poorly on an IQ test? Maybe.

They could be right, though. I know mercury is bad news in spite of the really cool name. When we were kids I was convinced that mercury was the key to attaining super speed much like that exhibited by the comic book hero The Flash. I carefully stole a bottle full of mercury from thermostat switches all over school and was prepared to drink it just before recess so I would gain super speed in time for our daily game of kickball. My best friend stole my bottle of mercury out of my book bag when I wasn’t looking and drank it before lunch. Nothing happened right away but over the next several weeks he turned a ghastly shade of pale and his hair fell out in clumps. The doctors managed to neutralize the mercury in his system but not before permanent damage was done. Now he works for the Bush administration as one of fifteen version of Dick Cheney. Interestingly enough all fifteen recruits were acquired through a medical records search for people who survived severe mercury poisoning. The real Dick Cheney is still alive but he has been hard wired into a defense computer at NORAD. My friend is the version who shot Harry Whittington but he did it under orders from Karl Rove because it was just the sort of thing the real Dick Cheney would do. It's a cool job but I don't know that looking like Dick Cheney is worth it.

Until we know more about lead and have some definitive proof that its bad I think we need to take a deep breath and relax. Is this really a problem? Do we have to send the global economy into a tail spin over this? I don’t think so. Tell your kids not to eat their toys. It’s that simple. If they listen you’ve got some bright kids with promising futures, if they don’t you get to purge the dead weight early and start fresh. It’s a win win situation. Now who wants to buy one of these bootlegged Thomas The Tank play sets?

Ohio Stripped of strippers

I’ve never been a big fan of being told what to do. I was a rebellious child and a resentful student. The trend continues to this day. I’ve infuriated employers and coworkers alike. It’s not that I don’t like to follow rules; I’m a law-abiding citizen and for the most part I’m an honorable and respectful person. My problem is when authority is imposed for authority’s sake. Don’t push me around. My response to the cop who tells me to “move along” is usually “get a warrant”. If I’m feeling particularly salty I might even call him “bacon boy” or “dough nut breath”. Fuck the police indeed.

I wear my seatbelt because I don’t want to end up in a wheelchair if some idiot crosses the center line and hits me head on (apply directly to the forehead) but it pisses me off that there are laws that make choosing not to wear a seatbelt illegal. If I don’t want to wear my seatbelt it’s really nobody else’s business. Sure, it’s dangerous to drive with out it but I do lots of things that are dangerous. I sure don’t want somebody telling me I can’t ski because the risk for injury is too severe. Screw you.

I’m not a big fan of strip clubs. Part of that is because my wife is smoking hot and will strip for free but it’s mostly because I’m a pretty big fan of completing the transaction…if you know what I mean. What’s the point in watching attractive women dance around in the nude if you aren’t going to dance with them? So I don’t go, but that doesn’t mean I want some bible-thumping loon to tell me when I can and can’t see naked women.

Ohio recently imposed a rigid law governing the operation of strip clubs. Basically strip clubs can’t operate after midnight. If they do, the ladies need to put their clothes on and wait tables. That’s patently stupid. On the rare occasion I feel slightly inclined to go to a strip club it’s after midnight. I suspect that’s the case for most guys. That’s why those phone sex commercials proliferate basic cable in the wee hours of the morning. Shutting the clubs down only diverts that post-midnight money.

Another provision in that law makes it a crime if an erotic entertainer and a patron are closer than six feet to each other. That’s a sticky wicket because there are a lot of situations where a stripper and a patron could breach that arbitrary radius, such as ordering a drink or walking to the rest room. Strippers will be like black cats with patrons trying to jump out of that dreaded “six-foot radius”. And heaven help you if you bump into a stripper in one of those dark, cramped clubs. That could be a felony. It’s also odd because we don’t know the limits… where does it stop? One could argue that waitresses at Hooters are defacto erotic entertainers and they continuously breach that radius.

And you can bet the cops will enforce the law. Why? Easy duty and easy money. Cops will line up to get assigned to a stakeout and the fines will roll in so fast the courthouses will install credit card machines in every court room. Gone are the days when nabbing sex offenders required extensive sting operations. Cha-ching.

The “six-foot rule” also ends the lucrative enterprises of lap dances, table dances and the revered tradition of stuffing bills into g-strings. What now…a collection plate? Speaking of which, I’d probably go to church and contribute readily if they’d peddle some flesh other than that stale old cracker they pass off as “the body of Christ.” I’m sorry but I’d like my savior to be a little more savory…and I wouldn’t mind catching the occasional glimpse of Mary’s virgin hoo-hah. What’s she hiding anyway? See, already I’m feeling sexually repressed. I’m almost 40 which means there’s a 50/50 chance I’ll be fat, bald and single in a few years. Then I’ll need strip clubs.

I suppose I can hang around the Catholic high school. I noticed that they built an addition and strategically encased a stairwell in glass. That makes it easy to sit outside and look up those naughty little skirts as the girls migrate between classes. Since the new strip club laws have gone into effect I’ve noticed cars starting to line up outside. I wonder if that was part of the plan. Will the diocese put in meters so they can cash in on the newly created market?

The argument for the strip club law is that it will cut down on crime. One proponent actually argued that men will spend less time and money in the strip clubs thus making them better husbands and fathers. Really? Or will that derelict father turn to some other diversion? There are certainly things much worse than strip clubs. Prohibition taught us a valuable lesson: Depriving people of alcohol actually increased criminal activity and turned a nation into junkies willing to brew rot gut in their bathtubs and drink turpentine straight from the bottle.

It stands to reason that the men who found some degree of sexual gratification in the controlled environment of the strip club will resort to illicit forms of satisfaction. I suspect illegal prostitution will increase. After all, if you’re committing a crime by getting a lap dance you might as well go all the way and make it count. And why is prostitution illegal in the first place? Sex is usually a transaction anyway. Is there really that much of a difference between buying a woman a tennis bracelet and giving her cash?

Morality is a personal issue. If you don’t like strip clubs, don’t go. If the strip club near you is a den of criminal activity then demand that the police enforce existing laws, but don’t sterilize society because you have a problem with erotica. Laws should only be written to protect people from doing harm to one another. Strips clubs aren’t forcing themselves on anybody; everybody is there by choice. If we’re going to impose laws on people to protect them from their own choices we might want to consider banning cheeseburgers and candy bars.

Or church. I’ve seen more lives ruined by evangelists than by strippers.

Craig violated Man Laws

I didn’t want to write about Larry Craig again but, like that creepy gay guy waiting for the GHB to knock his frat brother out, he just won’t go away. Sometimes a story won’t go away but in this case Larry Craig won’t. He plopped his tight little butt down on a couch conspicuously distanced from his wife and fielded prescreened softball questions from Today’s, Matt Lauer. Larry Craig certainly put on a better performance than Lauer, managing to emote a fair facsimile of consternation when Lauer sheepishly asked Craig if he was actually bisexual, but it was weak. Lauer asked the same questions Larry Craig has been answering for months. It was old news carefully reworked to give Craig an opportunity to show sincerity.

Where were the tough questions Matt? Did Katie Couric’s sickening levels of perkiness dull the sense of journalistic integrity you developed at Ohio University, or were you one of those guys who skipped classes in favor of the next party? Any guy who has used a public restroom knows Larry Craig is lying. He violated several important restroom codes…unwritten rules that preserve the integrity of the loo. Lauer should have confronted Craig on his violation of toilet etiquette. Even if Craig isn’t gay, the manner in which he flouted long standing policy in public restroom diplomacy is grounds to remove him from office.

Craig admitted that he peered through the gaps between the stall doors and the walls. The arresting officer claimed Craig was so close that one could determine the color of Craig’s eyes. Craig denies being excessively close to the stalls but he does admit that he peered through the gaps for “movement”.

This is unacceptable. Under no circumstances are people allowed to observe activity through the stalls. Generally a closed stall door is a sign that the stall is occupied and many stalls, particularly those in airports actually display an occupied tag when the latch is engaged. If the stall doors tend to rest in a closed position it is acceptable to glance under the door to look for feet but you never try to look through the stall at the person in side.

There are rare public restrooms that do not feature stall doors. My high school employed this measure to discourage smoking and/or monkey spanking. When a person was using the stall for those purposes for which these stalls are constructed visual contact was avoided. This is also true when men are using urinals…eyes front, fixed on a point well above the penis. Why do you think men have trouble aiming a device they’ve been handling since the womb? There is the Ray Busser exception. Ray is a guy I went to high school with who had enormous difficulty conducting bathroom business when people were looking at him. From 1986 through 1989 Ray ruptured his bladder four times because he simply couldn’t pee when people were watching him.

So Craig admits to violating an important rule in the restroom code of conduct. As a voter I can honestly tell you I would not be inclined to support him in future elections and I would expect the rest of the Senate to censure him at the very least.

Once Craig found a stall he claims that he assumed a wide stance while sitting on the toilet. A wide stance is fine for urination but when performing seated functions it is not practical. Some guys actually put their feet together and splay their knees, positioning their pants around the ankles. This makes it impossible to spread the feet apart without removing the pants. Most men prefer the “shoulder width” method which allows for optimal leverage while maintaining control over the pants. In all my years of utilizing public restrooms I have yet to see anybody assume a wide stance. Craig claims he’s a “wide guy”. I’m not sure what this means but when he makes this claim you can actually hear the quotation marks so I’m inclined to believe that this is some sort of innuendo.

Even if Craig is one of these rare people who finds the wide stance comfortable there are still rules that modify restroom behavior when neighboring stalls are occupied. In addition to the use of stealth modes (minimizing sounds) and courtesy flushes (minimizing stench), men honor a strict no touching policy. Hands are not shaken, shoulders are not squeezed and feet are not bumped in the restroom. That’s just the way it is.

Here’s the problem: Craig admits that he bumped feet with the cop. Granted he states that he thinks they bumped feet, but that’s a lie. You know when you bump feet and would be even more aware of it if it happened in a restroom. Even if he wasn’t soliciting sex this is still an arrest-worthy violation. It’s like running over an old lady in a cross walk; even if it’s an accident you have to pay the price. Matt Lauer should have gone on the attack right there. Have you ever bumped feet with somebody in a restroom before? Did that person punch you in the eye? What kind of a freak goes around bumping feet under stalls? Hard questions, Matt…you get paid to ask them.

Craig also admits that his hand might have breached the integrity of the neighboring stall. He claims he saw a piece of toilet paper on the floor and reached to pick it up. In the process his hand may or may not have passed under the divider. In the Lauer interview Craig explains that the toilet paper was on his shoe but when he was first questioned he stated it was on the floor. Clearly Craig read my last entry on how disgusting it is to be picking up stray pieces of paper on a public restroom floor and revised his statement. What he doesn’t understand is that it’s still not acceptable. If toilet paper is stuck to your shoe you try to rub it off on a rug or pull it off with your other foot. Nobody touches stray toilet paper. Craig would be better off claiming he was reaching for a stray twenty which is the smallest denomination a man of his income would pick up off a bathroom floor.

And no man in his right mind would risk breaching the other stall’s divider. You might as well shove your hand down another man’s pants and jiggle his goodies. Craig admits that it’s possible that the cop saw his hand on the cop’s side of the divider. Just creating that possibility is reprehensible. Keep your hands up.

Instead of tackling these issues and getting Craig to explain why a man of his age and pedigree would so wantonly violate basic restroom protocol is beyond me. I care less about Larry Craig being gay than I do about him refusing to honor essential man laws. Clearly, Matt Lauer is not a man…which might explain why Larry Craig didn’t play footsy with him during the interview.

Comma Ohio

What’s in a name?

For people in Columbus, everything. Apparently people in this city are fed up with having to include Ohio in the answer to the question: where are you from? It doesn’t bother me, in fact I insist on offering up the state just so I don’t get mistaken for one of those tobacco chewing mutants from Georgia. Still most people don’t want to be troubled with including comma Ohio. It must be too much work.

To be fair, Ohio is a pretty clunky state to enunciate. It’s only got three different letters in it but somehow manages to demand three syllables. That’s just out of line, but Ohio is a high maintenance state. We don’t even have a flag like the rest of the states; instead we opt for a burgee. Most people don’t know what a burgee is which is understandable since nobody uses them. It’s like two pennants stitched together. Talk about overcompensating.

Columbus is like the youngest child in a big family with active siblings. The city is constantly taunting Cleveland and Cincinnati by claiming that it’s bigger, smarter and faster than they are. Still Cleveland and Cincinnati enjoy single name status which infuriates Columbus to no end. Even lowly Toledo is in the cool crowd thanks to Jamie Farr. Akron and Canton are prospective members of that club as well but Columbus is stuck wearing that cheesy name tag that reminds people that it’s in Ohio.

City leaders even waste time on this subject. Elected officials have spent money trying to elevate Columbus to that level of recognition that would make comma Ohio optional. The city has landed professional sports teams and adamantly refused to allow those teams to be called the Ohio (whatever). Since many of the cities rolling sans state have professional sports teams Columbus civic leaders believe that this is the answer.

They might be right but it has to be sports people actually care about. Major League Soccer and the NHL aren’t exactly mainstream enterprises and even if people did care the local team has to win. The Columbus Blue Jackets aren’t a force to be reckoned with.
And there’s a prime example of what makes Columbus such a forgettable place. What the hell is a Blue Jacket?

It’s not really a stupid name. Blue Jacket was a Shawnee warrior who fought against whites as they expanded into the Northwest Territory. Most people familiar with those early Indian wars think of Tecumseh who was more famous than his predecessor. Little is known about Blue Jacket but he was active in the area around Columbus. The problem is that team officials don’t claim Blue Jacket as the inspiration…even though the only reference to Blue Jacket in the area is an epic outdoor drama depicting the exploits of the war chief.

Instead of developing that angle and paying homage to Shawnee heritage, team officials adopted a blue bee named Stinger as their mascot and put a civil war era cap on his head. They claimed that Blue Jackets was a nickname given to union soldiers. So they combined the concept of a mutant hornet with a fictitious etymology. Translation: boring.

Columbus is a city replete with plenty of reasons to forget about Columbus. There’s an infamous field of concrete corn on the northwest side of town, the Major League Soccer team is dubbed The Crew, which is a reference to the extensive construction work taking place around the city when the team was created, and wedged in a mud bank in the Scioto River, downtown is a replica of the Santa Maria. A big 1400s era sea going vessel is moored in the middle of Ohio.

Why?

It’s true that Columbus, Ohio, like so many other places in North America, was named for the explorer/opium peddler/slave trader/blithering idiot but why would a city in the middle of Ohio see the need to purchase a replica of his flagship? It’s not as if Columbus ever sailed through the Gulf of Mexico, up the Mississippi and turned right on the Ohio only to find himself curious about where the Scioto might lead him. Columbus never set foot on the mainland and is believed to have died insisting that China was just a little bit past the little islands he "discovered". Erecting such a monument to his efforts might attract historians and tourists interested in viewing the place Columbus chose to drop anchor and then the city would enjoy that mono-moniker it craves if only Columbus hadn't been such a lazy explorer. I have lived in Columbus for years and still can’t figure out why we are supposed to be fascinated with Christopher. It’s coincidental, people, let’s move on.

But Columbus isn’t alone in inanity. Nearby Westerville’s claim to fame is its stoic commitment to prohibition. The former home of the Anti-saloon League remained dry for decades only relaxing its alcohol restrictions in recent years. Another suburb, Reynoldsburg, celebrates itself as the birthplace of the tomato. No kidding. There’s a tomato festival in Reynoldsburg every year but nobody in central Ohio seems to know why. A call to the city’s office reveals that it’s the birthplace of the commercial tomato but explanations are vague beyond that. Why make such a dubious claim? It’s not as if it draws tourists. For some reason central Ohio’s favorite pastime seems to be clamoring for attention.

Most of the cities we know of on a first name basis earned it the hard way. In the 1980s and early 90s Columbus was known as Cow Town because there were still pastures within the city limits and the annual state fair is held just a few miles from down town every year. Cow Town records and Cow Town guitars both closed up shop in the late 90s but when the NHL first came to Columbus in 2000 fans wanted the team to be named the Columbus Mad Cows. In fact a minor league hockey team took advantage of that popularity and played one game as the Columbus Mad Cows. The jerseys remain popular with collectors. City leaders took umbrage and made great efforts to distance themselves from that name. They believed it was detrimental to the city’s image and could cost billions of dollars.

What they did was miss a golden opportunity to join the single name club. Cleveland endured (and continues to endure) mean spirited jokes about its industrial past and current economic woes. Recently Cleveland was the butt of yet another joke by NBC’s 30 Rock where characters on the show expressed a satirical admiration for Cleveland as a vacation destination. Does Cleveland throw a tantrum and demand respect? Nope, the city rolls with the punches. Great Lakes Brewing Company even named its flagship beer after the infamous 1969 fire that set the Cuyahoga river ablaze. For the record, Burning River Pale Ale is a fabulous beer. It’s aggressively hopped without being woody and the complexities of the malt shine through with each sip.

Toledo might very well owe its popularity to Jamie Farr incessantly plugging his hometown as Max Klinger on MASH. The name also stands out thanks in no small part to the exclamation Holy Toledo but Toledo is known for its many obvious faults more than it is its charms. Nobody seems happy about going there. Name recognition isn’t always a good thing. There’s a fine line between fame and infamy. Look at Reno.

Anonymity isn’t a bad thing at all. Columbus is a great place to live, so what if you don’t want to visit? Now let's all go to Applebee's.

Finally! A presidential campaign we can be proud of.

Our last two presidential elections lacked charisma. George W. Bush won because his party pandered to the Christian fundamentalists on the far fringes of the religious right. He surrounded himself with people who firmly believed that the greatest threat to our country was the enormous popularity of Harry Potter.

Everybody knows that Bush cheated in both elections…when Pat “Hitler” Buchanan gets enough votes to win counties with a heavy Jewish population you know that something is amiss…but he was only able to cheat because the Democrats failed to challenge him with a strong candidate. Al Gore was #4 in the Clinton Administration narrowly losing the number 3 spot out to whichever intern Clinton was banging that week but before that he took a back seat to his own wife, Tipper. To this day her stickers adorn almost everything at your local Media Play store, but her efforts to stamp out indecency were thwarted when Al invented the internet.

In an attempt to prove that Al Gore wasn’t quite as P-whipped as everybody made him out to be, the next Democratic Candidate was John Kerry who famously stuck his foot in his mouth and crapped all over his campaign by uttering the infamous quote “I voted for the war in Iraq, before I voted against it.” Kerry later went on to characterize the men and women serving in Iraq as uneducated. Only a nincompoop like Kerry could take military service commendations earned in combat and turn them into a liability. Kerry comes from a well-to-do family with political connections but he swooped in and married into the Heinz family fortune anyway. Not surprisingly it was Teresa Kerry who wasn’t afraid to speak her mind.

Bush was no winner either. As inane as Kerry can be Bush is worse. Kerry puts his foot in his mouth but Bush consistently talks out of his ass. He’s a blithering idiot surrounded by creepy overlords like Dick Cheney who will shoot you in the face for no apparent reason and then demand an apology from you. With Bush, we’re talking about a guy who sexually harassed a world leader on international television. If you think that’s overstating it find the highest ranking female executive in your company, sneak up behind her at the quarterly meeting and squeeze her shoulders in front of everybody. Good bye career.

Charisma won’t be a problem this time around. Both parties have fielded a pool of front runners that are certain to amaze, astound and titillate. The Republicans have lawyer-actor-senator Fred Thompson taking the helm. Fred’s never been linked to any serious scandals but his wife is a former stripper/escort who is young enough to get him arrested in some of the northern states where the age of consent is a ridiculously elderly 16. If you thought Billy Carter, Roger Clinton and Neil Bush were campaign poison, wait until the Democrats start digging up dirt on the lovely Mrs. Thompson. Assuming, of course, that Fred passes conservative muster...there is reason for some to believe that Fred Thompson might have caught himself of case of the liberalism when he rubbed elbows with those bleeding heart Hollywood pinkos…like Sam Watterson.

If Fred falters Rudy Giuliani is likely to assume the nomination because he’s the only person still playing the 9-11 card who hasn’t been linked to a subsequent 9-11 scandal. Yet. There are those who take umbrage to the fact the Giuliani never made a visit to Ground Zero without his trusted media entourage but it’s nothing a photo montage and a little flag waving can’t cure. Yeah, Rudy exploited 9-11 for his own personal gain but he spent more time at Ground Zero than all of those stupid rescue workers who are whining about their health all of sudden. Those guys might have been crawling through the wreckage looking for bodies but Rudy could have been blinded by a flash bulb. Think of his retinas.

Giuliani has skeletons in his closet too and not just dead ex-wives he abandoned at their death beds. America’s Mayor grew up with mafia bosses. He played informants and hitmen with them. This is a biographical point Giuliani gleefully pointed out when he ran for mayor of New York City, but will the rest of the country feel good about electing a guy who made his fun money running numbers for the Gambino family? Overt mafia ties might work in New York and Chicago but the rest of the country prefers its politicians laundered.

Giuliani’s claim to fame is cleaning up New York but at what cost? Under Giuliani the NYPD ran amuck, shooting first and covering up the evidence later and while New Jersey is certainly a convenient place to dump the garbage when you run New York, we’ll need a president who is a little more creative. We can’t round up all of the drug dealers, bums and people who like to go out and ship them off to Canada. Or can we?

The biggest concern for the Republican Party is how to handle the campaign trail with all of the hot gay hook up spots being under surveillance. It was great when these sting operations were landing the limousine liberals in Hollywood but now all of that morality based funding has come back to haunt the moral majority. Can the Republican front runners keep their hands of other men long enough to win the election? How long can you go without hot gay sex?

The Democrats aren’t exactly rolling out a second string either. Hillary Clinton is the Imelda Marcos of skeleton closets. Hillary’s got scandals warehoused in locations around the country. The problem is that the Republican party spent millions of dollars digging up every last bone but couldn’t find the connective tissue to make anything stick to Hillary or her husband. Pundits like Limbaugh, Beck and Coulter will make all kinds of grand accusations but the only people buying them will be die hard Republican ditto heads. It will make for great entertainment but it won’t hurt her. They’d be better off proving that she’s a lesbian and when you look at Bill’s taste in mistresses that might not be far from the truth.

Barak Obama is the most intriguing candidate of this election. He criticized the entire baby boomer generation on record and his middle name is Hussein. Wrap your mind around that for a while. Barak Hussein Obama. In name alone he is already the greatest president this country has ever had. All of this country’s problems with the Middle East would melt away the day he wins the election because nobody in that corner of the world is going to mess with somebody named Barak Hussein Obama. In the various Islamic languages his name literally translates to Make My Day. To those people it might as well be Ivan The Terrible, Genghis Kahn or Pope Benedict.

Obama doesn’t have a long political career so it’s hard to tie him to any scandals but in addition to the name, Obama has familial ties to Islam. It’s even been rumored that he attended an Islamic elementary school in the Philippines where, according to conservative pundits, he may or may not have studied the mystical art of suicide bombing. Apparently he didn’t receiving a passing grade, but that doesn’t mean he won’t take it up as a hobby while in office. That should provide plenty of fodder once the campaign battles start heating up. Not that they’ll need it because Obama is black, after all. The day this country elects a black president is the day all the white people pack up and move to Canada.

Come to think of it, that might not be so bad.

Touching the Bases.

The reporters made him do it.

Larry Craig claims he’s not gay. All he wanted was a little guy on guy action in the men’s room and the next thing he knew he was being arrested. Granted, when the undercover cop first shoved him up against the wall and started frisking him Craig was excited but when he was marched out to the awaiting cruiser the gig was up.

Craig made the mistake of looking for love in the wrong place. Guys on the down low, as they call it, have to stay ahead of the cops. The airport restroom Craig tried to hook up in was an old hot spot that the cops were all too aware of. All it takes is one straight guy walking in on a casual daisy chain to bring the weight of the police department down on the whole operation. If Larry Craig had checked the chat rooms rather than taking Ted Stevens at his word, Craig would have known he was reaching under the wrong stall.

Craig won’t admit that he was on a sausage hunt in that crapper but he accepted a plea agreement. Now he claims that he copped the plea in order to get those pesky reporters off his back and believes that is sufficient grounds to revoke his guilty plea. It might work but does he really think he’ll get his credibility back?


http://www.azcentral.com/offbeat/articles/0909saltyburger-ON.html

In Georgia a McDonald’s employee was arrested and detained for over-salting a burger. She might face criminal charges. Of course the “victim” was a police officer who claims that the salty burger made him sick which prompted the accused to ask why he ate the burger rather than spit it out and demand a refund. Indeed.

This is a classic example of cops abusing their power and the criminal justice system playing along. It’s hard enough to get a cop to show up when there’s trouble but could you imagine an arrest being made if Joe Cubicle filed a police report over an over-seasoned chicken sandwich?

Then the FOP wants to pester people for donations over the phone. Why? So abusive cops can opt out of a private supplemental life insurance policy and let the FOP pick up the slack? No thanks, porky. We’ll start looking out for cops when they start looking out for us. Oink.

http://tv.msn.com/tv/article.aspx?news=274940&GT1=7703

Unlike the Academy Awards, MTV doesn’t mind if the Video Music Awards turn out to be a train wreck. They count on something going awry because that makes for good television. So if Andy Dick pees on Vanessa Carlton and Madonna French kisses Paris Hilton’s dog du jour, they’ll have plenty of fodder for future programming that does not feature videos. In fact, given the reality-based edge to their programming it’s quite possible that the “M” in MTV stands for Moronic. They don’t care, as long as we keep tuning in. And that’s why the VMAs have to be a disaster.

It was a great year. Britney Spears made a name for herself by having what might have been the greatest body of all time. She had no vocal talent, limited intellectual skills and her dancing wasn’t anything more than a vehicle to make sure he body was writhing in all the right places but she was just a body. Her face wasn’t even that spectacular upon further review. Well Britney proved that there might have been just a smidgeon of talent there early in her career because her performance was awful. She can’t even lip sync anymore and while her body is still better than what you’ll see on most public beaches, it’s far from the Barbie with a pulse vessel she once had. The reports about Brit being grossly out of shape are exaggerated but she has no business getting paid to prance around nearly naked anymore.

Kid Rock decked Tommy Lee. It might have been over Pam Anderson but more likely it was over a bag a weed. In case you though both of them were washed up, security opted to drag Tommy Lee out in a head lock while Kid Rock got to stay. Clearly he’s got a few minutes of fame left but look out Kid, next year Jason Mraz might bitch slap you and you’ll be the one hauled out kicking and screaming.

Of course that prompted plenty of wisecracks from people like Jamie Foxx who quipped something about ending white on white crime. Apparently Jamie was only funny when the Wayans brothers were writing his jokes. It’s not funny. What black people need to realize is that there’s a difference between white people and crackers. Every time white people get together to have a good time, crackers be fucking it up for everybody. You go to the VMAs and crackers be beating each other up in the back over some white trash tramp with a case of hepatitis and a crotch full of crabs. Guys, chill out. There’s room enough for two...and you both know it.

But the star of the show was Kanye West who threw a world class tantrum (again) over not winning any awards. Kanye is clearly the best person in the history of the world ever. He’s bigger than Elvis, The Beatles and Run DMC. Before him there was nothing and after him the world will be a better place. But only if he wins an award, otherwise he’ll punish us with his wrath. Kanye’s a decent rapper but when you get right to it, he’s really a one hit wonder. Gold Digger was a great track but the star of that show was Jamie Fox who performed a spot on impersonation of Ray Charles singing a new version of “I Got a Woman”. Without that pseudo sample Gold Digger wouldn’t have soared to the top of the charts. So that wasn’t Kanye’s song.

Kanye will tell you that Jesus Walk and Touch the Sky were huge hits but they weren’t that big. He’s scored some success and believes that he’s special because he doesn’t rap about drugs and violence but his music is still indulgent. The Fat Boys didn’t rap about drugs and violence either, neither did Kris Kross. Jesus Walk and Touch the Sky are both odes to Kanye’s massive ego. He thinks he is Jesus but Jesus didn’t throw tantrums over not winning awards. Kanye will just have to wait for Rick Ruben to remake his career.

We'll have a gay old time!

Gay-dar. Be it a keen sense or a breakthrough device man has been preoccupied with detecting sexual orientation. Until now there has never been a proven method for detecting homosexuality in men (when it comes to women we have the WNBA). Now the answer is clear: political party. Based on irrefutable evidence and countless studies it’s clear that Republicans are gay. It’s not mutually exclusive, however. While all Republicans are clearly gay, all gays are not Republican.

Larry Craig is the latest conservative queen to be identified. He got caught trying to put the “lay” in layover in a Minneapolis rest room. He copped a plea after trying to cop a feel from an undercover airport police officer. Of course when the story began circulating he denied it, insisted he was framed in a sting operation and called the arresting officer a liar but when the tapes of his interview with that officer became public Craig seemed to be the one struggling with the truth. Now he’s imposed upon his family and they are defending his sexual orientation.

Craig doesn’t deny making contact with the officer in the other stall. He admits that he might have bumped the officer’s foot.When accused of reaching his hand under the stall to gesture for sexual contact, Craig insists he was trying to pick up a stray piece of toilet paper off of the floor. None of it adds up. First of all, compromising the integrity of the stall and making contact with another man is grounds for a world class beating. There’s no oops in the men’s room. Not even when urine misses the mark. Talking is prohibited unless both men are at the sink washing their hands…which never happens because men don’t wash their hands unless their mothers are watching them. Secondly, nobody picks up toilet paper off the rest room floor. Not even the custodial staff. It’s too risky. That toilet paper could have any number of nasty things on it and even if it doesn’t the floor probably does. So every man in the world knows that Craig is a liar.

This comes on the heels of former McCain campaigner and Florida state representative Bob Allen getting arrested in a public restroom for soliciting sex from an undercover office. Again, a male undercover officer. Allen’s excuse was that he was afraid of black people so he figured offering a big black man 20 bucks and a blow job would save him from something worse but if you happen to be straight there really isn’t anything worse. Being forced to perform fellatio on another man is bad enough but losing 20 bucks in the process is just unacceptable. No way was he being honest.

Just before the November 2006 election the Mark Foley scandal broke. Foley was a conservative lynch pin who got caught carrying on a graphic sexual relationship with a teenaged congressional page. Foley blamed booze for his lapse in morals. It’s true that alcohol does impair judgment but it does not change sexual orientation. Nobody was really surprised by Foley’s affair with a nubile page, however, the outrage was over the Republican party trying to sweep that story under the rug and leave Foley on a committee dealing with the sexual abuse of minors.

Of course the homosexual high jinks aren’t limited to elected officials. Conservative Christian leader Tim Haggard stepped down from his pulpit when news of his ongoing sexual relationship with a male prostitute surfaced and there is a list of Republican staffers who are gay making the rounds. And lest we forget, conservative news skank, Jim Guckert owned and operated a gay escort service on the internet while working in the White House press corps. At least he advertised himself as a top, no self respecting conservative would ever choose to be a catcher. He despises gays but for a fee he’ll deliver a night of homoerotic pleasure you won’t soon forget.

Conservative pundits are clearly gay as well. We all know Ann Coulter is a man in drag. It’s the Adam’s apple, stupid. What wayward fraternity brother or horny PFC on leave hasn’t learned that lesson the hard way? The difference is that straight men don’t go back for more. Republicans do. Glenn Beck does. He also shops at pottery barn and adores scented candles. And while Rush Limbaugh hasn’t been taken to task on his boy toy at home, we all know it’s only a matter of time before we see a You Tube video of that beefy blowhard on his hands and knees reenacting Ned Beatty’s infamous scene from Deliverance. Wheee! Wheee! Wheee!

Poking fun by calling it the Gay Old Party isn’t fair. Republicans are deeper than that. It’s a big tent, filled with all kinds of kinky gay sex that would make the Village People blush. Republicans like it dirty and it’s so much more exciting when its taboo. Besides, there are plenty of respectable gay people out there who don’t deserve to be lumped in with these conservative freaks.

Republicans engage in the nasty fetish-oriented side of homosexuality. That’s why they legislate against it. Increasing the risk enhances the pleasure. The age old adage in Washington is that only two things can kill a political career. Teddy Kennedy proved to be the exception to the dead girl theory, now Republicans are racing to see who can overcome the albatross of a live boy. Somebody’s got to beat it, right? And the one who does will be a heavy hitter in conservative politics for decades to come.

However, Republicans are only human. We all have a tendency to overindulge and that’s why it seems that every day another Republican stalwart is caught up in another gay scandal. Nobody in the GOP wants to stand up and forcefully denounce the depravity because everybody’s doing it. Ask not for whom the bell tolls or in this case, for whom the chimes tinkle.

Getting the most out of celebrity gossip

It’s occurred to me that tabloid shows would be a lot more interesting if they actually emulated tabloids. Sadly this came to me recently when I was watching one of celebrity gossip gabfests one evening. I don’t know the names of the shows but it was not the show with Sugar Ray. Yes, I know his name is Mark McGrath but if people are going to insist on calling Darius Rucker “Hootie” I think it’s only fair if we call Mark McGrath “Sugar Ray”, which makes me wonder if these tabloid shows would fare better if “Hootie” was a host.

It’s important to clarify that I didn’t seek this show out. It happened to be on when I sat down and I did not feel inclined to change the channel. I’m not being coy when I say that I didn’t enjoy the program. It was awful. Believe me, I wish I was just saying that. I prefer to get my dirt from Best Week Ever because I like my gossip delivered with the snarky commentary that only has-been and never-will-be comics can deliver. Go get ‘em, Doug Benson.

The host (I later learned his name is Billy Bush) makes Ryan Seacrest seem like a man’s man. Billy Bush is an annoying little turd who seems more interested in his time in front of the camera than the people he’s supposed to be yammering on about. Granted that’s not unusual in his line of work. Katie Couric ditched a cushy gig on NBC so she could get more exposure on CBS. Well, she doesn’t get more exposure because Today ran for 10 hours straight but CBS guarantees plenty of shots at he legs and a special make up crew to keep those gams in prime condition. The problem with Billy is that he’s so obvious about being a whore. Billy Bush is like that hooker down in the warehouse district where as Katie’s more like a $2500 a night call girl, although at this point CBS is probably wishing they would have gone that route. The $2500 a night call girl would be cheaper and more believable.

One of the (ahem) news items was a quick blurb on Britney’s hair. Apparently it’s grown a full two inches since she hacked it off to get even with her evil mother. All it did was made it easier for her mom to steal her boyfriends. There was another segment on Nicole Ritchie and her official California department of corrections weight which seems to indicate a net gain of 20 pounds since Nicole was last arrested. Something tells me that extra 20 pounds was probably contraband stuffed deep into various orifices.

Now I’m sure that these shows are more interesting when Lindsay Lohan runs over a girl scout troop and with Halloween coming up around the time she gets out of rehab for real there’s still hope, but the content on these shows leaves something to be desired. When I see the tabloid magazines in the checkout isle I notice compelling stories about women giving birth half human freaks and alien conspiracies. Even the more mundane celebrity gab rags deliver interesting pictures of Sharon Stone’s flabby ass and Jessica Alba’s botched Brazilian. Why can’t they feature those stories on the live action shows?

I’d also like to see some hard hitting stuff. Paper tabloids love to speculate about sexuality, so let’s put some of these celebrities on the hot seat and get to the point. I’m tired of wondering about Nathan Lane. Come on, buddy, fess up. Granted stars like Nathan Lane don’t want to come out because the mystery keeps their names in the papers but why should they manipulate the press? This is still journalism, right? If these stars want to play they have to pay. Straight answers or no more publicity…not even if your publicist begs for it.

Imagine putting Tom Cruise to the test:

Gossip Monger: So, Tom, have you stopped being gay?

Tom Cruise: Yes…I mean no…wait, I’m not gay.

GM: It’s a yes or no question.

TC: No it’s not! You…

GM: OK, No it is. So is Katie comfortable with your relationship?

TC: You’re a jerk.

GM: So she’s not. So are you seeing any famous men?

History in the Making

The Bush Administration is surreal. We’ve seen audacity before: Bill Clinton actually requested clarification on the legal definition of the word “is”. George H.W. Bush barfed on the Emperor of Japan. Ronald Reagan made “I don’t recall” his presidential motto. If he becomes a permanent fixture on the dime they should replace “In God We Trust” with “I Don’t Recall”.

It doesn’t stop there. Gerald Ford was clearly appointed to pardon Richard Nixon who ordered federal agents to steal documents from the Democratic opposition. One can only imagine that he was talked down from ordering the assassination of the leading Democratic candidates and settled on theft as part of a compromise.

Presidents and the people around them have proven to be corrupt and inept often at the same time. This dereliction of duty started with John Adams when he forced the passage of the Alien and Sedition acts in order to quash criticism of his administration. Interestingly enough the Bush administration has tried to use its power to limit the scope of the press.

Nothing compares to the Bush administration and we’ve had some doozies. Bush has taken the worst we have seen out of our past presidents and gone one better. The good news is that it’s hard to imagine it will ever get worse. The bad news is that this guy managed to get two terms. Sure, both elections remain steeped in controversy with final counts in pivotal states still in question but how did it get close enough to steal?

You can run down the list of cabinet officials, review a biography of Karl Rove and analyze the policy positions taken over the course of the past 7 years but nothing tops the two men at the top. Bush is the ever-bumbling moron to the embodiment of comic book evil that is Dick Cheney. It’s almost like a live action version of Pinky and The Brain.

Almost because The Brain was a cerebral intellectual genius who was often undermined by his control group counterpart where as Cheney is more of a surly old bastard who uses his bumbling sidekick as cover. You get the impression that when these guys leave office newly appointed White House officials will discover a shit stain on the Constitution from where Cheney literally wiped as ass on it and the Declaration of Independence will have splotches of Kool Aide on it because Bush used it as a coaster. We’ll probably find Lady Justice in a Supreme Court cloak room bound, gagged and sodomized with her scales and the Statue of Liberty might very well end up turning tricks in a Beijing massage parlor.

Unlike the quintessential bad guy, Cheney has no class. He dropped the F-bomb in Congress. Granted, we’d all like to (WTF is going on in here?) but Cheney used it in a threatening manner when addressing a rival. It should have been shocking but it wasn’t. We’re talking about a guy who shot a man in the face and then sat on his ass while that same man apologized to Dick Cheney for the public humiliation the shooting caused. Cheney is a heartless son of a bitch. Literally! The Federal government has spent almost as much money on Cheney’s ticker as it has on body armor for the troops. Cheney makes Emperor Palpatine from Star Wars seem like a fair and decent human being.

I’m still trying to figure out if W hails from the prominent political Bush family of Maine, Texas and Ohio or if he is actually related to the Bush’s Baked Beans clan. His father wasn’t exactly a great president nor was he an eloquent statesman but George H. W. Bush didn’t come across as patently stupid or even arrogant. The younger Bush is a dangerous combination of both. He’s definitely the product of several generations of wealth and the inevitable inbreeding that occurs when opulent people marry to consolidate power.

We’ve had presidents who managed to cast poor public images in the past. Jefferson was a poor public speaker who mumbled in hopes of hiding a lisp. Carter seemed wimpy, as did the elder Bush and Richard Nixon was just creepy. Gerald Ford was widely regarded as somewhat dumb but that was because he was a very slow, deliberate speaker. When it comes to speaking it’s hard to think of a politician who hasn’t put his or her foot into his or her mouth. And when it comes to lies, boy do we have a surplus. Ronald Reagan was about as dishonest a president as you can find but he had so much charisma that there are people who actually want to put his face on Mount Rushmore.

Nobody beats Bush. Most people carefully craft their lies but Bush just fires away. He’s like that neighborhood brat you could catch red-handed throwing rocks through your garage windows only to deny it to the bitter end. Bush characterized John Kerry as a flip-flopper but it’s not hard for the producers of the Daily Show to compile a video segment of Bush contradicting himself. In fact the only time Bush seems capable of speaking with out stumbling over his tongue and creating new words is when he’s telling lies. It’s the truth that comes out in slow, garbled phrases that don’t quite make sense.

Thomas Jefferson was known to show disdain for pretense and offended many white house guest by suspending accepted social decorum for a more relaxed environment. Seating during White House dinners was based on who got there first and many dignitaries took offense that their fashionably late arrival resulted in a less desirable seat. This was a shrewd ploy by Jefferson to demonstrate that the American concept of power was different and respect was granted on an individual level, not necessarily by station alone.

Bush demonstrates a lack of decorum as well but his goes beyond the symbolic displays practiced by Jefferson and into the realm of boorish self-importance. From sexually harassing the Chancellor of Germany to shouting “Yo, Blair” across a room filled with foreign leaders, Bush has proven that he simply lacks respect for everybody that is not George W. Bush. He’s the “war president”; he is the “decider”; he doesn’t have to engage in tings as bothersome as diplomacy.

Other presidents went to great lengths to show world leaders respect. When John Kennedy faced the irascible Khrushchev he did it with a sense of poise and rationality that won him the respect of every other leader in the world. Imagine what life would be like had Kennedy possessed Bush’s sense of self-righteousness.
Long ago Bush decided to abandon his ivy league roots and embrace life as a redneck. He is a combination of Elmer Fudd and Yosemite Sam. He makes ridiculous accusations, outlandish threats and then has the nerve to blame liberals for the mess he made and Cheney comes out of his casket every so often to keep the train on the wrong track. It would be hilarious if it wasn’t real.