I care whether Elena Kagan's gay

(Note re blogging: I almost didn't notice that I hadn't written anything for two months, but now I am inspired by Andrea's reinvigorated blogging, and, let's be frank, by her saying my last post was funny. I'll do ANYTHING to be called funny. ANYTHING. Warning: the following post is probably not funny.)

I am really annoyed by all this "Elena Kagan shouldn't have to disclose her sexual orientation" commentary. People who say this do not actually mean "disclosing her sexual orientation," they mean "disclosing that she is gay," and it only makes sense in a world in which people are punished for being gay. For instance, every married nominee brings their family to their confirmation hearings, to sit there behind them as huge blinking signs of heterosexuality, but nobody thinks that is TMI. If there were no homophobia, sexuality wouldn't be something to be "disclosed" or not; it would just be a fact that's out there about a person, like where they went to college.

And it does matter if she's gay. If she were gay and out, that would be excellent because the other Supreme Court justices would be forced to deal with the existence of at least one gay human being in their lives. (Not that "diversity" always makes them see straight--the two Jewish Justices were recently unable successfully to explain to 5 Christians that the cross is a symbol of Christianity.)

But if she were gay and closeted, that would be weird and disturbing. I mean, yes, there is homophobia in the nation at large which explains why many people do not come out, but girlfriend is from a pinko family in Manhattan, has moved exclusively in lefty East Coast circles her whole life, and is 50, not 20. If she had not found the courage to come out by now (or, put another way, she had decided to keep an important part of herself hidden all this time, maybe so as to limit the kinds of ammunition people could use if she were nominated for something someday) it would make me suspicious about her trustworthiness and priorities. Plus, closeted gay public figures tend to be totally delusional.

Of course, I am totally late with this post because this morning a good friend of hers gave an amazingly awkward interview to Politico to prove that Elena's straight. Sooooo very straight!! For instance, "Walzer recalled 'discussion about who she might be interested in – the usual girl talk stuff-- talk about how to get his attention.'" Ack! Maybe I want to modify my opinion here--the fact of your sexuality should not be "private"/hidden, but most of the details past that probably should be.

Pro-what?

Here is what I don't get about the Superbowl ad with the football player and his mother talking about how she decided not to abort her pregnancy even though doctors told her she might die if she didn't: it seems off-message for "pro-lifers." Is their target audience really women whose lives are at risk? And is their goal really to convince those women that it would be immoral, and should be illegal, for them to have an abortion to save their own lives?

If not, then the message of the ad is: she was faced with a CHOICE and she made the CHOICE which others questioned but which was the right CHOICE for her. If that is the message they are cool with, then perhaps I have been misunderstanding things.

Julie Meyers Halloween pictures surface

As you might recall from my brush with quasi-infamy last fall, I happened to run into the same blackface-costumed dude to whom Julie Myers had, earlier that evening, awarded the "Most Original" Halloween costume at a DHS costume party. My friends could only find a blurry picture, and Myers, in true Bush administration fashion, ordered the official DHS pictures deleted as soon as it occurred to her that maybe she had oopsied. Congress, lacking dramatic photographic evidence, confirmed her in December.

Now DHS has produced the pictures (with the dude's face redacted) in response to a FOIA request from CNN. Julie says she didn't lie to Congress when she said the pictures were unavailable, it just took 3 months for DHS to forensically recover them.

I note a couple of things we can learn from this story:

1. If it takes our Department of Homeland Security 3 months to recover files from a camera memory card, the kind of thing that I feel confident an electronic discovery firm could do for a law firm in a couple of days, we are all totally screwed, homeland security-wise.
2. LAWYER DORK ALERT Congress should look into "spoliation"--the idea that if somebody destroys evidence on purpose, you should infer it's really really bad for them, and maybe, for instance, not confirm them as head of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.
3. Haha, I was totally right that it was the same guy!
4. Somebody should check the memory card on the camcorder they used for those waterboarding tapes.

I am one with the inchoate urges of the electorate

I have always been a big critic of the Undecided Voter, those blank-faced avatars the news shows get to watch the Presidential debates and mutter blankly about how they're still not sure. How the hell can you NOT BE SURE, and how can your decision turn on something like which guy made better jokes at the debate?, I am always screaming at them.

So it took me by surprise that I have totally become that dude for the Democratic primaries. Until the Iowa caucuses I was on board with Obama--not rabidly so, because excessive sincere enthusiasm makes me nervous, but pretty decidedly. While watching the coverage of the caucuses that night, though, I found myself defending Hillary when people said things like that it would be more ground-breaking to have a black President than a female one. Also, I admit, I was impressed by the near-crying incident--I dont know if it was fake or not, but if it was, what a performance!

Then after she lost in Iowa, I found myself feeling slightly disappointed that the race might be over so fast, and also kind of bad for her for all the piling-on. I think she's too conservative, but I found all the coverage about how voters don't want to return to "the Clinton years" really annoying because I don't think people mean "Bill Clinton pretended to be a pinko but passed some hideously retrograde legislation and nominated medium-to-conservative judges," they mean "We had to hear about Monica Lewinsky all the time." Which, get over it, plus I'm sure Hillary will not bring Monica with her to the White House. Would my change of heart have been enough to make me vote for her if I lived in New Hampshire instead of a disenfranchised non-state? Who can say?

Now that she's back in the running, though, I am swinging back away from her. She is still too conservative, after all.

So, my sympathy for the dumb voter has increased, but hopefully that will go away soon.

Julie Myers, blackface, Halloween, and me

Julie Myers, the head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has gotten in a wee spot of trouble for giving a costume award to a Halloween guest at her party whose costume entailed a striped prison outfit, dredlocks and blackface. (The award was for "originality.")

I had a weird and legitimately ironic encounter with the THE SAME GUY! (Or another guy in an identical costume.) We attended a friend's Halloween/birthday party at the Mansion on O Street, a bizarre bed & breakfast/restaurant/club apparently decorated by somebody's crazy/fabulous aunt, which featured a Halloween buffet dinner involving lots and lots of olives, a make-your-own PB&J stand, and zillions of cakes. I wore a costume consisting of my wedding dress, my pink fake-fur hat with ear flaps, and stamps and mailing labels affixed to my person, hence: Russian mail-order bride. (Pretty good given that I came up with it at midnight the night before, no?)

As we were about to leave, this very tall guy in a striped prison costume approached me and said his friends wanted to see my costume. I went and talked to his friends, who had accents of some Russian/Eastern European type, so I got nervous and kind of apologetic about the "Russian" element of my costume, and said I hoped it was not offensive. I was apparently so nervous that I did not notice that the GUY WHO HAD APPROACHED ME WAS IN BLACKFACE. Mr. T&A pointed it out to me after the fact.

Is it reasonable to think that this is the same guy? Or is it more likely that multiple people chose to wear blackface, dreadlocks and a prison outfit to Halloween parties in DC? What are the chances that I should apologize to a dude in blackface for the potential offensiveness of MY Halloween costume?

Update: A friend found the above picture showing the guy in question in the background. When Mr. T&A asked our friends if anybody remembered the guy in blackface at the party, everyone did, so it seems that my not noticing was aberrational. Also, in my defense, I am pretty sure I would have noticed if I had been, for instance, examining his costume so as to judge it.

MonicaGate II

I am very psyched about the prospect that Monica Goodling, the former Alberto Gonzales aide who has so far refused to testify to Congress about the firings of the U.S. Attorneys, has been granted immunity and will probably be forced to testify. I will totally watch with glee as a 31-year-old with no qualifications other than a degree from Regent University Law School (founded: 1986, Pat Robertson; accredited: 1996; motto: "Christian leadership to Change the World"; alums hired by the Bush Administration since 2001: over 150) squirms uncomfortably about what role she played in firing 8+ U.S. Attorneys for not prosecuting Democrats.

I also hope they also ask her if she was really the one who suggested to Ashcroft that he cover up the ta-tas of statues the Justice Department.

I also kind of want to see evidence that, as rumored, she's a crier. Is that evil of me? Mwahh hahahahaha!

However, I was perturbed by a recent NYT article about how Monica was also in charge of refusing to hire career attorneys if she thought they might be Democrats. Not just by the anecdote that she decided someone was a "liberal Democrat" because he "graduated from Howard University Law School, and then worked at the Environmental Protection Agency" (translation: "because he was black.")

The surprising thing is that the NYT portrayed all of this as Monica's own devious plan, which shocked! Shocked! all those who found out about it. They refer to the hire-only-rabid-Republicans plan as "Ms. Goodling’s strategy," and say she "insisted" she be given final approval in hiring assistant United States attorneys when there was an interim U.S. Attorney.

Dudes. One. The fact that the Justice Department weeds out lefties in hiring for career positions is as much breaking news as is Britney's loss of her virginity. And, Two. How does it sound vaguely plausible that this 31-year-old was coming up with a hiring strategy for the entire DOJ on her own?

If this is a sign that Monica is going to let herself get thrown to the wolves in order to protect the people who were really making the decisions, that is going to totally blow my schadenfreude about her testimony.

Fred Thompson is skinny grey jeans

I went shopping the other weekend and found myself inexplicably drawn to skinny grey jeans. This was surprising because I clearly remember myself thinking a year or so ago that the skinny-jeans trend was something that I was way too smart to fall for, and also that grey jeans were an annoying fake-ironic 80s throwback look for girls who were not actually born until the late mid- to late-80s.

What changed my mind? Why, looking at lots of pictures of people looking awesome in skinny grey jeans, of course. Here, try it:









Starting to grow on you, aren't they? One could get freaked out that it's so easy to get brainwashed by pretty pictures, but that's what fashion is about--a kind of group addiction that makes you want things mainly because other people want them. As group addictions go, it's much healthier than, say, religion.

Except it seems that the same logic has made Fred Thompson the skinny grey jeans of the Republican presidential candidate world. He's totally gonna be the next candidate, entirely because people have seen a lot of (relatively) pretty pictures (talkies, even!) of him as a tough prosecutor on Law & Order. He didn't even play the President! (I would definitely vote for President Bartlett, btw, if you're looking for work, Mr. Sheen.)

I submit that this is something people should be too smart to fall for, as it is an annoying should-be-ironic throwback idea for people who think they miss Ronald Reagan and the '80s, but don't really know why. I'm boycotting Law & Order (and possibly grey jeans, just to be safe.)

Alberto Gonzales: Live by the not very plausible deniability, die by the arguably slightly more plausible deniability

Ah, time, how you do fly. It seems like only yesterday that I was writing about how the new Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, had twisted himself into a tasty pretzel of nonsensical post-hoc justification to explain why he had dissed Priscilla Owen when they were on the Texas Supreme Court together.

(Review: He said that when he labelled her dissenting opinion "judicial activism" for essentially imposing a Just Make The Dumb Slut Have the Kid Already rule in abortion judicial-bypass cases, he wasn't saying she was an judicial activist, but that if he had written the same thing it would be activism for him. For reals, read it and weep.)

Flash-forward today, when that same kind of preposterous non-explanation is a maybe-firing offense! Gonzales' explanation for the role he was playing while his chief of staff masterminded the firings of a bunch of U.S. Attorneys was a classic:

"I was not involved in seeing any memos, was not involved in any discussions about what was going on . . . That's basically what I knew as the attorney general."

Really, I think the first one was worse.

Scooter Libby goes to the hoosegow for chauvinist beliefs

One of the more disturbing things about the whole Scooter Libby/Valerie Wilson thing is that it apparently seemed reasonable to the Bush administration to attack Joe Wilson by suggesting that his wife was the person who suggested he should go to Africa.

There are a bunch of reasonable ways you could think of to discredit a political adversary who's said something you don't like: Did he benefit financially from the trip? Was he unqualified to look into Nigerian uranium sales to Iraq? Did he have a book deal, and was just trying to make controversial statements to increase the buzz about it? Did he have an unseemly affection for teenage girls?

Fine, fine. But the information that his wife gave him the assignment? It could be a charge of nepotism, IF it weren't coming from a President whose main qualification for office is that he has the same name as his daddy.

Logically, it only works as "rebuttal" of Wilson's findings claims if you believe:

1. That any man who has to get job references from his wife is a big wuss.
2. That big wusses cannot be trusted to accurately investigate purchases of uranium.

If only Scooter had had the foresight to say, Dudes, this strategy is stoopit and sexist to boot, and I'm not going to be part of it. Alas, poor Scooter!

Democratic Rule: Bennett Barrington III slums it at Potbelly's

I went to Potbelly's for lunch today. If you haven't been there, Potbelly's is this chain sandwich place that has the type of "quirkly" atmosphere that is signified by mass-produced kitschy decor and enforced by uniform corporate policies, like Chotchkie’s in Office Space. Instead of a 19-pieces-of-flair requirement, though, Potbelly's has musicians sitting on platforms above your heads singing Dylan songs. (See image at left.) The musicians are always slightly grungy-looking dudes, generally with white-person dreadlocks, which all seems in keeping with the natural order of things.

Today, though, the Potbelly's musician was an extremely preppy-looking guy in blue-and-white-striped button-down shirt, khaki pants, and--I kid you not--a braided brown leather belt.

Could it be that this guy was my first real live sighting of that rumored species, the umemployed former Republican staffer? I read about this phenomenon in this article, which contained this priceless quote from a 23-year-old about why he didn't want to take a job at the Department of Labor, even though it paid more than his erstwhile phone-answering gig on the Hill:

"It's simply that I don't want to have labor issues stamped on my resume."

Awesome. I may go again tomorrow.

America: Freaks to Freakazoids

I was on a plane the other day and these two guys across the aisle from me started talking to the guy behind them about how the Illuminati and the world bankers want to enslave us all, which you can tell because currency is not backed by gold anymore. Then they started telling the flight attendant about how those in the know don't pay income taxes, and this is legally fine because there isn't actually any law requiring individuals to pay taxes.

The only explanation for what happened next is that I lived in D.C. for too long and have become one of those annoying wide-eyed East Coasters who can't really believe that there really, really crazy right-wingers out there, and vaguely believes that such people will see the error of their ways if presented with rational arguments. What happened is, I started talking to them. I told them that they could do whatever they wanted themselves, but it's really irresponsible of them to go around telling innocent strangers that they don't have to pay taxes, since people go to jail for tax evasion.

Oh good God. I spent the next 10 minutes trying to figure out whether it would be easier to jump out the window or hide under the little toy airplane seat, as these two guys tripped over themselves to tell me how the 16th amendment, which gives Congress the power to collect taxes, isn't really part of the Constitution because it wasn't ratified by the right number of states, and there are laws that say they require the payment of income taxes but they aren't really laws, or they only apply to corporations and not individual income, and did I know anything about horses? because they are farriers, which means they put horseshoes on horses. In fact, what they're doing now is going to Cincinnati for a farriers' conference, which is part practical applications and part theory and business. Also, I should really see a documentary called America: Freedom to Fascism, which is about the history of the Federal Reserve and how it's a big plot by corporate interests and lawyers to control the world, and they'd be happy to write it down for me, in case I might not remember the title.

I eventually told them I didn't really want to talk about politics and anyway, I had work to do, but I hoped they enjoyed their farriers' conference. Was this my inner polite Midwesterner taking over, or was it just a rational instinct for self-preservation? I don't know, but I came away with a strong impulse to spend some quality time with TurboTax.

Meet my fella

As previously mentioned, I'm happy to be married, but I think I may start boycotting the word "husband." At first I thought I just wasn't used to it yet, but the other day I realized that the real issue is that when you use it, you sound like a Republican "values" voter, or an unreasonably demanding dissatisfied customer in a restaurant. (Which, if you drew a Venn diagram of those two groups, the overlap would be quite significant.)

I had a revelation about this recently because I purposefully evoked the Husband connotation in an angry letter to Verizon demanding that they give me money back. I was totally justified in asking (Verizon DSL is the Iraq War of the internet-service world--they got you into it by telling huge lies about how fast and easy it will be, and once you're in there it doesn't work at all, and it takes years and billions of dollars to extricate yourself), but in order to strengthen my position, I dropped several mentions of how inconvenienced "my husband and I" had been by their crappy service.

Was that really relevant to the point of the letter? No, but it carried the implication that I had really important Married People business to be attending to, and thus that my time was not to be trifled with like that of some slutty, tragic, unlovable single girl who probably doesn't own property or vote, and has nothing better to do with her evenings than eat ice cream and chug vodka while waiting for 15 minutes for Television Without Pity to load. I was portraying myself as a self-righteous suburbanite who expects to be catered to by customer service representatives just as she is by politicians.

Ick. So now I need to find a new title for Mr. T&A. Boyfriend, partner, and spouse are all out--inaccurate, confusing, and clinical, respectively--so for now I think I'm gonna go for "Fella," or, you know, "Mr. T&A." Let me know if you have any better suggestions.

Pick a dynasty!

Some might say it's scary that Hilary Clinton might be the next president, because then the U.S. will have been run by one or the other of a set of dueling dynasties for over 20 years.

Yeah, it's true that dynastic leadership is fundamentally incompatible with democracy, and all. BUT. If Clinton doesn't win, we will not have dueling dynasties; we will have only one. That would be depressing as a comment on our present choices, but more importantly it would seal the fate of humanity for generations. This election is not just about the next 4 or 8 years, it's about who you would rather have as President in 2028: George P. "Yeah, There's a Third One; You May Remember Me For Such Things as Nearly Getting Arrested for Breaking Into My Ex-Girlfriend's House" Bush, or Chelsea "I Endured Rush Limbaugh Calling Me a Dog When I Was 13 And Yet I Grew Up To Be a Smart and Classy Woman" Clinton? You decide, America.

Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

I didn't really make any New Year's resolutions. OK, I made them, but they're already broken, so let's not speak of that again.

But today I'm feeling inspired (or shamed, or something) by Martin Luther King, Jr. day, so I'm making one and putting it on the internets so as to hold myself to it: This year I will volunteer, both for political causes and local needs. That's it! Shouldn't be so hard, right? I am not saying I'll stop talking the cynical talk, but that doesn't mean I have to walk the apathetic walk. That was not a good slogan, but it's what I mean.

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day!

WP claims Bush twins dress like crap

Reliable Source, the Washington Post's gossip column (yes! such a thing does exist) has this scoop on the Bush twins' recent visit to DC:

[B]oth twins [were] at Town Hall on Saturday night with a well-heeled entourage-- crushed-velvet sport coats for the men, trendy leggings, silk dresses and platform heels for the women.

Brain . . hurts . . . outfits . . . do . . . not . . . compute. Just try it: visualize a group of people whose attire involves crushed-velvet sport coats--COATS, plural!--, "trendy" leggings, silk dresses, AND platform heels all at the same time. Your brain is turning into neon-pink goo and dripping out your ears onto your computer, causing it to let off confused, fashion-challenged sparks, no?

The only image I am able to muster is Prince hanging out with early Stevie Nicks and some early-90s high schooler whose Friday Night Outfit involves shiny silk items from the Limited and huge, plasticky platform Mary Janes from Payless, combining to create a 90210-wannabe vibe:













(As it turns out, Prince and Stevie Nicks hung out in 1983, until, in Stevie's recounting, they were torn apart by "all the drugs," but as far as Google knows, neither of them ever appeared on 90210, and they definitely didn't come to my high school.)

One must assume that Jenna and Barbara did not, in fact, go out looking like the video for a Purple Rain/Rumours/Peach Pit mash-up. Are the Reliable Source writers just reporting the news as they hear it from people who hang out in obscure neighborhood bars in Glover Park (where's Glover Park?) and write to the WP when they see famous-for-DC people (instead of Wonkette, like a normal person)? Or, as I would prefer to think, are they actively frakking with us and seeing if anybody notices? If so, ladies, well played, but consider yourselves called out.

2006 Best and Worst!

I like year-end lists, so here's mine.

Worst

Worst actress about whose life direction to care: Katie Holmes. I held out hope there for longer than was even vaguely reasonable, grasping at the breakup rumors and conspiracy theories like so many promises to train the Iraqi police, but it was all in vain.

Worst Media Trend: YouTube. I realize I'm in a tiny, cave-dwelling minority here, but when I'm reading a blog entry discussing how, say, Clay Aiken put his hand over Kelly Ripa's mouth and then Rosie O'Donnell called Kelly homophobic, I don't wanna have to watch a dozen (OK, one) YouTube videos to see what happened. Those things are MINUTES long! Since when does the MTV generation attention span accommodate that? I want SCREEN CLIPS, people! (Plus, the sound tends to blow one's cover at work.)

Worst fashion trend: Obvs, no underpants. Britney, whatev, but Linds, you're breaking my heart.

Worst speech trend: Unnecessary shortening of words. This one is even more pernicious than the vortex that was "izzle," because it actually saves time and thus could accidentally become perm. Anent.

Worst Presidential Candidate Launch: It pains me to say this, being from Iowa and all, but Governor Vilsack's appearance on The Daily Show. His takeaway line: We're creating a "culture of dependency" in Iraq. Are we giving them excessively generous welfare benefits? And shouldn't you be criticizing, oh, say, the President whose deeply unpopular policies you are presumably running against rather than the victims of his geopolitical folly?

Worst switcheroo in Blogland: Above the Law replaces Underneath Their Robes. Probably AtL is more lucrative and David Lat doesn't have time to do both, but wahhhhh. Where UtR was so snarky and bitchy that I was able to nearly ignore its raging Federalist Society undertones, Above the Law has a fairly boring, lawyery voice and is all about how big the bonuses are going to be at various big firms. Bring back Article III Groupie!

Worst movie: X-Men 3. OK, possibly not the absolute worst--I didn't see Lady in the Water--but the most disappointing. It didn't even know what its overarching metaphor was: is the cure for mutation the Holocaust, abortion, or the ex-gay movement? Because, nooooot the same things. Also, SPOILER ALERT the ending is a blatant rip-off of the Buffy-has-to-kill-Angel-even-though-she-loves-him-in-order-to-save-the-world thing, except not touching and with a thick overlay of misogyny.



Best

Best Top 10 Lists of 2006: Best Week Ever's lists o' Movie Cliches, Reasons to Hate Singing and Dancing, and, most of all, Celebrity Body Parts. 100% awesome.
Best movie: The Departed. This surprises me, because Cops, Gangsters, Boston, and Father Issues are not normally my movie topics of choice, but it approached The Godfather (Part 1) levels of greatness. I haven't been as impressed with Leonardo DiCaprio since he was a child, and Matt Damon convinced me he's really an actor. Also, Martin Sheen just broke my heart. Also, Marky Mark. Mmmmmm.

Best sign for the future of mankind: The election. :) :) :) :)

Best new (to me) blog: ApartmentTherapy. It inspires me to want to paint! wallpaper! un-clutter! entertain! Not to say that I have actually done any of those things, but hope springs eternal, and looks very attractive in the meantime.

Now I will cop a tactic from Scrubs, and swerve disjointedly into Very Sincere Mode. Cue the strings.

Best personal development: Getting married! Awwww. Not that I've become a big booster for heterosexual hegemony! But it was just unparalleledly great to have so many of our friends and family all in the same place being happy for us. So, thanks, guys. :) Also, married life is pretty much the same as living in sin life, which is as I had hoped, EXCEPT! It seems to have turned our BoyKitty into . . . a lapcat! At first when Mr. T&A advanced the hypothesis that BoyKitty felt more secure knowing he was in a stable home, I told him he was batshit crazy. But. The cat who previously spent most of his time skulking, sneaking, lurking, and glowering has, since October, become an actual cuddler. Of course I know that correlation is not the same as causation, thank you very much. But. He sits in your lap! Awwwww.

Reminder: Bill Frist Kills Kittens

As former Senate Majority Leader Frist puts Congress back on the shelf, looks around to see if anybody noticed what he did to it, and slowly backs away, I think it's important that we take the time to remember who Bill Frist was before he became a heart surgeon and presidential hopeful.

A kitten murderer! I am not exaggerating in any fashion. As you can read in his 1989 book Transplant (discussed in this Wikpedia entry, and here, and here), when he was in medical school Frist did research using cats. OK, yuck, but that's what scientists do, and I can get behind science. However, when Frist ran out of his supply of lab cats, he visited multiple animal shelters near Boston, told them he wanted to adopt cats as pets, and then killed the cats as part of his experiments.

Again: he told the animal shelter he was going to adopt the cats as pets, and then took them to his lab and cut their hearts out. I've adopted a cat from an animal shelter, and it's a fairly involved process; you have to fill out a bunch of forms, provide proof that your landlord has given you permission to have the cat, promise that you're going to get it fixed when it's old enough, and discuss how much you're going to feed it and what kind of cat litter you're going to use. It's not just a Madonna-goes-to-Africa drive-by adoption situation. Frist did this multiple times.

He later apologized for his little Jack the Ripper phase, saying he'd been "a little crazy." Which is really nice, and all. In closing, I leave you with this thought:

Please be OK, Sen. Johnson, but if not . . .

These guys said it best: South Dakota Governor Rounds, don't be a dick.

George Will's "Journalism" is worse than my "cooking"

George Will had a column today about how Jim Webb is an asshole who's disrespectful to the President. His main evidence is this account of an encounter between Webb and Bush:

When Bush asked Webb, whose son is a Marine in Iraq, "How's your boy?" Webb replied, "I'd like to get them [sic] out of Iraq." When the president again asked "How's your boy?" Webb replied, "That's between me and my boy."

So, Webb does sound a little curt. But here's how the original Post article, which Will cited as his source, described the encounter:

"How's your boy?" Bush asked, referring to Webb's son, a Marine serving in Iraq. "I'd like to get them out of Iraq, Mr. President," Webb responded, echoing a campaign theme. "That's not what I asked you," Bush said. "How's your boy?" "That's between me and my boy, Mr. President," Webb said coldly.

"That's not what I asked you"! Snap, Mr. President! You tell that man with a son whose life is put in danger every day by your policy decisions how he's allowed to feel about about it!

Kind of embarassing for George Will, though, that the actual facts screw up the point he was trying to make. You'd hope that after this snafu, the Washington Post will start to supply its writers with computers on which the cut-and-paste functions work, so they wouldn't be forced to resort to paraphrasing earlier news stories to themselves via smoke signals.

New stylist, same electorate

I don't want to call myself The Biggest Genius Since Einstein, or anything, but may I humbly point out that I totally, 100% called it: Britney's filing for divorce was a sign that the electorate was going to kick the bums to the curb. Go BritneyMerica!

Now that Britney is officially the oracle of our national consciousness, though, I must admit that I am having a little trouble sleeping at night. For one thing, we can tell ourselves 'til we're blue in the face that Britney's a legal genius for filing for divorce before she owed K.Fed a year's worth of alimony at "Britney's touring" rates rather than "Britney's reproducing, eating Cheetos, and walking into public restrooms without shoes on" levels. But if she's so insightful, why did she marry her slack-jawed backup dancer to begin with? And what's to stop her from doing it again? The possibilities are non-encouraging:

1. She finds white-boy cornrows dreamy.
2. She's a traditional girl who believes in "staying the course" despite all evidence that the enterprise is doomed, at least for a couple of years.
3. She thought Iraq had something to do with September 11.

And then there are the ta-tas. The soon-to-be-former Mrs. Federline hired a stylist to give her an "I'm back" makeover, to which I say, smart move, doll . . . but then why, in every public appearance she's made since her big announcement, do her ladyparts appear to be engaged in a desperate, primal struggle to escape from her clothing, from one another, from this gravitational plane? To wit:


















Britney's breasts clearly have something to say about our nation. "You may think your electoral system is bouncing along nicely now, nurturing other fledgling democracies and all," they say, "but if you don't address the structural inequalities here, your hopeful-young-nation bubble is gonna start to deflate, and you're going to be left with a sagging, wrinkled husk of a republic."

Britney has convinced me: in 2008 I won't be hiding under the couch with a bottle of wine when the election results come in. I'll be out in some actual state, volunteering for a get-out-the-vote drive: The support bra for the electoral college!