Have you ever wished you could find that perfect song to express those tender feelings you couldn’t put into words yourself? I think I may have found it. Well, that is if your feelings are about Janet Reno when she was state attorney general of Florida, and the (apparently) commendable job she did enforcing child support payments. Oh yeah, I forget to mention it’s a booty bass song.
Anquette "Janet Reno" via Fluxblog
Been wanting to post about this all week, but haven’t had time. In the newest issue, "America’s Favorite News Magazine" - TIME gives a free finger fuck to the far-right with its cover profile of Ann Coulter. The article inside is lazy hagiographic horseshit that treats Ann like a conservative Bill Hicks ("a right wing Ali-G" is the actual quote) , and her detractors as humorless PC stiffs who miss the subtlety of her barbs. "Like, lighten up guys, she’s just joshing!" (This is the old Limbaugh defense, like when he told a black caller to take the bone out of their nose). Here are some of her funniest ‘bits’:
"We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity." - Sept. 12, 2001
"My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building."
"When contemplating college liberals, you really regret once again that John Walker Lindh is not getting the death penalty. We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, too. Otherwise, they will turn out to be outright traitors."
"(Sheryl) Crow explained that the best way to solve problems is to not have enemies.’ War solves that problem too: We won’t have any enemies because we’re going to kill them."
"I think we had enough laws about the turn-of-the-century. We don’t need any more." Asked how far back would she go to repeal laws, she replied, "Well, before the New Deal … [The Emancipation Proclamation] would be a good start."
Ann Coulter: I take the biblical idea. God gave us the earth.
Democratic Strategist Peter Fenn: Oh, OK.
Coulter: We have dominion over the plants, the animals, the trees.
Fenn: This is a great idea.
Coulter: God says, "Earth is yours. Take it. Rape it. It’s yours."
I really cannot imagine where we are headed when a vile proto-fascist like Coulter is given the stamp of approval of the consensus crowd. Check out this line from near the end of the article: "On TV or in person, you can trust that Coulter will speak from her heart. The officialdom of punditry, so full of phonies and dullards, would suffer without her humor and fire." Now, check his pathetic defense in an interview with Columbia Journalism Review about the cover story. The rationalizations are laughably inconsistent, ranging from justifying it b/c they had Michael Moore on the cover to excusing it b/c they had Hitler and Stalin on there as well. The first obviously concocts a false rhetorical equivalence, and in the second he is saying cover treatment doesn’t mean approval. Now, I haven’t read either of the two dictator issues, but I’ll lay good money down that Hitler or Stalin didn’t get the gushing valentine Coulter lucks into here. The article states "Coulter has a reputation for carelessness with facts, and if you Google the words Ann Coulter lies, you will drown in results. But I didn’t find many outright Coulter errors." But yet, when confronted with the fact that he may have missed, oh, a few in the interview with CJR - "My story was not primarily about picking apart … all 1,000 of Ann Coulter’s columns or the hundreds and hundreds of pages that she’s written in her books. My job in this story was not to be a fact-checker"
(Sound of needle being violently jerked from record)
Then why the fuck did you choose journalism as a career?????? This isn’t the Weekly Reader, this is the god-damn cover story for TIME magazine on a highly controversial political ‘thinker’, one who is frequently, and rightly, accused of making most of what she says up. Maybe fact-checking shoulda landed somewhere near the top of the old priority list, you think?
Anyway, the point is, words have consequences, and all this wildly irresponsible rhetoric will enact a heavy price somewhere. Given the extremely polarized, and more importantly, dangerous (esp. if you’re gay or Muslim) political climate right now, the worst possible thing you can do is give legitimacy to nutjobs like Ann Coulter, Michael Savage, Michelle Malkin or whatever reprehensible mouthpiece is most popular next week. But the media continues, letting the hard right pull their strings, e.g. doing their best to shove the extremist viewpoint on Schiavo down an unwilling public’s throat, and looking the other way when Republicans issued coded fatwas on the judiciary when it didn’t rule their way. A president narrowly squeaks by for a second term, and the media is ready to hand over the keys to the republic to the mouth breathers and the faith healers. The term "mainstream media" is quickly becoming an oxymoron. The far right is firmly in the driver’s seat, and the rest of us are just along for the ride.
Alas….
The Grand Prix is no more. After consuming three quarts of oil in two days and sputtering along fussily, the $300 dollar Yellow Beast gave up the ghost on Saturday. A ornery bitch till the bitter end, she stopped in front of a red-lined curb, clear out of pushing distance to a safer haven. Tried calling scrapyards to no avail, and the charities couldn’t pick it up until Monday. Walked to it today, and sure enough, my baby was gone, greedily gobbled up by The One They Call Caltrans. I greeted this most recent automotive disappointment with surprising equanimity, according to reports. Well, besides the experience of having at least 7 other cars do the same thing, I couldn’t help but be grateful for the time we had together. For the aforementioned price (thanks Dallas!), I received a loving, giving companion that somehow took me across the country and lasted nearly two years on the LA freeways. I’ll always have a soft spot for the ugly fucker. Guess I’ll be using the notoriously reliable LA public transit system until I free myself of the soul-crushing sprawl of Southern California and trade it in for the dense, inhospitable squalor of NY. As for what I’ll do for transportation there, I’ll have to quote the inimitable Dr. Emmett Brown:
“Roads? Where we’re going, we don’t need roads!”
Continuing in the vein of posting about dated topics…..
Last night, my brother Jon thought of the perfect name for a Movie of the Week we’re bound to see soon - Veggie Tales: The Terri Schiavo Story. *
*For the unintiated, Veggie Tales is a series of animated Christian films for kids, inexplicably using anthropomorphic vegetables to tell the story of Christ.
I wish I could figure out how to get this thing to recognize my new Friendster picture. The wacky-faced pope is going to look a little silly two months after he kicked it.
On the way home the other night, I pulled behind a black SUV. Their personalized license plate frame said “Watch Out” on top, and “Widow Gone Wild” on the bottom. Well, then. OK, now I have no problem with sexy septuagenarians shooting for potential GILF status, and I’m not going to condemn the elderly to being old maids just because the thought of seeing their unclothed bodies triggers my (admittedly weak) gag reflex. To each his own. However, when angling for a potential new beau, perhaps invoking your dead spouse right off the bat isn’t the way to go - especially if you’re going to reference a trashy video guide to drunken sluttitude. Regrettably, my first thought was an image: Estelle Getty on a New Orleans balcony, one lonely set of beads swaying back and forth between her drooping (and oddly tan) breasts as she drunkenly yells profanities and spills her Pabst on the horrified future date rapists below.
Think of that during your next moment of intimacy with your loved one.
Didn’t have the heart to call and tell my friends I couldn’t hang out at Big Wangs b/c my pants ripped at work.
Let me personally and publicly congratulate Sean McElwee for being the only other person I’ve ever met to not find The Big Lebowski the least bit funny. God Bless You, Kindred Spirit.
In lieu of something substantive, here are the songs that have an embarrassing number of times played on my iTunes recently. I’ve probably got 5 gigs of stuff from other people that I’ve haven’t listened to once, and yet it seems I listen to the same 20 or so songs constantly. Sigh.
New Loves
1. Psapp - Rear Moth
2. Emiliana Torrini - Sunny Road
3. M.I.A. - 10 Dollar [poj's cut price remix]
4. Deep Thinkers - Kiss the Sky
5. Mawglee - Used to Get High
6. VHS or Beta - No Cabaret
7. Mosquitos - Boom Box
8. Daedelus - Just Briefly
9. Bright Eyes - Landlocked Blues
10. Be Good Tanyas - The Littlest Birds
Old Flames
1. Merle Haggard - If We Make It Through December
2. El-P - Linda Tripp
3. DJ Q-Bert - Razor Blade Alcohol Slide
4. Ghostface Killah - Daytona 500
5. Bob Dylan - It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)
6. Shirley Brown - Woman to Woman
7. Harry Nilsson - Jump Into The Fire
8. Van Morrison - Domino
9. Aphex Twin - Avril 14th
10. Ice Cube - Bird In The Hand
