Liberal Guilt on Radio & TV

The Senate Majority Leader Nancy "I command a legion of Winged Monkeys!" Pelosi has issued an ominous warning to Conservative Talk Radio listeners. She claimed they were "like fundamentalist terrorists who have become emotionally invested in shrill rhetoric" thereby dramatically increasing the threats of violence to Democrats. Five years ago, then Senate Majority Leader Tom "I Smell my Fingers from Time to Time" Daschle said "We are talking with some media experts about how, if we're going to try to break through as Democrats, we have to have the same edge as Conservatives do with Talk Radio."

Here comes the Fairness Doctrine Redux which is about as fair as declawing is to a Tabby; it has nothing to fear from the shredded couch, but it can be terrorized by a rabbit. And that's what the Dem's are - a genus of cottontailed mammals run amuck due to brainless overpopluation and hindgut digestion. Sorry Australia, maybe not the metaphor you would have liked...

Daschle calls for a new constituency of “emotionally invested” Democrat radio listeners to counteract the alleged threat to those “in public life” was as out-of-touch with the nature of Talk Radio listeners as it was with the principles that make Talk Radio work.

I’m in a unique position to piece together the elements of both his fears and his desire.

When I returned from two tours of duty in Vietnam, ready to dive back into the wild partying of the `60’s I left, the party was over. I took a job as a radio D.J. in a Northern California town and moved quickly from Midday to Mornings, by turning phone-in song requests for into brief interviews.

The power of hearing oneself, or one’s friends speaking on the radio was a media intoxication that, to this day, turns listeners into fans, fans into devotees. I took on production manager responsibilities and drove the station toward talk using this simple sensibility. As our numbers rose, we split into both AM and FM stations, and our broadcast signal fanned out to reach a much wider audience. After we boomed, I became bored with the repetition and moved to Los Angeles to follow my dream of working in Television and performing stand-up comedy.

Although it may seem like a leap from the windowless studio to the nightclub stage, to me it was just “working the microphone” again. The only difference was that the walls and distance between the audience and me was gone. This new entertainment intimacy gave me a powerful emotional interaction that can be described, but must be experienced to be fully understood.

The tenuous connection that made on-air phone interviews into personal, life-affirming declarations was now a full-on sense of shared spirituality in the comedy club. When all the elements are in play, a great comedy performance is literally on the same level as a religious rite of community.

While performing on the comedy circuit, I continued to produce television and began writing and directing for the theater. Mostly I focused on comedies because I love to hear people laugh, but regardless of the temperament of the show, I always used the audience-inclusive elements I learned in radio and comedy. This lead to grateful audiences, glowing reviews, awards, and rewards.

In 1994, one project in particular brought me back to examining Talk Radio. I was hired on to help re-work and tighten the script for Rush Limbaugh In Night School, a brilliant one-man show by Charlie Varon, and direct its opening run in San Francisco.

It was 1994 and Limbaugh was King.

Charlie Varon and I share an enormous love of `50’s and `60’s Radio personalities, especially Bob and Ray, Long John Nebel, Malachy McCourt, and Jean Shepherd. We agreed that Shepherd the best of them all, a most gifted storyteller, whose nightly show on WOR was like watching a film through a set of earphones.

Every Saturday night Shepherd would broadcast live from The Limelight Club in Manhattan. If you felt you were outside the mainstream of life, Shepherd was a godsend - a guy whose greatest talent was making his listeners feel that he not only understood their feelings of disenfranchisement, but that he shared them. I always felt as though he was talking directly to me, that we were partners in the daily struggle against the squares, the meatballs, and the conformists.

It was my pre-teen induction into a subversively absurd camaraderie, the “thinking kid’s” Mad Magazine. Shepherd died in 1999 and, in keeping with his sense loopy sense of rebelliousness, I wish him a fond, “Excelsior, Fathead!”

So, with my childhood grounding in spoken word radio, direct experience working in radio - both performing and producing, with 14 years of listening to Limbaugh climb his way to the top, and nearly a decade of listening Michael Savage strip down the Talk formula like a Marine strips down his rifle – I can say with absolute surety:

Going toe-to-toe against Conservative Talk Radio will damage the Democratic Party so severely that it may never fully recover. It is a wrong-headed leap into battle against a foe as ephemeral as the radio waves they seek to dominate.

In fact, the underlying Democratic notion that Conservative Talk Radio is a conspiracy of the GOP sets up whomever steps forward as the Great Liberal Hope to be knocked-out by a self-inflicted punch.

Here are a few key points the Democratic Talk Radio “counter conspiracy”:

The Object Of Comedy Is To Make People Laugh, Not To “Feel Good”

The therapeutic power of regular laughter is a given. What many people, and some comedians, are unable to do is separate the physical act of laughing from the performance that causes the laughter. So, in cases where the content of the material (joke, comment, story, image) is deemed to be politically incorrect by the audience, the laughter is deemed “bad” and indulging in it immediately brands the person as insensitive, racist, or worse.

Example: In the Bay Area during the `80’s there were several comedy clubs. Some appealed to local people, some to tourists, some were “white and blue collar” some were “politically sensitive.” The PunchLine was a downtown glass, brass, and ass oak furniture club that booked comics who attracted audiences of mainly local men and women with what would be considered mainstream middleclass jobs and lives. The Other Café (actual name) was a converted restaurant in the Haight district that catered mainly to what is now called “alternative” lifestyle people, fringe groups, and self-imposed outcasts.

At the PunchLine, the comedy was all over the map. Everything was fair game – sex and sexuality, politics, marriage, drugs, kids, home life, jobs, anger, prejudice, etc. There was plenty of edge, the laughs were thunderous, and the shows were raucous and packed to the walls.

The Other Café, while encouraging comics to do whatever they liked, was unfortunately saddled by a captive local audience of people who wanted something cheap to do, and at the same time carried more than a little emotional baggage into nearly every show. While hissing was almost unheard of at the Punchline, it was a common occurrence at the Other, where the audience evaluated every joke – hissing at the ones they found offensive as a warning to the comic to “steer clear.”

So, while any comic could do just about any material at the Punch, the Other was not the place to do material about race, sex, politics, or drugs – unless you represented the requisite victim group who laid claim to each issue. So Blacks joked about racism, Lesbians and Gays made light of “homophobia,” Lefties degraded the government and America, and Dopers mocked the addiction warnings of the DEA while falling further and further into addiction.

The problem was, the only comics who could consistently please all the fractious Other audiences were clowns, stooges, and prop comics, who have no point of view. The was not the case at the punch, were laughs were the currency and politics/agendas were left for safe-keeping at the entrance door.

The Other is, once again, a restaurant. The PunchLine still packs `em in.

Which leads me to my next point:

Homogenous Groups Prefer Targeted Comedy, Diverse Groups Prefer Untargeted Comedy

The interactional dynamic that shapes a crowd into an audience is a sense of shared experience with other members in the group. This feeling of social communion with strangers is the fundamental attraction of church, sporting events, concerts, and other events where people “lose themselves” in a crowd. For most of these experiences, an “us versus them” atmosphere prevails as anywhere from a benign acknowledgement of acceptable differences to a prompt for jihad and elimination of the oppressor.

Since the homogenous group has a relatively fixed point of view and a pre-disposition to place their mutual concerns first, topics tend to track closely to these areas.

In a mixed group, the overlap of shared concerns is more narrow, and subjects deemed threatening or insensitive to any sub-group must be avoided at the risk of fracturing the larger assembly.

Conservatives, by their nature, are a relatively homogenous group. Liberals, by definition, are a mixed group. Comedy that works in a nightclub is unworkable in The Big Tent.

Which brings me to:

Circuses Do Not Work On Radio
· Jesters Must Make Fun Of Both The Peasant And The King
· The Ability To Laugh At Our Shortcomings And Pain Is A Sign Of Sanity
· It Is Impossible To Build A Lasting Consensus When There Is More Compromise Than Agreement Within A Group

Thank you Existing Liberals Are Incapable Of Mixing Comedy And Vitriol - the necessary ingredients for entertaining political commentary.

Liberal leaders are currently categorically unable to build a coherent point of view consensus or audience bond, because, by definition, they exploit extreme diversity and even more extreme tolerance to build their constituency. The imagined Democratic solidarity is, in actuality, an uneasy amalgam of many groups whose goals and agendas often work at cross-purposes.

But rather than launch into an abstraction of the current Democratic stumper, I’ll give you an ironclad analogy.

As I said above, “Daschle is neither a brain, Maher is not a brain OR a brawler.” At this point in history, brainy celebrities must be able to brawl or they are marginalized as out-of-touch pundits, alienated agenda pukers, or egghead malcontents.

If Carville wasn’t the fiercest backbiting, swamphumper around, no one would listen to his stat spewing. If Hannity wasn’t “up anyone’s ass in an eye blink” no one would care about his heartfelt patriotism.

As American’s we want a fight - blood oaths and retribution and grudges - just like the WWF until a bunch of neutered males stole their initials back. Nyah, Nyah.

Well, Talk Media is a boxing ring. And there are two places to fight. Center ring and “on the ropes.” In the center ring, if you are not slugging you are dancing. Fans love slugging, but tire quickly of dancing.

On the ropes, if you are not beating the crap out of your opponent, you’re probably getting your ass thoroughly beaten.

Fans love the ropes, not as much as slugging, but most fighters spend more time on the ropes than trading haymakers. This is what Maher forgot when he thought that moving to HBO would help him. He’s a “rope fighter” not a knockout puncher. The ropes are an advantage for an “in fighter” and way too crowded for a slugger.

When Maher was on Politically Correct, the restrictions of Standards and Practices worked to his advantage, supplied the “ropes” to body punch his softball guests.

Out in the center ring of HBO he will dance, dance, dance the night away, like Lou Costello in the ring with The Bayonne Bruiser: swat, prance, crawl between legs, run in circles, and hide his head under the spit bucket.

So he is safe from a knockout blow, but there is no rope to push the opponent against. If you doubt this, take the gloves off and call in Limbaugh or Savage with the restrictions they are used to on FCC-choked AM radio.

Maher would be tapping the opponent with one hand and using the other to unload his boxers.

REAL TIME

I have several points about HBO"s Real Time with Bill Maher. I was bored to tears by the show. Maher is a Guilty Liberal and an utter phony.

1 - Tell Your Maher, Tell Your Pa
As I said yesterday, and have been saying for weeks since hearing of his HBO slot: Maher is not a brain OR a brawler. His glossy sound bites indicate content retention rather than context navigation muscle. And his threshold of self-deception is exceptionally low – he seems to believe his own hype.

Maher never went on the attack without immediately evading, and in a few instances fleeing the argument with and ill-fitting segue. The opening monologue was without a doubt the limpest, most audience manipulative pieces of crap I have ever heard. “…blah, blah, blah that’s what they get for letting a gentile do the negotiating (awkward pause waiting for laughs) And speaking of gentiles, Ms. Germany is going to Baghdad..... (???)… And speaking of urban centers in Arab countries, I hear that the Beirut Starbucks is…

I know, I know, the excuse du jour is that he’s “de-constructing the stand-up form” to add another layer of brilliance to the gag. Bullshit. De-construction isn’t shitty material - it’s great material pulled apart with élan. I counted 8 writers in the tail credit crawl and THIS is the material he premieres with? Either he doesn’t know good material from bad, or he believes he has the god-like power to turn dross into gold.

2 - Maher’s Constituency
A couple of vertigo-inducing swish pans of the audience showed that it was a small, nearly exclusively White mix of blue collar types that skewed toward the dentally challenged with a smattering of frat and sorority types placed at strategic close-up positions. At curtain, the audience’s thunderous standing ovation was alternately encouraged and dismissed by Maher as he sought to find their control knob. He didn’t and, for the rest of the show, I watch one of the poorest performances by an audience in recent history orchestrated by a guy who is known for playing to the gallery.

3 - Rohrabacher Cleans Maher’s Clock
There were also several responses from Maher that sounded exactly like Alex B. “on the run” - bait and dodge, bait and dodge, jump ship when pressed for logic, info source, or proof. Although I imagine Maher believed Rohrabacher to be a soft yet credible target, opening with this lop-sided interaction simply cut the balls off the show in a handful of sentences. Maher began with a broad, predictable conspiracy swipe at the administration but was rapidly reduced to whining “But why now? Why deal with Hussein now?” At this point he was out of gas and awkwardly tied off the interview to introduce “Feature Report” by some comic he though was funny enough to evolve up from Wednesday Night Open Mike gigs.

4 - The Feature
I can’t remember the chump’s name, but i will know him henceforth as “The Open Mic'er of Political Commentary.” A schlub with puny, obvious material. Aside from his goofy buck teeth and lip-pursing while waiting for the audience to give him the laugh he knows he deserves, this schmuck is a High School Talent Show impersonation of a Daily Show field reporter - a Steve Carrel wannabe with Rob Corddry chops. In a black sack suit yet, with a garish “look-at-me” tie to signal, “no taste here.” Wheee. A Wacky One!

He teased the piece just to give Maher “cover time” to seat his “A” list guests at the roundtable.

5 - Maher Reveals His “A” List People
During recent interviews, Maher has repeated his claim that, during his run on Politically Incorrect, he was forced to suffer the lowbrow likes of Carrot Top and other clowns who represent the basest form of comedic engagement—making people laugh. On HBO, Maher promised he would assemble the crème de la crème of intellectual assiduousness and credibility.

But rather than scoop up a contentious mix of liberal and conservative gunslingers, he brings us a tenured PoMo Brother whose claim to fame is his latest book, “I Love to Bang Black Women.” Not Cornell West with a couple of Jack Daniels under his belt, but a whiny, America hater who has spent most of his anticipated reparations on a load of Flashy-Academe clothes that say collegiate but scream Chess King.

NOTE: Let me explain this “I Love to Bang Black Women” comment. The published title of his book is “I Love to Date Black Women,” but dating is banging, attempting to bang, or failing to bang said women. “Dating a Woman” would involve Carbon 14 and a radioactive half-life extrapolation.

Next, Larry Miller, oft-cited as the Conservative Comedian as if that would make him an oddity. Every comedian who owns a home and has kids is a conservative - unless he also has way too much money, has made or is in the process of making the leap to Film, or is fucking every woman they can get their hooks on while his wifey looks the other way - probably at a nut-brown Ecuadorian fry cook.

Miller is appropriately self-deprecating for a panel but looked glazed as he tried to figure out what Maher wanted him to say next. Larry was scripted to be Falstaff but lapsed into shtick at the drop of a hat rather than working the material on the table. So rather than the stupefying inanity and playfulness of Falstaff in 1 Henry IV, Miller gives us the Sir John of 2 Henry IV, where the less flattering and entertaining elements of the character are obviously out of place.

Black clown, white clown, and finally...
America’s best-known Righty Anklebiter. Without going into a description of this Assault Robo-Bitch eager-beaver and, because Maher alluded to it at least twice during the show, she is probably there as a reward for being the whiff of arrogant, contrarian poon that keeps him “going out clubbing with her.” 

Clubbing? How old is Maher? 23? 24?

Ann has all the charm of a second string Cheer Leader scrub who will never bed the quarterback, but has a horde of panting, second-string, scrub guys in her Rolodex. Her beaten-dog look has become increasingly popular along with the rise of Calvin Klein and Pro-Anorexia websites.

So there you have it. The “A” list. And, wonder of wonders, Maher announces that Larry Miller is so “A” that he will be back, taking up another seat, for the next show. Somewhere Carrot Top sips his Gin Rickey in anger and dials 1-800-CALLATT.

6 – IRAQ!
Uh-huh. As much as I would like to give Maher the benefit of the doubt on why he chose this as the kick-off “A” list topic (He probably thought he would have Rohrabachers head on a pike next to the roundtable) I must again refer to the comedian with house and kids point of view. I know Maher’s act because I have an 11 year-old. I’ll substitute BED for IRAQ and it goes like this.

DAD: You have to go to bed.
MAHER: I don’t want to go to bed.
DAD: You have to go to bed.
MAHER: But I don’t want to go to bed
DAD: It’s 9:30. Time for bed
MAHER: Why? I’m not tired!
DAD: Because going to bed now will let you have a good day tomorrow.
MAHER: None of my friends go to bed at 9:30
DAD: I’m not talking about your friends. You have to go to bed.
MAHER: Why didn’t you make me go to bed at 9:30 on Saturday?
DAD: Because you could sleep late the next day. You have to be up early.
MAHER: If you were a good Dad you wouldn’t make me do things I don’t want to do.
DAD: That’s the Dad job. It sucks, but it has to be done.
MAHER: I hate you because you are not even listening to me!

What Maher and the protesters fail to realize is that they are expressing their opinion. That is our Constitutional Right to dissent. That being said, there is no right to take action beyond First Amendment dissent unless you fully support Second Amendment dissent, which Maher and his peers don’t. So they don’t like the Administrations Policy toward war and Iraq, they march and scream, and give cover to the Black Block wimps who trash businesses because their hippie parents played Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young to them when they were in utero. Uberwimps.

If the Protests and Media Silliness fails to stop the Day One Tomahawk sortie, they may continue to protest ad infinitum, unless they are willing to use the Second Amendment for precisely what it was devised for: When the government abridges individual rights or fails to represent the majority opinion of the American people, we get to terminate the lawmakers with prejudice whether extreme or matter-of-fact.

That’s what the Second Amendment is. Not a “gun nut” mistake that the FF’s overlooked. If a government - be it American, Iraqi, French, South African - abuses its responsibilities to serve the people, its congressional brains should be splattered under the rotunda. “Get us another batch of politicos, but make them clean up this glatch first so they remember who they serve.”

Liberals can’t stomach that, so Jackson and Sharpton run national extortion rackets, Hillary tongues Arafat's wife and the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Cheney makes millions building and bombing, Trafficant campaigns from a jail cell, Marion Barry “smokes” his competition, Turkey gets offered $26B for the privilege of being defended from Hussein.

Thank you for your heartfelt Anti War protests. Now, either pick up a weapon or a box of super-absorbent tampons large enough to staunch a wound from a .40 caliber round. The White Trash and Hillbillies you so vehemently despise are getting restless and sick of your anti-American affiliations, e.g., the WWP/ANSWER seditionists.

7 - Lumpy Segue # n:
Once we heard the Black Guy who Bangs Black Babes rattle off his anti-war platitudes, Ann Culter seig heils her way into the corner, and Larry Milter squeeze bits of his act into a couple of dead-air cracks, Maher abruptly shifted gears with a klunk and announced that America is addicted to Speed.

Not caffeine, diet pills, ephedrine, crystal meth, crank, dexedrine, ritalin or any other metabolism boosting compounds per se, but all of them and none of them at the same time. “Deforesting Colombia” “Starbucks Machiato’s” and Brittany Spears “White Powder Spill” are scattered across the roundtable a fair game for any and all comments (or one-liners) about drug addiction. “Maybe that’s why we’re going to war!” is the import - as though we want France and Germany to “Talk nice, when you talk to me you fucking monkeys!”

Unless I missed some crucial underground newsflash in the past few years, the Drug of Choice of a A New Generation is either marijuana or ecstasy: yielding either profound lethargy or abject disassociation.

I was under the impression that the rise in popularity of Crack displaced the Straw Sniffers and drew a dividing line in the snow - on one side societal drop-outs in a hypnotic world of thievery and intoxication, on the other, weekend snorters who are hocking themselves down to eventually join the other side.

Knowing now that the Administrations “Crack Monster” myths were clearly DEA propaganda to justify more personnel, overtime, property seizures, and exotic equipment, we are left with a sub-strata of dissolute addicts who, for the most part, are beyond the reach of both the law and government rehab handouts.

I would hardly put a tabloid cover of Brittany Spears on the screen to say Mr. and Mrs. America is so wired on cocaine that they “need to kill something to vent their energy.”

In fact, the very idea is preposterous. Approximately 127 million adults in the U.S. are overweight, 60 million obese, and 9 million severely obese. That’s 196 million people who do not fit the profile of “wired coke head.” A diet pill cause murder? Now, who is juggling the stats to make his point?

Maher hears the word “obesity” from Miller and, klunk, shifts gears like a moonshine delivery boy trying to outrun Boss Hogg.

8 - The Feature Piece
The Open Mic'er schlub launches into a wobbly monologue that uses hamfisted news actualities – looking like they were edited on a Fisher Price PixelVision console. Not only was the piece unfunny, forced, and driven up the audiences nose, it was no more than a hodgepodge of comments that have been floating around since the “Duct Tape” announcement. The Ridge over Troubled Water. A major snore.

The only bright spot was an extended joke about the death of dozens of Black “clubbers” in a Chicago night spot stampede. This hilarious bit included the terms “box cutter” “yo’ Lady” and a crude mimicking of Black teens running for their lives in the midst of a mob.

Maybe I’m hypersensitive, but his flat (amateurish) delivery combined with the smug smirk while waiting, waiting, waiting, for the audience to catch on is sufficient reason for him to be thrown in a ditch and sprayed with automatic weapons fire. I know a low-level comedian who made a cottage industry (and millions) out of his Caveman crap on Broadway, but the Foldable Australian Penises just had a successful San Francisco run, and Cats toured for the lifespan of a cat while dishing up dreck music and oh-so-gay costumes. 

The Theatre's integrity in disarray? What integrity?

With the Schlub Feature neatly flushed down the comedy crapper...

9 - Maher Goes To The Phone! Apparently unfamiliar with how the technology works, Maher gets impatient and cuts off the first caller rather than wait for the connection to be completed by offering some patter or comment. He shifts to the audience and - miraculously - there is an overweight Black woman at the audience mike with a disapproving grimace on her face.

A few moments ago the audience looked like a busload from an Amish Group Home for Adults, and now, here’s a former “Queen of Egypt” preparing to drop her considerable load on the panel. “What are your feelings about affirmative action?” she huffed, glaring at Ann alone to make sure she doesn’t blow a potential date with the Black Guy WBBW. Or should I say WBBBBW?

Predictable answers, agendas and screed all around, and then... “Ladies and Gentlemen! A surprise guest, the most confrontational Black comic in the business!”

Amazingly, Chris Rock is on mike, screeching Coulter’s assertion (true) that “Bush got 600’s on his SAT” over and over. (The stat was poo-pooed by Maher as being way too high). Rock re-stated her words as “Bush got 600 on his SAT?” probably unaware that there are two scores combined (Verbal and Math) to determine the total SAT score.

Flat 600’s would put Bush at the 1200 level against a (then) top score of 1500. So he was, roughly, in the “C” student range - probably where he belongs, but certainly not at the 600 level which would have indicated that he did not get much further than the sixth grade. So, unable to find the comedy edge in regaling the president as a merely a goofy dimbulb, Rock needed to imply that he was a flunky dropout, which, paradoxically, in his world of obscenity-dependent HipHop comedy is probably the equivalent of a Doctorate.

Then, a predictable barrage of “Fuckin’ Bush, Nigga’, Nigga’, Nigga’, SAT score of 600? Nigga’, Nigga’, Nigga’, blah, blah, to read A FUCKING STOP SIGN?” With his sterling improv spit out like a mouthful of sour milk and a sincere Hollywood Hug for Maher, Rock was gone. (By the way other than two muttered “fucks” by Maher, Chris Rock’s antics were the only thing about Real Time that would not have flown on Politically Correct. More on this in the wrap-up below.)

NOTE: A dressing room prelude to the opening of the show featured Larry David doing Larry David to Maher’s impersonation of Larry David. With the addition of Chris Rock’s “just happened to stop by to yell FUCK and NIGGA’” pretense, HBO had pulled in the Big Gun comedy favors, but by contrast, simply reinforced the obvious: Maher has no comedy chops or balls. None.

10 - Then There Is The Love Interest
As much as it appears that Maher loves sniffing Coulter’s skirts as they cavort their nights away, he was positively rhapsodic about his “featured UNCENSORED comedian” a poorly thought-out and rehearsed Sarah Silverman who demonstrated several important points about contemporary comedy without ever resorting to it. At least once during her shock-laugh performance the show’s director when to a wide shot to show Maher laughing his ass off, lying across the roundtable. He was alone in this behavior.

The audience, for the most part, barked out a burst of laughter at key words and inane character shifts. The best lines, which were still teeth-gritting bad, sounded like the work of a extroverted graduate of a two-day comedy writing workshop put up by a washed-up Catskills tummler with a tumor.

By banking heavily on the power of Lesbianism, Sex Between Toddlers, Wacky Nazi’s, The Holocaust, Blacks, Mexicans, and Body Odor, Ms. Silverman did not have to have coherence, linearity, or fixed point of view. A spritz in the purest sense - a petulant child peeing on Bube’s favorite Kilim in front of the neighbors.

If her act is considered a “emerging talent” here’s what that talent suggests:
· Again, a lack of audience rapport and interaction. Ms. Silverman’s material was delivered with a coal shovel.
· Leading with a Lesbian Toddler / Pussy bit set the tone of the set - shock for shock’s sake, take no prisoners.
· No apparent structure, no confrontation, no insight, no second-level thinking - all first level associations.
· The shock material petered out and it became what was once known as “smelly pussy” jokes.
· The Holocaust is the new “Nigger” for Jewish comics. The “H” word. This is as avant as a Jock doing Locker room jokes.
· Blacks and Mexicans are fair game, but only if we portray them as innocent victims or unknowing primitives.
· Being a Cunt is a postmodern attempt at being equal to a Prick. Funny is the qualifier here. Unfunny Prick? Boring.
· Stinky, dirty Mexicans! Heehee!

Just today I read were we are about to see a wave of TV re-tread re-makes: New Monkees, New Mister Ed, New Hunter, New Hotel.... Maybe we have run out of creative ideas. Maybe Ms. Silverman is the forefront of a new wave of comedy that learns the notes, but not the melody, the beats, but not the rhythm. But it’s not much of a song. And you can’t dance to it.

11 - Rules
When out of pat soundbite comebacks, when unable to wrestle a topic onto the table, when the snappy patter veers from centerpiece to sidebar, when FUCK is not enough and the NIGGA’ has left the building, Maher’s ready to drag out his TEN COMMANDMENTS a few at a time.

Up from the bottom of the TV frame, comes a Doric Colonnade framing device for Maher’s glib talking head. Although the frontis of the graphic is emblazoned with “RULES”, we see only one rule at a time to underscore Maher’s mini rants. Provocative, yet irrelevant, pithy, yet unfunny...

The sad reality is: Maher was at the top of his game in the lukewarm puddle of Politically Correct. He crossed the line and made a name for himself being a lot more spontaneous and predatory than he actually is. Now he’s out there in the ring and the assistance of the ropes to restrict his opponent is gone. He’s in a donnybrook in an open field, like a bare-knuckler of the 19th century – no referee, no time limits, no foul.

The only thing he can to save his trembling ass is to book his Real Time shows with pantywaists and fellow travelers. Which should make for TV that will make the Politically Correct guests – including Carrot Top – seem like heavyweights.

Terror

I have seen the face of terror - and it's gorgeous.

Back in January of this year, John Stewart was interviewing Charlize Theron on the Daily Show. Theron was promoting the film Monster - in which she portrayed serial killer Aileen Wuornos. Theron later won a Golden Globe award for her "gutsy" performance. ("Gutsy" in Hollywood terms means gaining weight for a role and having sex on camera as a chubby prostitute with someone other than Richard Gere.)

Wuornos, a psychopathic Lesbian serial killer, was found guilty of murdering seven people and subsequently given a dirt nap by State of Florida in 2002. Up until the end, she maintained that her mind was being controlled by radio waves.

Anti-capital punishment activists cited this paranoid belief as proof that Wuornos she was insane... until they realized that Bill Clinton had made the same "mind control" claim about Conservative Talk Radio.

(Years earlier, Nick Broomfield's creepy documentary, Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer continued his formula of elevating scum-of-the-earth criminals (Heidi Fleiss, Courtney Love, Tupac Shakur, Lily Tomlin...) into the Violet Light of the Bleeding Heart. In one hilarious sequence we see Wuornos' lawyer sucking down a huge spliff in preparation for discussion of defense strategy with his client. Poetic, no?)


After Stewart's predictable Daily Show couch chat and ego frottage, the interview turned to the viciousness of the main character.

Stewart: ...was Wuornos just a vicious psychopath?

Theron: Well, there was a lot of gray in her story ... it's very easy in our society to kind of label people like her. ..."

Stewart: ...she [Wuornos] killed seven people...

Theron: No, and I don't want to make excuses for that ... she did horrendous things, terrible things, and we're not trying to justify them or make excuses for them at all. But ... a lot of times the word 'evil' gets misused, or 'crazy' or 'psychopath,' and I think that our human nature is just much more complex than that. And I think it's a cop-out ... an easy thing to say, kind of condemn the person. ..."

There you have it - The Face of Evil.

Not Osama's long, Kerry-like physog... Not Zarqawi's glue-huffer stare... Not Al Sadr's tragic orthodontia...

But this:

An example of what America must destroy before we can have both hands free to tackle Al Qaeda: simple-minded Liberal Guilt.

No Heavy Head Trips!

Where have we heard examples of Charlize's free-range, moral vacuum idiocy before?

- When lawyers portray unrepentant killers as, "having had a rough childhood."
- During protests, where bus bomb murderers are hailed as Freedom Fighters.
- In classrooms where kids are taught that they must respect every deviant behavior without judging it - or risk being castigated as a racist, homophobe or fascist.

Charlize is a second generation product of the Sick-O `60's, with its hidden deathwish for the anarchy, judgment and punishment that those gray-ponytailed Hippies believe America rightly deserves. Wealthy Libs yearn for the retribution they are cocksure will never reach West Hollywood, Laurel Canyon, Malibu or Santa Barbara or The Upper West Side, or Frisco.

(The only dent in the TinselTown deathwish vehicle was Manson's slaughter of those who felt most immune to violence. The Hollywood Lib silence lasted until he was safely behind bars... and then they immortalized him along with their other "political victims" - cop killers, castraters, sadists and masochistic exhibitionists.)

But this is only a bubble-headed actress, Marty..., the average person on the street thinks aloud for the benefit of this blog, What in the world does she have to do with pure, unrestained evil?

A couple of weeks ago, I blogged "How To Keep Your Teeth." a layperson's tutorial to barroom brawling. In it, I listed Brawl Observation #4 WHILE THE BRAWL IS IN PROGRESS, YOU CANNOT TRUST YOUR FRIENDS TO DO THE RIGHT THING.

You know that film scene where a guy is fighting a gang of thugs and the "girlfriend" tries to stop the fight by holding the hero's arm? He can't hit the enemy, so he gets clobbered. HA-HA! What a comic moment! And then he turns to tell her to stop "helping him" and another thug's uppercut knocks him off his feet? HA-HA! Yet another bellylaugh. Wouldn't it be weird if that was the way fights happened? Hee-hee-hee.

Watching an Indiana Jones flick we can laugh out loud, knowing that the end result will be Good Guy 1 - Bad Guys 0. I could list dozens of these cliche fight scenes, but why? The struggle between good and evil is not a movie and it's certainly not funny.

Intellectual Hostages

We're going to lose thousands of American lives by letting the Theron's of 90210 spew their flat-Alpha wave, New Age, non-judgmental goo over tens of thousands of fawning fans.

You want to bandy about the theory of Memes, Mr. Ebert? You tell me. How does one goofy actress affect hordes of impressionable tweens? Have another nitro-glycerine tablet and wax intellectual for us, won't you?

We can expect more "we must understand the mindset of the beheader/bomber/terrorist" vomitus from daft celebs. They long to understand these characters, breathe in their motivations, portray them as complex, totured souls and pick up a couple of career-expanding statuettes.

We can also count on marches in the street calling for the defeat of America and the annihilation of Israel by brain-scrambled Lefties. See for yourself.
http:www.protestwarrior.com

Pure hatred. Anarchy disguised as "championing the victims." "Victims" who murder children and other innocents in the name of Social Justice. "Social Justice," which is the euphemism for "killing those who disagree with the movement."

And Charlize would like us to "hold off on judgment" because we can't know the mind of the killer. They may have a good reason for slaughtering innocent people...

What If

What if the public was so appalled by Theron's sympathic portrayal of convicted serial killer Aileen Wuornos, that a law enforcement official called for her immediate death as a sort of Legal/Creative Fatwah? Would she understand that her limited knowledge of the official's motivations absolved that person of judgment by her or others?

Or would she have a brace of corn-fed Lawyers bringing Fire From On High down onto that person?

More simply put, would Ms. Theron be willing to be one of Aileen Wuornos' victims to help the poor serial-killer ameliorate her sense of worthlessness? If not, why would she refuse to judge Wuornos' behavior?

Legal versus Moral Sanity

Years ago, I had a friend (!) who was a criminal trial lawyer in New York. Criminal trial lawyer - what an apt description.

He chose to defend David Berkowitz - the Son of Sam killer.

(Continued)

The Gelding Of America - Neuts, Feminized Males, and Metrosexuals - Part 1

The typical metrosexual is a young man with money to spend, living in or within easy reach of a metropolis -- because that's where all the best shops, clubs, gyms and hairdressers are. He might be officially gay, straight or bisexual, but this is utterly immaterial because he has clearly taken himself as his own love object and pleasure as his sexual preference. Particular professions, such as modeling, waiting tables, media, pop music and, nowadays, sport, seem to attract them but, truth be told, like male vanity products and herpes, they're pretty much everywhere.
- Mark Simpson, Meet the metrosexual, Salon.com, July 22nd, 2002 - http://www.salon.com/ent/feature/2002/07/22/metrosexual

A response to an insulting e-mail to EjectEjectEject.com in which a Dutch Pacifist ranted about America's Cowboy Mentality -
I spend a great deal of time in the Netherlands and immediately recognize the whiny bickering tone of the sender's email. You would not receive this wanton crap from a Dutch woman, only a Dutch man. This is a country where feminism began and then ran amok, not only did women gain their deserved rights, they then proceeded to turn the men into the women they once were, one has to see it to believe it. The women run the country, and the men have assumed the persona of an American fifties housewife: Complaint ridden, disoriented, they whine and cower and are generally selfless and confused, and when they get angry, well look out for the silent treatment. Pointedly the most direct, energetic, and courageous thinker/politician to appear on the Dutch scene in a generation was the very gay Pim Fortuyn who began questioning what they hell were they doing with their country. He was shot in the head last year by a straight Dutchman who described himself as an animal rights activist.
Posted by: James Croak on January 30, 2003 11:29 AM (http://www.ejectejecteject.com/archives/000028.html)

and...

Recent federal testing data show that what starts out as a modest gap in elementary-level reading scores turns into a yawning divide by high school. In 12th grade, 44% of girls rate as proficient readers on federal tests, compared with 28% of boys. And while boys still score slightly higher on federal math and science exams, their advantage is slipping.

Most startling is that little is being done to correct the imbalances. All of the major players schools, education colleges and researchers largely ignore the gender gap. Instead of pursuing sound solutions, many educators merely advocate prescribing more attention-focusing Ritalin for the boys, who receive the drug at four to eight times the rate of girls, according to different estimates. ''Too often the first reaction to an attention problem is 'Let's medicate,' '' says Rockville, Md., child psychologist Neil Hoffman. ''Some schools are quick to recommend solutions before they've fully evaluated the problem.''

For instance, as part of an ongoing 20-year dyslexia study focusing on Connecticut schools, Yale neuroscientist and pediatrician Sally Shaywitz discovered that schools were identifying four times as many dyslexic boys as girls. Yet when her team entered schools to screen children, it diagnosed just as many dyslexic girls as boys. Shaywitz found that the mostly female teaching staff was quicker to identify rambunctious boys than quiet girls.

The results are just one example of what might be learned about the role gender plays in education, especially in elementary school, where 85% of teachers are women.
Girls Get Extra School Help While Boys Get Ritalin,
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/972970/posts

Experience
My work experience C.V. reads like an overview of the Department Of Labor's Index Of Occupations. Working dozens of different jobs over the years has taught me many diverse and invaluable skills.

Managing an Ice Skating Rink taught me both how to maintain a great ice floor with a Zamboni and how to deal with parents, kids, skates and roughneck hockey hoodlums.

Building Log Homes in a mountain community gave me chainsaw construction savvy and the ability to blend into and thrive following a rural, blue-collar work ethic.

Writing Accessibility Guidelines for emerging software at Microsoft showed the limitations of our physical and cognitive perceptions and how special small, interest groups can hobble a mega-corporation (despite our attempts to meet their unending demands).

There were many other jobs that also broadened my point of view, shaped my ethic and sharpened my senses.

But the most life-changing lessons were learned in a darkened barroom, in front of a crowd of strangers, with a light in my eyes and a microphone in my hand.

Stand-up comedy is the journey inward of enlightenment from which the seeker must return a profoundly changed person.

A small part of this character change occurs while onstage, making a case to the audience that a series of seemingly innocent observations add up to a rationale-busting and laughter provoking a revelation, if you will.

This is the exciting, successful performance that would-be comedians crave. It's addictive and, if you are successful at it, can drive your career in film or on television.

Or weather reporting.

The other, darker, more headache-producing change happens as you search the daily news, every bit of pop culture, the canon of common beliefs literally every bit of information we are exposed to everyday to create and maintain a comedy act - a routine.

This ceaseless demand for information forced me to become an obsessive fact sleuth with my main interest in cause and effect relationships, personal interaction idiosyncrasies, outrageous analogies and the outlandish realities we cloak in euphemism and misdirection.

So, for thirty years, I've been absorbing every bit of information I can get my hands on, pulling it apart, identifying discrete elements and reassembling it into interlocking pieces for my act. And now that same information is pulling my perceptions apart and re-assembling my ideas about the world's last 10,000 spins.

Here's what I've found:

In the early seventies, about the time of the debut of Ms. Magazine, there was a call by feminist writers for more sensitive men to replace what they thought were extraneously masculine guys. The media picked up on the outcry and the bra-burners demands became topics for both discussion and ridicule.

The unacceptable, unsensitive men were called macho-jerks who, for a variety of reasons, wouldn't listen to their girlfriend's or wife's endless chatter or, more damningly or join them in watching costume epic films or Merchant/Ivory chickflicks.

So, although they were damned by some and championed by others, the line in the sand had been drawn for men by the feminists - "intelligent women, self-respecting women don't have sex with macho guys." "Utter nonsense."

Don't think that this damnation of men made extreme cavemen types and criminals less sexually attractive to women. As we saw with O.J. Simpson (and more recently, Scott Peterson), a significant number of women lust after "bad boys" even when they go beyond bad to dangerous, to murderous.

Women are guilty of making the same groin-level fantasy choices they have accused men of lusting after for years. Pretty boy, basket-bulgers are prime fantasy objects, but for day-to-day relationships, paycheck and parenting, the same women reward passive, feminized men who are compliant and submissive.

Silver screen bad boys rose to the top of the Sexiest Star list: Brad Pitt, the stud/scumbag in Thelma and Louise, Robert Downey Jr., L.A.'s premiere Urine Test actor, Christian Slater, the drugged slugger, Sean Penn, the midget pacifist firecracker - every one of them seething with macho sexuality on the screen. But, in reality, they are all neutered males - powerful in image, but hopelessly crippled in their everyday lives by their necessary social, political and entertainment industry emasculation. The have no control over their public image.

Punching a reporter doesn't make a guy a man. Mainlining a speedball doesn't make a man. Rippling abs and Clinique, despite all the homoerotic fashion advertisements, doesn't make a man. Whining about politics, espousing quack utopia sentiments, gossiping and spreading conspiracy theories, prattling about personalities, or strutting like a policy welterweight in the safety of a television studio certainly do not define the man in manhood.

The confusion lies in the systematic destruction of the word man by the feminist writers, reducing it to mean no more than physically male. Yet, this mis-application of the term, meant to gut the spirit and strength of manhood, did little more than create a new subclass of genderless men. These neutered males, eager to abandon their natural instincts, basked in the favor of men-hating women - women who wanted less to rise up than they wanted to push men down.

In fact, the concept of Manhood was forced into a single definition noun: penis owner.

For the last 700 years, manhood meant 1 - the condition of being a human being, 2 - qualities associated with men, 3 - the condition of being an adult male as distinguished from a child or female.

More commonly it was used to express strength and virility.

But, under the pretense of seeking equality, feminists chose an easier path than side-by-side competition with men: they chose to redefine strength and virility as brutality and sexual harassment. This perversion was lead by an elephantine Lesbian named Dworkin who considered all sex to be rape.

A quasi-human preaching about human behavior - curious, but ultimately worthless.

To the Feminist faithful, manly men were a retro-relic of the past: cowboys, policemen, construction workers, bikers, Native American warrior.

I pause at the realization that many readers, at this point, have a crystal clear picture of the Gay Disco group, The Village People. When these human caricatures rose to popularity, their image literally turned the uniforms and behaviors of these vocations into drag. And dragged down the concept of manliness.

If you think that I'm flogging a minor point here, remember that these vocations provided role models for young boys as they matured into young men and take another look at this promotional photo from the late `70's:


To this day, the Village People's music - songs composed solely of encouragements to engage in Gay Sex - are still promoted as fun sing-a-long tunes for young children.

The result of this identity appropriation drove many straight men to distance themselves from any display of manly behavior - conduct that was being degraded by Feminists while simultaneously being eroticized by Gays.

Paradoxically, the shame and guilt fostered by incessant accusations of macho or chauvinist attitudes had driven some men to reject themselves and the behavior of other men, while adopting the very submissive personality traits that the feminists hated in themselves.

This self-hate and transference of guilt to men, left many women in the unenviable position of being surrounded by more examples of what they saw as mainstream female submissiveness. They were turning Tom Cats into kittens. Ball-less, neutered and de-clawed.

This had a dramatic effect on relationships during the late `70's where neither the man nor woman had the faintest idea who they were in relationship to each other. As in other cases where this mutual confusion kills communication, the core of the relationship became an out-of-kilter dance of avoiding offense to the other person while attempting to present a coherent personality.

For men, common kindnesses and courtesies were viewed as suspicious behavior: holding a door open for a woman to pass through could be interpreted as a callous, chauvinistic insult, buying a gift for a female friend or wife became a task of avoiding any item that could be interpreted as condescending, alluding to sex or out-of-touch with her deepest desires. So gardening tolls could be viewed as being relegated to menial work, clothing (especially provocative) could be seen a gift for the giver, and anything that smacked of traditional female roles or interests was suspect.

The saddest disappointment in many marriages was when, after months or years, the women finally shaped her husband into what she thought she wanted him to be, only to find that he had willingly become uninteresting to her and that the excitement was gone.

(Part 2 to follow)

Enmity Of The State

I received an e-mail from a reader today, taking issue with a quote from yesterday's entry:

`Guilty Liberals call those who oppose them racists, homophobes, religious fanatics, demagogues, Right Wing conspirators, or just plain evil in an shallow attempt to dismiss viewpoints and beliefs they refuse to tolerate. '

The writer explained that statement didn't apply to her and her Liberal friends, She went on to describe how a search of the Internet turned up many sites that mentioned the above slurs but, to her immense satisfaction, they were mostly Conservative sites recounting verbal attacks by Liberals.

Her advice to me was to take up the hate-speech issue with the Conservatives.

She obviously does not live in or near the War Zone.

Rear Echelon Liberals are routinely flummoxed by the heat coming from the Middle and Right. And probably with good cause. It must seem puzzling, sitting there ya-ya, waiting for their la-la.

Rather than launch into my standard Bay Area / Berkeley / San Francisco / Marin frontline assessment, I invited her to survey the battlefield herself. Starting with this article by Debra Saunders. then this analysis by Peter Schrag or this, by Steven Rosenfeld.

A common misconception is that there is a far, far Leftie Liberal faction that spews "Racist, sexist, homophobe, etc." The truth is, that those castigations are inherent in all liberal demands for social programs. (read, enforced charity)

As I said above, the reader is apparently far from the front line of the California Enforced Charity War, shielded from the politics and polemics of Bay Area Liberals.

Today Governor Davis is preparing to sign a bill that will give free California State University tuition to Illegal Mexican Aliens, while tuition fees for all other California citizens are raised. Oppose it and you are accused of being anti-education, anti-poor, and anti-affirmative action.

- If you are against the freshly-signed bill that gives Illegal Mexican Aliens California Driver's Licenses (and hence, de facto citizenship) you are branded a racist.

Lt. Governor Cruz Bustamante freely uses the term "racist" to label those who oppose the license give-away despite the fact that Mexicans can legally use their Mexican Driver's License, purchase local insurance and drive in CA.

Like it or not, Driver's licenses are the equivalent of an American I.D. card. The Democrats are pushing through a wide-open border with perpetual amnesty.

- If you are against last week's bill that makes failure to hire a transgendered, transsexual, or transvestite an offense punishable by a $150,000.00 fine, you are called a homophobe - as said by Governor Gray Davis in a post-signing press conference.

- If you are against the bill that mandates all California employers to pay for full health benefits for all employees, you are scorned as anti-worker. (although this is seen - across the board - as the coup de grace to the critically wounded California economy)

- If you are against the tripling of car registration fees to pay for spurious social programs, you are called anti-poor (although no-one can say where the money is going other than "to the poor people who need it most."

- If you are against arbitrary regulations that allow under-qualified female candidates to push aside the qualified males (Police, Fire Department, Paramedic) you are called a sexist.

All of these abominations were signed into law without any input from the voters of the state - passed "in the dead of night" as it were.

Perhaps dangerous social, safety and security issues don't bother "homefront" Liberals, like the e-mailer who suggested I talk to Conservatives to end Liberal name-calling. But, in a foundering state that's literally going down the tubes with liberal socialism run wild, these insane handouts are progressive steps toward insolvency and chaos.

The blooming Culture War isn't Muslim versus the West, it's self-hating neo-socialists ready to spend other people's money and drive the society and economy into the ground - as the examples above clearly illustrate.

Sadly, this beautiful state, which I adopted as my second home years ago, is now being torn apart by wild-eyed, Utopia-seeking fools.

And, as with Fundamentalist Muslims being only a small BUT VERY LOUD percentage of all Muslims, the Guilty Liberal activists out here may be only a small percentage of all U.S. Liberals, but they are setting a course to the destruction of our society and economy, one state at a time.

If the e-mail writer and her congenial Liberal friends would like to take another look for epitet-spewing Liberals on the web, I suggest they skim the 1-star reviews of Conservative books on Amazon.com.

A Hen In The Fox House

While I was writing my Shame Game post (below) here's what was happening on Fox News.

I find Fox to be as disreputable as any of the other Late-Breaking-Enter-Info-Tain-Mercial News firehoses, but what better venue for the weasel-like equivocation to begin...

"NEAL GABLER: Well, I have tremendous respect for John Burns and I have no doubt that some reporters traded their objectivity for access. But John Burns says himself that he was protected by being on The New York Times. Anyone who read any coverage of the war knows that almost every reporter talked about having to bribe the Iraqis to get access. It -- that doesn't mean that if necessary [they] colored their coverage as John Burns says. In point of fact, we know there was terror in Iraq."

No, Neal, it doesn't necessarily mean they colored the news. It means they were willing to disregard human rights nightmares that were part of everyday life in Iraq.

In point of fact, we know there are bleary-eyed idiots with degrees in film and culture who feel qualified to exhonerate unethical journalism.

Simply under-reporting for favor would be enough of an offense for me to demand that these reporters be stripped of their satellite phones and handed mops. Nah, Swiffers.

Grey Lady, et al., I have your new masthead motto, "All The News We Don't Omit."

As Americans, we have a tough time separating the truth from reporter selected facts, from media slant, from broadcaster spin. If the full story is pre-editted by cowardly embeds from the comfort of a warm Baath, we start with garbage at the outset.

Embedded, The Media at War in Iraq, especially John Burns white-hot accusations (exerpted below), lifts the rock off journalist maggots who fed on Saddam's decaying body politic.

The Shame Game

Guilty Liberals have mastered the art of eliminating shame. Their own shame, that is.

They simply press it onto others.

While living in a comfortable world built on the so-called injustices they decry, Guilty Liberals call those who oppose them racists, homophobes, religious fanatics, demagogues, Right Wing conspirators, or just plain evil in an shallow attempt to dismiss viewpoints and beliefs they refuse to tolerate.

Guilty Liberal intolerance runs far deeper than the intolerances they claim to fight against. In fact, it is their foremost self-defining feature. As diverse as their events and conventions seem to be, the only quality they share is a gut-level hatred of people who won't sit in their tent.

So, they demand tolerance for Islam while castigating Christians, they demand self-determination for Arabs in the occupied territories while calling for the dissolution of Israel, they champion human rights monsters like Castro while calling Bush a terrorist.

The question: Is Liberal Guilt a result of feeble genetics or is it an infectious dementia?

I'll come back to this idea in a moment. First I need to recommend an excellent book.

Embedded, The Media at War in Iraq, a book by Bill Katovsky and Timothy Carlson, features interviews with 60 embedded journalists who accompanied U.S. troops into battle. The book packs a powerful punch as the stories impart a rare glimpse of front-line journalism that most of us will never see firsthand.

But these spellbinding accounts don't prepare us for a far more disturbing accusation made in an interview with then New York Times Baghdad Bureau Chief, John Burns.

And there are a lot of journalists who want to bury book and wish that Burns would shut up.

But they can't and he won't.

An excerpt from Burns' interview:

"There were correspondents who thought it appropriate to seek the approbation of the people who governed their lives. This was the ministry of information, and particularly the director of the ministry. By taking him out for long candlelit dinners, plying him with sweet cakes, plying him with mobile phones at $600 each for members of his family, and giving bribes of thousands of dollars.

"Senior members of the information ministry took hundreds of thousands of dollars of bribes from these television correspondents who then behaved as if they were in Belgium. They never mentioned the function of minders. Never mentioned terror.

"In one case, a correspondent actually went to the Internet Center at the Al-Rashid Hotel and printed out copies of his and other people's stories, mine included, specifically in order to be able to show the difference between himself and the others. He wanted to show what a good boy he was compared to this enemy of the state. He was with a major American newspaper. Yeah, it was an absolutely disgraceful performance.

"Editors of great newspapers, and small newspapers, and editors of great television networks should exact from their correspondents the obligation of telling the truth about these places. It's not impossible to tell the truth. I have a conviction about closed societies - that they're actually much easier to report on than they seem, because the act of closure is itself revealing. Every lie tells you a truth. If you just leave your eyes and ears open, it's extremely revealing.

"We now know that this place was a lot more terrible than even people like me had thought. There is such a thing as absolute evil. I think people just simply didn't recognize it. They rationalized it away. I cannot tell you with what fury I listened to people tell me throughout the autumn that I must be on a kamikaze mission. They said it with a great deal of glee, over the years, that this was not a place like the others."

So, faced with the fact that many journalists "sold their credibility" for a visa and favor, deliberately mis-reported, mis-represented, and in some cases, collaborated with Baathist Information Ministers to mislead the rest of the world, the New York Time has "nothing to report."

Nothing to report about collaboration with thieves, rapists and murderers who wore the uniform of Saddam's Death Regime: wives raped in front of their horrified children, men run through wood-chippers feet first so the monsters could watch their faces in excruciating death agonies, kids hung on meat hooks and flayed alive. Reporters couldn't mention this and still count on their entitlement to hot baths, and clean sheets and sweet cakes, so they looked the other way and dreamed of leaping to the big time like Wolf Blitzer, and Christiane Amanpour.

These compromised reporters effectively became associates of the Baath Party Ministry Of Information and immediately leapt to another big time - Peter Arnett's big time.

Ironically, we were laughing at Baghdad Bob for being such a fool, while reading and watching the reports of journalists who were feeding us an infinitely more damaging pile of rubbish.

During the war, I noticed a pattern among the American-bashing reprorters. While other were reporting from Humvees and Bradley Fighting vehicles, the Baath appeasers often started a report with a strange attribution, "A taxi driver told me..." or "One of the hotel workers said..." or "My translator said that his brother said..."

These reporters went for a drive and questioned the driver or reported from the hotel, or worse yet relayed hearsay from government employees.

But not Burns. His experiences in other totalitarian hellholes taught him how to get to the story and hold the depots at bay. In reading his recounting of how he went face-to-face with the Iraqi brass, I could only think of one appropriate word for his actions - fearless.

Burns' fearless brand of reporting has elicited dramatic responses by repressive governments. In 1986, the Chinese government tried to silence him with a six-day day incarceration. In Iraq, he flummoxed his Mukhabarat minders by detailing the horrors of Saddam's notorious Abu Ghraib prison.

Now, the New York Time is steadfastly ignoring his accusation, preferring to leave their readership in the dark and sit silently on this enormous credibility time bomb.

The Gray Lady, in not acknowledging this media liaison and complicity with the enemy, is rapidly moving from merely dingy gray to positively hoary.

Keep in mind that the New York Times, as the house organ of the Liberal Left, is guided primarily by its own shame and guilt. Don't expect any self-examination or confessions. Just as the Jayson Blair incident, emblemic of wrongheaded affirmative action and preferential treatment, blew over in a flurry of terse e-mails and bluster, the NYT hopes no one important reads Katovsky and Carlson's book.

But that hope is a pittance against Embedded, The Media at War in Iraq's position at 112 on the Amazon sales ranking (09/21/03).


To the NYT and Guilty Liberals, honesty and introspection causes political psychosis and, in this regard, it appears to be neither a genetic disorder nor an infectious dementia.

It reads more like a cult.

In fact, Liberal Guilt most closely resembles a religion that lacks a crucial sacrament. The outward, participatory ceremonies are there; rallies are a type of mob vulgus communion and being an American while indicting America serves as a schizophrenic form of confession.

But the internal ritual of absolution is missing, so even true believers can never achieve redemption.

By example: A Guilty Liberal attends a protest, feels the strength of the crowd and the communitas of its unified spirits. By carrying a sign or chanting a slogan, he redefines his sense of self and retains "person living in America" while discarding "American." The result is a now-familiar absurdity where people (Americans) yell at America (people). These temporary Ana-Americans decry a system they say has been wrong since its inception, yet live comfortably within it.

Here's the bind. After the chanting is over, after the last sappy folksong, after the celebrities have returned to their limousines and the streets are littered and the police return to their normal duties, where do the protesters go?

Regardless of whether the post-protest activity is merely returning home to watch the event replayed on the news, reveling with new-found acquaintances, or languishing in a jail cell, nothing has changed. The oppressed are still oppressed, the victims are still victims, the war machine is still the war machine.

The city streets were alive with defiant spirit and mob-mentality just hours ago, and now, the milk still sits in the refrigerator, the dog still needs a bath, and other than for the buzz on the TV, the net effect of the protest can only be seen in overtime hours accrued by cops and sanitation workers.

The hour-long Anti-American chant has melted into the other 8,759 hours of simply being a disgruntled American who voted for Gore and feels cheated, who enjoys ever modern convenience but feels shame for having an abundant life, and makes his most profound political statement by drinking only shade-grown coffee with soymilk and turbinado sugar at a non-franchised coffeshop while listening to culturally pure ethnic songs, sung in a language he doesn't speak.

The let-down after a protest must be staggering. A half-day of faux empowerment makes the protester feel as though the world must bend to the crowd's will, followed by nothing more than promises to do it again, in a week or a month, or when summoned.

Chronic, political coitus interruptus - an exercise that never gives relief or release to the participant, while intensifying the desire to dominate the situation. And with each frustration, the energy can only grow more violent.

Hmmm. I seem to have drawn a line from the mindset of the protester to the mind of a rapist.

Losing Libs

I'm looking to title a book I've been working on since last year. I'm a fairly quick writer but, nearly everything I commit to paper makes me re-examine what I know and why I know it. The scenario keeps evolving, and so do the working titles.

But after phone calls with two old friends, I was so saddened by their responses that I believe I've decided what the subtitle will be: Losing Liberal Friends.

One of them is a writer/producer in Hollywood, and the other is a tenured professor at a well-known southern University - an amazing, almost stereotypical pairing.

Where Did All My Good Friends Go?

In the last year or so, I've lost over a dozen truly wonderful friends. Not because we've worked ourselves into partisan donnybrooks, but because our language and concepts have grown (or have been pulled) so far apart that we no longer share sufficient reality-ground to stand upon.

The result is semantically loaded, syntactically nuanced, semiotically fractured "talking at each other" that keeps us struggling to pull each other into a context and sensibility that can be presented and argued logically.

It seems hopeless. And after the last extended, yet frustrating call, I scribbled out a list of recurrent problems.

My friends will undoubtedly read these posts, and I hope they understand that I am as stymied as they are about how we can set this aside.

So, in the spirit of "open kimono" honesty:

You have no idea how I feel about Bush, Kerry, the National Guard, Vietnam, cocaine, treason, terror, the economy or Gay marriage.

Yes, you can probably estimate a response I would give when questioned about any one of the above, based on our years of friendship and discussions, wisecracks and arguments. But my feelings are deeper and more complex that you can guess. For example: I served along with National Guard and Army Reservists in Vietnam, so painting the Guard or Reserve as a draft-dodging ploy doesn’t wash with me. In fact it shows the shallowness of the accusation. If you don't know the facts, please don't parrot the talking points or smear du jour.

I also used cocaine during the mid `80's and had a hell of a time eliminating that social and physical addiction from my life. If someone else got caught in its grip and escaped, I feel mild camaraderie with that person, not self-righteous indignation or hatred. I don't care what mistakes a person made in their life - what lessons did they learn, what changes did they make and where are they now.

It's also important that the person learned a life lesson due to the change and is able to understands and communicate it to others, when appropriate.

On the phone with my Mom the other day, I said, "Did you ever think the Democrats would be putting up a Nam vet, reviling draft evaders and accusing their opponents of being drug addicts?" She thought for a moment and offered, "They must be out of ideas."

Heroes

The behavior needed to be regarded a true hero has been so diluted and misapplied that the title is now routinely bestowed on victims, survivors and bystanders.

Merely surviving an incident does not make one a hero. Speaking up when disagreeing with a majority does not: dying in a catastrophe, enduring a painful situation, suffering for good or needless reasons, encountering and besting overwhelming obstacles, being oppressed, hated by others, and willing to defy the law at risk of punishment are not necessarily the earmarks of a hero.

The ground rule of heroism is placing the welfare and needs of others above that of your own safety and subsequent advantage. And this bar is raised for soldiers, police, firefighters and rescue workers. In their situations, underlying heroism is built into their job descriptions.

And more often than not, they go well beyond that.

Who's a Hero?

My Dad was a severely wounded WWII veteran: Bronze Star, Purple Hearts, Unit Citations and a physical disability that brought him over 55 years of intense pain. I never saw his medals or heard a word about his battle experiences. Once a year, he went to a reunion of his unit (the Tenth Mountain Division) and met with other soldiers to laugh and cry and thank each other for their mutual sacrifice.

Other than that, you wouldn't hear much about it from him. And we - my brothers and sister and I - grew up remembering that he was wounded only when we went to the beach or saw him with his shirt off.

I often wondered how he had survived: the silver dollar-sized bullet scars that ran across his chest, the deep trough in his arm and shoulder where a mortar explosion shattered his bones and shredded his muscles, the small shards of shrapnel that he "sweated out".

My Dad was a hero, but it would have embarrassed him to talk about it.

Now, an Army private wraps up her S.U.HumVee, lies on a hospital bed for a week and can't remember anything after the crash is designated a "hero." Loudmouth Liberal Senators confer the title of "hero" upon themselves and each other for the bravery of braying like jackasses during a Conservative Administration. An actor gets thrown from his horse due to his arrogance and lack of skill and is paralyzed from the neck down. When he maintains that he is optimistic about walking again, he's hailed as a "hero".

These people may be lucky, unlucky or have a great press agent, but they are not heroes.

What Did You Do During The War, Daddy?

Flying a soon-to-be-decommissioned jet in the Texas Air National Guard is not heroic unless the pilot was shot down over Austin, held prisoner in a tortilla factory and winged by trigger-happy INS agents while trying to lead the illegal alien dough-patters to an Immigration Attorney's office.

Pulling a fellow soldier back into a boat while hostile fire rages is undoubtedly heroic. Perhaps even shooting a VC rocket carrier in the back is heroic, since life and death transcends the Hollywood code of the Old West.

(Although, if you describe the alternative to a live-fire lifeguard action - moving your boat to safety and watching the helpless soldier get shot or drown - we are left with only one word - coward. Perhaps a Swiftboat commander who HAD run off, leaving the man to die, might have realized this paucity of descriptions and, after four or five minutes, returned to execute the bare minimum required of his rank and mission - save the soldier.)

Throwing one's medals or ribbons (or mibbons or redals - Damn, we `Nam Vets sure do get those words mixed up!) back in the face of America while stabbing 3,403,100 U.S. military men and women in the back - repeating lies told by Vietnam veteran impersonators - meeting with the North Vietnamese in Paris to demoralize our troops while the war was still being fought - are most assuredly not heroic actions but are, by simple definition, treasonous and criminal.

Finally, becoming a true, selfless hero is not necessarily event that transforms the rest of one's life, washing away character faults or destructive behaviors. There are certified heroes who are liars, drunks, manic-depressive spouse beaters, sex addicts, greedy manipulators, child abusers, and politically motivated sycophants.

So, I don't care who you believe is a hero...

The question is, "How does the past action of an individual determine who will be of more value in the future."

The skills needed to be an effective President track more toward management, consistency and persistence.

Battlefield heroics? A miniscule part of the equation.

(Want some relevant numbers and myths busted? http://www.vhfcn.org/stat.html)

Until you has been in the thick of war, not the armchair-General Fog of War that plays so well in cinematic retrospect, you have no idea what you are talking about.

(BTW: MacNamara is a senile old man who has just recently realized that he was a senile young man.)

In fact, the influence of Hollywood has created hordes of non-military simpletons who have an opinion and agenda about how conflicts should be managed. Watching Spielberg wage war is merely following colored lights on a canvas screen because a story, no matter how well told, is not reality. It's not even a good guide to reality. It's just a fragmented piece of an unknowable mosaic of experiences.

Vietnam was not Platoon, Apocalypse Now or Good Morning Vietnam. It was over 3 million stories and very few happy endings.
http://www.palletmastersworkshop.com/namflash.html

But the functional insanity of non-military strategists is an outgrowth of Police Review Board activism - bhong smoke left over from the `60's - where those who will never find themselves in a life or death situation are authorized to dictate what they feel is an appropriate use of force. Closet anarchists.

Earlier, I said that a strong measure of heroism is built into the job descriptions of the police and military. But make no mistake; job #1 for both professions is arriving home at the end of the day (or war) with the same number of holes in your body that you were born with.

Neither are paid to be wounded or killed. That is not the job description.

So, when anyone resists arrest or capture - and they either have a weapon or act as though they have a weapon - they have forfeited their right to be afforded the courtesy of unarmed restraint.

Most gunfights are mere seconds in length, chaotic and pit a life and death action on the part of the suspect against a measured response from the officer. The suspect has no chance of "punching out at 5 and going home" so this imbalance presents an enormous disadvantage to the military or police employee.

Second-guessing the soldier or police after the fact, is senseless. To even the disadvantage, a police review board should be composed of people who have been in armed conflict and survived.

Knife Versus Gun? Shoot To Kill.

Hell, this isn't a video game.

And yet, I hear PRB morons screaming, "He only had a knife!" as if any of them would risk a razor slice across the throat in the blink of an eye to protect the rights of the suspect. The same people who would take away an American's right to own a gun, illogically support the right of a suspect to brandish a knife.

Laughably, many PBR stooges (and other Lefty politicos)have wangled pistol "carry licenses" to protect themselves. Scare California Senator Dianne Feinstein and you'll be sucking on the stubby barrel of a 38 special.

Here in Denver a few months ago, the police responded to a domestic violence call where the attacker was reported to have a weapon. When the police arrived on the scene, one of the men reached under a blanket quickly and pulled out a can of soda. Mentally deranged? Confused? Thirsty?

No. Dead. In a split second. The same split second it would have taken a bullet from the suspect to hit the officer. You call it. What would you do in the same situation?

If you're sure you could have positively identified the shiny object flashed into view before pulling the trigger, I'll ask you to put your money where your mouth is.

Step Right Up!

Spend an afternoon at a Confidence Course pistol range. Walk through a home defense situation. As the silhouettes pop out at you, you'll see various potential targets: say, a man with a pistol, a child with a toy or a woman with a cell phone. Perhaps the Man will have the phone and the woman or the child will have the gun.

You've got a fraction of a second to recognize, evaluate and decide whether or not to shoot, and if so, aim to wound. The suspect just has to shoot to kill. A full second lag time on your part means you lose.

Shoot the unarmed person and your career is over, and you will live with the incident as the prime defining moment of your life. Fail to shoot the armed person within that brief single second and you are probably wounded or dead. By the way, being wounded does not stop the encounter, you still need to kill or be killed; only now, you may be unable to move or aim your weapon.

So stroll down the Confidence Course and every time you hit an unarmed pop-up, laugh nervously and say, "Oops!" But imagine that every time an armed target appears, it automatically fires a round at you - unless you hit the armed silhouette within a scant 1 second.

You won't have enough reaction time to say "Oops."

That'll be your initiation into the Police Review Board position - lots of dead innocent people and possibly a few new holes in you. After all, if you're not willing to stand in the cops shoes, who the hell are you to second-guess his survival judgment?

It's Even More Fun For Soldiers!

Now, not only do you have to make the same split second decisions to save your life, but you are walking through an environment where seemingly unarmed people are wearing bomb belts, improvised explosive devices can be hidden in cars, boxes, dead animals, bushes, piles of rubble, and the suspects all look alike, are not concerned about surviving the attack and the rest of the non-hostile populace won't make a move to defend themselves or warn you when you are in danger.

Now, here's your motivation - as an E-3 (Corporal) you'll be paid a whopping $1,117.80, per month before taxes. That's $13,413.60 for your 1-year tour of duty being a target in Baghdad. Sixty excitement-filled minutes in every $6.70 hour, 8 hours a day. The other 16 excitement-filled unpaid hours are yours to do with as you please.

It's not an enviable re-imbursement for risking your life - a buck or so less than flipping burgers or sitting on your single-hole ass collecting welfare or unemployment. But think of the honor you'll receive when you hold fire a split second too long to avoid hitting an innocent and take a round or two for the team.

So, that $6.70 an hour had better be supplemented by your strong personal sense of duty, honor and commitment to freedom - the very qualities that so-called "peace-activist" whiners despise. Sure, they'll scream about individual freedoms, but deny them to others when they feel threatened. They'll rally for social justice, but deny it to those who protect the rest of us. They'll march for economic equality, but protest pay raises that would give their defenders the same compensation as a spatula-jockey.

If they really want to bring the troops home, give the Armed Forces the materiel, authority and emotional support they need to take out the terrorists/insurgents/Islamicists and pacify Iraq. The notion of wanting to end all wars and keep the U.S. military dormant is rubbish. End fires and keep Fire Stations dormant. End Hurricanes and keep rescue workers dormant.

Maybe We Can Change Reality By Changing The Language!

This silliness is perpetuated by agenda-reciters who talk about Sensitive Wars and Exit Strategies.

Sensitive War is such an addle-headed buzzword that I refuse to point out how illogical a pairing it is. Caring Mutilation. Gentle Rape. Considerate Beheading. Nutty. The object is to impose your control over the enemy. Period, end of message.

And the concept of an Exit Strategy wasn't even applied to warfare until the corporate world worked up the idea in quasi-criminal acquisition and management schemes, e.g., Michael Milkin and Ken Lay had exit strategies. Not a tactical retreat, mind you, but a way of extricating oneself when the situation you've made turns bad and you want to yank out your plunder.

The reason the military does not have an exit strategy is because it is not an option to leave a war zone while still battling the attackers. It's a win or lose proposition. That's what war is: survival - battle-by-battle, campaign-by-campaign. To have a plan to "pull out" is to admit at the outset that there is another option to the war in the first place. Yet another whiff of Bhong smoke...

The option of not deposing Hussein on March 19th 2003 was deposing Hussein on March 20th 2003 or the 21st. Having been hit hard at the WTC, America could not afford to allow a known supporter of terrorism to remain in power. Time is money.

The U.S. could have conceivably "pulled out" of Iraq after Hussein was apprehended, but the cost in subsequent Iraq civilian murders would be staggering. (Ask Kerry how his estimate of post-pullout assaaination in Vietnam worked out - he stated a "three or four thousand - 2.5 million were massacred)

Besides, the ground rule of heroism is placing the welfare and needs of others above that of your own safety and subsequent advantage. Not the Kerry "acceptable massacre" concept.

Between Iraq and a Hard Place

It doesn't matter what Moktada al Sadr wants, or what the mullahs want, or what the jihad-frenzied foreign terrorists want. All that matters is that we leave Iraq a safer place for the citizens, where they can determine their own rights and freedoms by participating in free elections and referendums.

Of course the Islamicists are willing to die to prevent this. Any choice freely made by the Iraqi people countermands their centuries-old interpretation of the Koran. A similar misreading of the Bible would have fanatical groups of Christians demanding a "Caesar" to impose taxation and legal jurisdiction on all Americans.

That would be as "fanatical" as Fundamentalist Liberals crying out for Kerry's ascension to the Presidency and its resulting aftermath, wouldn't it?

We are at war with 12th Century terrorists, using 21st Century weapons. You can't plan a strategy when the other side is looking forward to dying. All you can do at that point is to help them reach their goal quickly and efficiently without harming those who wish to live.

It's often pointed out that the U.S. military is not equipped to handle Police responsibilities. This "change the argument" nonsense has been hampering the transition of Iraq from a war zone to civilian authority. At this point, Police are still a step away from taking control. It's still a war, Mr. Edwards.

Call the Orkin Man

What Iraq needs - and what the U.S. will need in the near future - is a specially trained team of exterminators. Not military, police or swat personnel, but an independent organization charged with routing and destroying the embedded terrorists. In Iraq they would be Iraqi nationals, trained and supported by U.S. troops. In America, judicious application of the Posse Comitatus Act would allow the military to support covert actions against entrenched terrorists with a civilian -led front. http://www.homelandsecurity.org/journal/articles/Trebilcock.htm

This so-called "Police State" scenario will be keenly opposed only until horrors like those witnessed in Beslan force us to confront the perpetrators of unreasoning evil. http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2004/09/20/001.html

Exterminators. Not soldiers or police or peace negotiators. A bunch of men, women and children who identify vermin and help set-up their removal.

For example: Begin a program where Iraqi's identify every non-Iraqi living in their area. Shine a light on the jihadists sense of invisibility. Pop a few and the neighborhood becomes too hot for them.

Think it's a fascist, racist idea? Tell that to Black leaders who have cleaned up inner city neighborhoods using the same technique. You might find yourself in a double-Democrat bind.

Meet terror with terror and disregard the demands of the people who weild it. Every suicide bomber explosion should set back plans for negotiations a year, every massacre - a decade. Chechnya can forget about seeking independence until well after 2025, Palestinians should not have a chance at statehood within the lifetime of any one alive today, and Arab leaders will be persuaded to either use their own sharpened senses of greed and retribution to assert control over the suicide-mill madrassahs, or be lumped in with those that must be removed.

Exterminated.

Looking for a Job?

The economy and relative availability of employment are virtually independent of Administration policy.

If the President had the power to create jobs, we'd have them. Right now, if Bush could create 1.4 million jobs he would send Kerry scuttling back to Assachusetts. And Bush is only responsible for putting two people out of work: Al Gore and Joe Lieberman.

Hammering on the stats versus who's in office despite major economic upheavals disregards the simple fact that changes for the better are usually glacial. There's every reason to believe that Clinton's "red hot" economy during the `90's was a gift provided by the previous administrations Gulf War. And that the collapse of the Dot.com bubble - and the WTC - were Bill's true legacy to us all.

Other than hiring a couple of hombres to rake the White House lawn, how would any President create jobs? Unable to answer this simple question, some people continue to wail about the lost jobs. Liberal people.

Explain what your contender would do (other than start a bunch of make-work Federal programs) to get America working again. Since the Heinz Company shipped 70% of its jobs overseas, the price of its pickles has remained the same and their cost has gone down. Who do we get to beat up about that?

The Liberal response translates a shape-shifting argle-bargle: "Capitalism is bad, and people who make obscene profits are criminals, unless they donate a lot of money to people who support social justice for underpaid migrant workers whose sweat is the brine the cheap pickles are cured in."

Relishing the Liberal Pickle

Honestly, what does a member of the Heinz family do to deserve $1 billion dollars? Make a pair of shoes as competently as Nike? Brew a steaming cup of Open Sun-picked coffee as well as Starbucks? Stitch up a Kathy Lee halter-top with the word SLUT spelled out across the front in sequins?

The whiners don't straddle the fence here: they're impaled upon it.

I live near Boulder. I lived next to Berkeley. I owned a home just up the highway from Fairfax in California's Extreme Leftist Marin County. You may know Fairfax as the home of its most famous ex-resident, the American Taliban, Johnny Lindh Walker.

I fully understand the hardcore Liberal mindset, "I got mine, you don’t deserve yours."

Remember the schoolyard snitch and gossip, who made points (or got rewards) by exaggerating the behavior of others, setting one group against the other and spreading rumors to destabilize the rest of the students?

These reprobates never stopped meddling, clouding the issues and disrupting those around them. They merely formed pernicious groups of self-proclaimed "socially conscious" gatekeepers and rabble-rousers.

How bizarre are they? I have personally met over a hundred of the dozen or so people who walked side-by-side with Martin Luther King. I met Pro Abortion activists who yelled at pregnant women for smoking. I've seen fireplace mantel pictures in million-dollar homes showing the owner, at 20 or so, fighting with riot police.

And all the while, these preposterous self-deceivers bragged about their triumphs in the `60's, forced their children into socialist indoctrination, casual drug use, hatred of authority and social alienation.

Liberal Revolutionaries - Just Like Mom and Dad wish they were...

I often wondered who thought up the "Question Authority" bumper sticker (so prevalent in university towns and other Lefty enclaves) and how ridiculous a command it was when displayed on the back of one’s car. One routine stop by a traffic cop and you"re either proven a congenital wimp or well on your way to a jailhouse rendezvous with a 300-pound guy named Race.

The common thread with most of the gray pony tailed, Granny Spandex, Earth Shoe scuffling, militant Vegan, namaste bowing, throwbacks I met (including their damaged whelps) was financial independence through hard-driving capitalism in their dim past, a family inheritance or an endowment from a lefty slush/trust fund or foundation. Mostly - free money.

(If you think I'm exaggerating about the "namaste bowing" watch Kerry do it in front of crowds and then talk about matching Bush blow for blow against terror. It's hilarious. Doesn't he realize what he's doing? Do any of them? (Abandoning the Jews in Israel, then emulating the Hindoos... verkakt!)

And yet, rather than being thankful for what they had (and stopping by the orphanage to change a diaper or dish out gruel), these Left Behind Lefties attempt to spread their anti-capitalist rabies to everyone they meet. "Tax the Rich!" they scream, knowing full well that the rich are never taxed. Those who are trying to become rich are taxed: clobbered with assessments and surtaxes and penalties.

That's why they call it an Income Tax. Not a Savings Tax or Endowment Tax or Trust Fund Tax. Income. What people who work for a living depend on.

Not the landed, endowed, posh enclave of Socialist discontent. They’re beyond the reach of an Income Tax. They've got all their stuff already.

The Kerry Exit Strategy

If Kerry wants the Rich to pay their fair share, let him propose a 50% Multi-Millionaire's Tax on all legacy wealth and he could pick up a fast 500M from his wife. It'd send a lot of disadvantaged kids to school, but I think he'd return home to find his suitcases piled on the front stoop of one of the The Heinz Palaces.

And about his claim of being able to create jobs? It might pay for Kerry to find a job himself, even this late in his moneyed life, so he can find out what having one feels like.

Next: Terror and Gay Marriage