Apparently, Mr. Sullivan's very lucrative political amnesia shall be permitted to sail on and on, unimpeded, until the End of Days.
Okay then, that being the case, in this unusually long post, see if you can spot exactly where his brain turns to poo (and, no, while funny, "1977" will not be accepted as a valid answer):
The Party Of Fiscal Responsibility
Ezra Klein claimed last week that it's the Democrats. Douthat isn't convinced:
To the extent that there are serious liberal plans for bringing the budget toward balance — whether they involve centralized rationing, middle class tax increases or huge tax hikes on the rich — neither the White House nor the Democratic Party as a whole seems to feel a sense of urgency in rallying behind them. In part, no doubt, that’s because much of the left doesn’t think of the deficit as a particularly urgent issue. They have every right to take that view. But it explains why the case that the Democrats are the real party of fiscal seriousness looks thin indeed.
But the GOP after the past ten years? It has a very long way to go before it retains any credibility.
Skipping lightly over whether Mr. Sullivan meant "regains" [very likely given the context] or "retains" [unlikely] let us focus instead on what I'm sure we all remember as that positively motherfucking Camelot of Conservatism prior to 2001...
{Insert cheesy flashback special effects here}
Back when the United States could coast breezily along on those record-breaking Reagan/Bush Surpluses (bolstered by the confidence America then had in the robust good health of its economic institutions such as the Savings and Loan industry and the staunch moral rectitude of its high-flying Captains of Capitalism) with enough scratch set aside in the boodle bag to carry us comfortably through the Dark Days of The Clinton Profligacy. In fact, the good times might have gone on forever had it not been for a silly man in a flight suit (which no Conservative ever voted for...or voted for again...or in any way ever supported) who -- with naught but the able assistance of his trusty, gun-totin' sidekick -- single-handedly drove Adam and Eve Smith out of Conservative Paradise forever and ever.
Very sad.
Also thank God the emergency auxiliary backup Conservative at the Little Paper That Could is finally getting some linky love from the Daily Beast. Because, dammit, the off-brand generic diet Conservative cola product that Mr. Douthat brews up out of adjectives left over from David Brooks' bi-weekly Beltway Common Wisdom bromides truly represents an edgy, rebel perspective to which our consarn Lamestream Media simply will not devote anywhere near enough attention.
* (In response to a question from Tild, I'm pretty sure the tee-shirt font I used started out life as Ariel Black, with which I added some fading, mid-tone burning, perspective distortion, liquifying and pasting-into.)
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Outside of a dog, a Professional Left button is man's best friend.
Inside of a dog it's too dark to read (sorry, Groucho .)
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“...they turned to prayer, beseeching that the sin which had been committed might be wholly blotted out.”
-- 2 Maccabees. 12:42
Behold the lucrative moral cowardice of Andrew Sullivan, conveniently boiled down into a single bullshit bouillon cube by the Greatest Blogger in the World himself:
"Yes, the right has moved inexorably to the fringe, but you shouldn't judge the conservatism of the 1990s by the standards of today's degenerate rump."
Gee, Andrew, which 1990s Conservatism was that?
The 1990s Conservatism that smiled approvingly as George Herbert Walker Bush's campaign was saved* by Lee Atwater blowing the Giant Conservative Bigot Dog Whistle loud and long?
The 1990s Conservatism that shrugged off record deficits?
The 1990s Conservatism that saw radical deregulation tank the S&L industry and said "More please!"
The 1990s Conservatism that cheered on Reagan as he sold weapons to terrorists? Got Marines killed in Middle East foreign adventures? Cut and ran from said adventure?
The 1990s Conservatism that was cool with using that weapons-to-terrorist dough to fund an illegal war?
The 1990s Conservatism that immediately set to work delegitimizing -- not opposing, but delegitimizing -- that "socialist" Clinton Administration?
The 1990s Conservatism that gave the keys to the party van to scum like Tom DeLay and Jerry Falwell?
That 1990s Conservatism, Andrew?
The 1990s Conservatism that threw a fucking parade for "Majority Maker" Rush Limbaugh?
The 1990s Conservatism that delighted in Newt Gingrich bending the full power of the political and corporate Right to the task of creating a new generation of mass-produced Orwellian hatespeech specifically designed to demonize all opposition and destroy our national capacity for political comity?
The 1990s Conservatism that launched Fox News?
The 1990s Conservatism that spread Hate Radio from coast-to-coast?
The Ralph Reed 1990s Conservatism?
The Paul Weyrich 1990s Conservatism?
The Phyllis Schlafly 1990s Conservatism?
The Oliver North, Superhero 1990s Conservatism?
The Jesse Helms 1990s Conservatism?
The Dick Armey 1990s Conservatism?
Or perhaps you're referring to the "Hunting Clinton like an animal for eight years" 1990s Conservatism?
The 1990s Conservatism of Ken Starr and a dozen officially approved, taxpayer-funded witch-hunts?
The 1990s Conservatism of investigating the White House Travel Office? Of "Filegate"? Of the Clinton Christmas Card list?
The 1990s Conservatism of Bill Clinton the murderer? The rapist? The assassin? Of Hillary the Lesbian?
The 1990s Conservatism of the Impeachment Freak Show?
The 1990s Conservatism of the American Spectator and for-pay hit pieces on the Clinton's funded by a 1990s Conservative billionaire?
Or perhaps Mr. Sullivan simply means this -- The 1990s Conservatism, without which neither Mr. Sullivan nor Mr. Frum nor Mr. Brooks nor any other member of their very, very forgetful circle of well-remunerated Conservative friends would have a career? The 1990s Conservatism, without which Mr. Sullivan would be spending his days hacking out clever supplementary dialogue for B-list celebrities to prattle while on press junkets.
Because of course, being a Conservative, Sullivan is permitted to play the role -- endlessly and profitably -- of the Born Again Virgin who has long since worn the corners off of his Get Out of the 90s Free card in a phenomenon I have already written about at great length here ("Like a Virgin") as part of a spectacularly damning bill of particulars that Sullivan is never going address or acknowledge...
...and which reader Ben Riddle was kind enough to commit to narrated video here:
Part I: The Public Record
And here -- Part II: Like a Virgin
I also have nothing to add to the sweet illegal ninja moves from the government visited upon Andrew Sullivan tag-team fashion by James Wolcott and John Cole here --
And I agree with Balloon Juice's John Cole that Andrew Sullivan is letting himself be played for a pious patsy yet again ad infinitum. He quotes from Sullivan's chiding of Obama for not releasing this info sooner, and writes:
The reason, Andrew, is because he already did everything he needed to do, and he did it in 2008...
Only for truly insane people and politicians who find advantage in race-baiting and de-legitimizing the President was this not enough. How evident was it that this was ALL he needed to do to prove he is a citizen? Try this on for size- not one god damned state contested his citizenship in the election. Jan Brewer just vetoed the birther bill in Arizona because it was an exercise in redundancy exercise and ran headlong into the full faith and credit clause. This new release will solve nothing, and the birthers will still continue to spew their nonsense.
[snip]
I know Sullivan’s reaction shouldn’t be pissing me off as much as it is, because he really can’t help himself. He really is just a stooge for whatever bullshit the right spews, either intentionally or accidentally. He doesn’t mean to be, I don’t think, just his self-identity as a conservative is so strong that he simply can not come to grips with the fact that conservatism is dead in the United States, and that those who call themselves conservative are just crazy people. But Andrew so yearns for a “sane conservatism” that he just can’t help himself, and as such, advances bullshit narratives like the Ryan plan being “serious” or it being Obama’s fault that he didn’t release this information earlier. Sully just can’t help himself.
other that one, small dissent regarding Mr. Sullivan's motives in this matter.
Specifically, that Mr. Sullivan needed to hype the patently absurd idea that Barack Obama somehow owed it to America to walk coast-to-coast taking every seething bigot and inbred lump of Conservative human livestock in-hand and personally reassure them in William Makepeace Thackerian detail that he really, really, really, really was an American...
...because as Mr. Sullivan himself has made a virtual franchise out of beating e-n-d-l-e-s-s-l-y on his own little conspiracy theorizing tin drum about the natal circumstances of another famous person, allowing any precedent short of "Famous Political Persons absolutely owe Andrew Sullivan any idiot with a megaphone and a conspiracy theory their undivided attention and 30-significant-digit Massive Overkill answers to their every question" would make Mr. Sullivan look like a kind of a dolt.
You know that dream where beloved ace pitcher Jethro "Jet" Beefhammer is suddenly stricken with something just debilitating enough to knock him temporarily off the mound, but not really bad in any other way, and the coach points to you in the stands as you wolf down your 2nd Vienna Beef and says "Suit up kid!"
Such was sort of the case last Saturday when Blue Gal and I breakfasted at the Heartland Cafe with the polytalented Matt Filipowicz and his fiancee The Kate and got invited to the stage to appear on the local radio/YouTubed program Live at The Heartland.
The part of Lovely, Wicked Smart Woman with Terrific Laugh is played by Blue Gal.
The part of the Almost Invisible Hand of the Marketplace is played by me.
Also too, at the request of many kind souls, we now have a propoer, dignified snail mail option for correspondence and contributions.
You can now make checks payable to:
The Professional Left Podcast PO Box 9133 Springfield, IL 62791
Paul Ryan, the Republican Party’s latest entrant in the seemingly endless series of young, prickish, over-coiffed, anal-retentive deficit Robespierres they’ve sent to the political center stage in the last decade or so, has come out with his new budget plan. All of these smug little jerks look alike to me – from Ralph Reed to Eric Cantor to Jeb Hensarling to Rand Paul and now to Ryan, they all look like overgrown kids who got nipple-twisted in the halls in high school, worked as Applebee’s shift managers in college, and are now taking revenge on the world as grownups by defunding hospice care and student loans and Sesame Street. ...
Since Brooks himself is talking about Ryan’s plan cutting $4 trillion over the next ten years (some say that number is higher), what we’re really talking about here is an ambitious program to cut taxes for people like… well, people like me and David Brooks, and paying for it by “consolidating job-training programs” and forcing old people to accept reduced Medicare benefits.
We are in the middle of a major national disagreement over budget priorities, and that debate is going to turn into a full-scale cultural shooting war once the 2012 presidential election season comes around. It is obvious that we have a debt problem in this country and that something needs to be done about it. But a huge part of the blame for the confusion and the national angst over our budget issues has to be laid at the feet of media assholes like Brooks, who continually misrepresent what is actually happening with national spending. ...
There is now simply too much money and power to be made from professionally lying to the American people (People's Exhibit #6,255,701: this Centrist stool sample taken directly from David Brook's column today) --
The country is about to be offered the same two products: one from Soviet Production Facility A (the Republicans), and the other from Soviet Production Facility B (the Democrats). It will react just as it always has.
What Steve Gilliard might have made of the Obama Phenomenon and the Obama Presidency, I went spelunking around in his archives for awhile. And, having done so, I think it is not unreasonable to guess that his take on "Obama and the Democratic Party: Past, President and Future" would have sounded something like this:
Passivity is no solution
...regardless of a genuine collapse or gamesmanship, there has to be a sustained public outcry, win or lose. There has to be pressure put on the Dems to do whatever it takes to oppose him [then-Supreme Count nominee Sam Alito], and that starts with you calling your Senator.
You know, the rich and the fundies use democracy all the time, they work the Congress like it was second nature. But here, on the left, you have people waiting for the brown shirts to return and inventing excuses to be passive, or even worse, hoping for some pure party to come along and offer easy salvation.
There's a line from the Guns of Navarrone "You're in it, right up to your neck". Well, if you think you'll stop Bush by voting Green or whining or saying he's a dictator, you're wrong. Until the mobs are in the streets, you still have the law and your rights and the right to petition Congress. And if you think last year was ugly, that was nothing compared to what is coming.
You think this is the only fight? You think you can walk away from this one? Shit, this is nothing, because by the end of the year, we may be fighting to reclaim the Republic from, Bush and Cheney. If Congress won't act, it's up to us to try and make them act. And if they want to appease, we find new people for their jobs, if it takes years.
People say I'm optimistic. Fuck no. I know American history. Bush is a piker compared to the people who ran Mississippi in the 1950's. That was a police state, complete with secret police, disappearances and mob rule. Most American have forgotten that, but they shouldn't.
Bush's power came from our weakness and fear, we didn't protect what we should have when we should have. We gave him too much trust and he failed us all. Now, we have to reclaim it and that will not be easy. But is has to be done. Compared to the other challenges Americans have faced, it's not a massive thing, no one has to steal Tory land at gunpoint or dodge German bullets on Omaha Beach or face fire hoses and dogs, but it won't be easy either. But it needs to be done. And no matter how shitty it seems at any one moment, like reading the Times this morning, you don't get to lose heart. Why? Because if you can read this, you probably aren't doing that bad.
The people who need a different America, soldiers, Wal Mart employees, don't get the time to call Congress. We do. So keep in mind, if you do nothing, the people who catch it in the neck isn't you, but someone who's already struggling and doesn't need another burden. You aren't just fighting for yourself. Every time you read about Wal Mart, and get pissed, remember, you're not just protecting your rights, but a lot of people who have no voice. That's why we do this, not just to vent your anger and express your frustration. America has left a lot of people behind, and if no one else want to think of them, it is our moral duty to do so.
Always it came back to moral duty with Steve, and a realistic assessment of our gains and losses (this lovely piece by Ta-Nehisi Coates put me in mind of just that kind of writing today):
The Civil War Isn't Tragic
... I think that ground is generally accepted by almost everyone, and for good reasons. Six hundred thousand people died in the Civil War, a shocking figure which doesn't really capture the toll that this sort of violence took on the country at large. And yet when I think about the Civil War I don't feel sad at all. To be honest, I feel positively fucking giddy.
And I don't think I'm abnormal because of this. Twenty-two thousand people died in the Revolutionary War, and we celebrate that with hot dogs and hamburgers every year. I'm sure that while Jews feel fairly horrible that the Holocaust happened, very few of them consider the fighting it took in order to liberate the death camps, "tragic." The Holocaust is tragic. Ending the Holocaust is not. ...
Tasty.
In the days after Gilly passed away, there was a lot of fine talk from people higher up the blogger food chain that A Book Must Be Done.
Yes! Yes! Here! Here!
Most of it, as I recall, was done in the passive voice ("Yes indeedy, someone somewhere should certainly Do That") or done by people whose mainspring gets wound up very fast...and who then spins most of that lovely manic energy off into the air until the next awesome thing about which someone should really do something come into view.
Needless to say, nothing at all happened. I'm sure everyone was very sincere and good hearted, but sincerity and good intentions don't get ballots recounted in Florida. In the end, all most of us have is our word, which is why most grownups make large commitments sparingly; because they know how very hard large commitments can be to keep. Which is why I shrugged back when I overheard such passionate talk from Very Important bloggers at Chicago's Netroots Nation just I shrug now: I know about how far I can get on a gallon of Up With People gas, and I know what loose talk that no one ever really, really intends to back up with action sounds like.
(Shit, after leaving a few jobs and liberal organizations behind for precisely those reasons, I ought know the timbre of that jaunty tune by now :-)
an alternative interpretation of events surrounding death and resurrection of Jesus Christ as presented in Christian scripture, reprinted in its entirety from this post from five years ago.
It reads: “Get your fucking hands off my son!”
(Actually it’s a photo of the Coptic script of the Gospel of Judas via National Geographic)
File this under: The Real, True Adventures of Jesus and his Kid.
OK, none of this is original to me.
Some I’d read, some I’ve picked up talking to Jesuits and much of it I got through a series of letters that a good friend of mine assembled several years ago when he was getting his thoughts on paper.
No, I have never read “The DaVinci Code” (I started it and found it to be similar-if-not-outright-derivative of things I’d already read, and the writing was, well, turgid) so if this is too overlapful of that, skip it.
Manuscript Indicates Jesus Urged Judas' Betrayal From Associated Press
12:47 PM PDT, April 6, 2006
WASHINGTON — For 2,000 years Judas has been reviled for betraying Jesus. Now a newly translated ancient document seeks to tell his side of the story.
The "Gospel of Judas" tells a far different tale from the four gospels in the New Testament. It portrays Judas as a favored disciple who was given special knowledge by Jesus -- and who turned him in at Jesus' request.
"You will be cursed by the other generations -- and you will come to rule over them," Jesus tells Judas in the document made public today.
The text, one of several ancient documents found in the Egyptian desert in 1970, was preserved and translated by a team of scholars. It was made public in an English translation by the National Geographic Society.
Religious and lay readers alike will debate the meaning and truth of the manuscript.
But it does show the diversity of beliefs in early Christianity, said Marvin Meyer, professor of Bible studies at Chapman University in Orange, Calif.
The text, in the Coptic language, was dated to about the year 300 and is a copy of an earlier Greek version.
A "Gospel of Judas" was first mentioned around A.D. 180 by Bishop Irenaeus of Lyon, in what is now France. The bishop denounced the manuscript as heresy because it differed from mainstream Christianity. The actual text had been thought lost until this discovery.
…
"Perhaps more now can be said," he commented. The document "implies that Judas only did what Jesus wanted him to do."
Christianity in the ancient world was much more diverse than it is now, with a number of gospels circulating in addition to the four that were finally collected into the New Testament, noted Bart Ehrman, chairman of religious studies at the University of North Carolina.
Eventually, one point of view prevailed and the others were declared heresy, he said, including the Gnostics who believed that salvation depended on secret knowledge that Jesus imparted, particularly to Judas.
… "Step away from the others and I shall tell you the mysteries of the kingdom," Jesus says to Judas, singling him out for special status. "Look, you have been told everything. Lift up your eyes and look at the cloud and the light within it and the stars surrounding it. The star that leads the way is your star."
The text ends with Judas turning Jesus over to the high priests and does not include any mention of the crucifixion or resurrection.
…
So you want to know the really-real story of Jesus?
Well, settle down and bring me a scotch and I will reveal all.
Now is this little story I'm about to tell true?
How the hell should I know? It is to my mind, however, no less riveting an explanation of the Jesus Story than the cartoons they pass off as genuine coin in Sunday School, or either the Abattoir Christianity or "JC, CEO" faiths that are pimped by various hucksters on the Right.
In other words: We Purport, You Decide.
So once upon a time…
The Kingdom of Judea was in upheaval as is had been for years. The Romans had conquered the region and had tried to bend in into becoming another distant province of their empire.
Their success was…mixed.
The Occupiers were militarily superior to the locals in every way, and there were a lot of advantages to being a client-state. And, yes, they had effectively co-opted many of the local elected officials, but everyone knew what the score was.
The Occupiers said “jump” and their proxy government said “how high.”
And the locals – who had been conquered and pillaged many times before and who would have found our modern notion of separating Church and State incomprehensible – existed in various of states of high-pissoffery.
The Occupiers were almost uniformly seen an affront to their God and despoilers of their holy places.
Some people just wanted to be left alone. Some thought cooperation was the lesser of many evils; the only way to stave off something much worse. Many were seething with rage. And a few of them took up arms against the Occupiers and those they saw as collaborators.
And those who drew blood in their cause saw it as a sacred thing.
It was a cauldron of faith, politics, family, tribe, righteous fury, military power and insurgency, always gurgling away at a low boil and kept in check by compromise when possible, and massive shows of force when not.
And I don’t think it is exaggerating the situation by a whole lot by describing it as an on-again-off-again form of urban warfare taking place in the context of a low-grade civil war.
Say, does ANY of this sound familiar?
Does anyone fail to notice that if it were air strikes vs. carbombs instead of legions vs. daggers, this is exactly what the front page of the New York Times looks like every single day?
The reason I mention it is I am always surprised when devout Christians are oblivious to the context in which their central stories take place.
In a city in the grip of factional fighting that shuddered and bled for years before JC came along.
A city that was all but wiped off the map in the denouement of that Long War, 40 years after Jesus was supposed to have been killed.
So instead of the Disney Christ, existing outside of time and space in a Neverland of shepherds and parables, wise men and stock-character Romans, just imagine it as it really was.
In a city in the middle of a guerilla war, where leaders desperately rose up again and again only to be killed, again and again.
And then a young warrior-priest hit on a new strategy.
He is well-educated in both tactics and law. He is of royal blood, and like true royalty feels quite at home talking to people of every station in life. The Essenes know him, as do the Zealots. Even to the worshipers of Mithras he would not be a stranger.
He has developed what we would call a broad constituency, and he also has a duty. The same duty every Jewish lead bears in his turn: to drive the Romans out.
As a rabbi and a royal, he has also taken a wife. Seriously, who in those times would have trusted a wifeless, childless leader? They were married at Cana (you may have read about it), and had a son, then entering his teens.
The son is a royal and a rebel like his old man, but has fallen in with the armed, hard-core, “Revolution Now” crowd. His dad worries about him, but he’s a strong-willed and righteous kid who’s been listening to dad's anti-Roman kitchen-table-talk his whole life, so what can the old man really say?
The uprising Jesus had planned was, of course, both spiritual and political -- two concepts which would not be teased apart and thought of separately for millennia. To craft and trigger his rebellion he made an underdog's careful use of the agitpropic power of “prophecy fulfillment” to fill the streets with followers, perhaps using the radical idea that in the true fulfillment of Jewish Law the revolutionaries could literally love their enemies into making concessions to capture the imagination of the war-weary residents of Jerusalem.
Maybe the streets were too narrow?
Maybe the crowds were too large?
Whatever happened, at some point the wheels came off, and the massed power of the Roman military moved in. It was soon obvious that the uprising had failed, and seeing that the tide was turning and they were all now (or would soon be) wanted for capital crimes, Jesus and his team went into hiding.
Which leads to what I think of as one of the central, unanswered question of New Testament.
Why didn’t they just put their boogie shoes on and scram?
Live to fight another day?
C’mon, you’ve got a city full of followers presumably willing to hide you. Friends in high and low places. Pals among the Essennes down the coast. I mean, who the fuck plans a rebellion without an escape route?
Without a Plan B?
It's 106 miles to Chicago! You've got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark and we're wearing sunglasses.
So hit it!
But they stayed.
Why?
Don’t think supernatural; don’t think stilted or scripted or Cecil B. DeMille.
Just think like a smart, compassionate leader of men during a time of war and ask yourself, "What would make me blow off my chance at retreat and regrouping?"
How about if the Romans had your kid?
Your child, who is not just your flesh and blood, but the heir to a royal line.
A teenaged boy who had been name after his father, and since people didn’t have last names in those days, he would have been called something like “Jesus, Son of the Master” or “Jesus, Son of the father”.
But where in the New Testament do you find a second man named Jesus?
Now the gospels tell us the name (title) of the robber Pilate offered to the crowd for release in Jesus stead was "Barabbas" or Bar'Abba Mk 15:6-15, Mt 27:15-26, Lk 23:17-25, Jn 18:39-40.
(This is not a personal name. It's a title - in Aramaic it means "the Son of the Father"). Some ancient manuscripts of Matthew, confirmed by the writings of the church father, Origen (250ce), reveal the full name of the criminal as " Jesus Bar'Abbas " , just like the "Jesus Bar'Abbas" ( Son of the Father "God" ) that Christians worship .
The church father Origen was appalled by the use of "Jesus Barabbas" in the manuscripts he was familiar with because he held the conviction that no "sinner" should bare the name and title of "Jesus the Christ " . … "…scribes deleted the name Jesus from Jesus Barabbas out of reverence for Jesus Christ ." D. A. Carson, Matthew, in vol. 8 of The Expositor's Bible Commentary, edited by Frank E. Gaebelein, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1984), p574.
In the Christian story of the passion of Jesus , Barabbas, actually Jesus bar-Abbas, (Aramaic Bar-abbâ, "son of the father"), was the insurrectionary murderer whom Pontius Pilate freed at the Passover…
"Jesus Barabbas"
According to the United Bible Societies' text, Matthew 27:17 reads: "...whom will ye that I release unto you? Jesus Barabbas [Greek: Iesous ton Barabbas] or Jesus which is called Christ [Greek: Iesous ton legomenon Christon]?"
Some early Greek manuscripts of Matthew present Barabbas' name twice as Jesus bar Abbas: manuscripts in the Caesarean group of texts, the Sinaitic Palimpsest, the Palestinian Syriac lectionaries and some of the manuscripts used by Origen in the 3rd century, all support the fact that Barabbas' name was originally Jesus Barabbas, though not all modern New Testament translations reflect this. Origen deliberately rejected the reading in the manuscript he was working with, and left out "Iesous" deliberately, for reverential considerations, certainly a strongly motivated omission. Early editors did not want the name Jesus associated with anyone who was a sinner.
So word gets back to you via intermediaries that the Romans have your son and have charged him with being a member of the sicarii (An armed, militant sect dedicated to overthrowing the Romans by force.)
He had committed a capital crime (Mark 15:7 says that he had committed a murder during an insurrection) and was soon to die…but the Romans would be willing to trade.
The Father for the Son, and the clock is ticking.
You see how with a little context we’ve moved this along from a child’s badly staged Sunday School pageant to an episode of “24”?
"My name is Jesus of Nazareth...and this is the longest day of my life!”
Your rebellion is fucked, your movement is in ashes and as you and your posse pack fast and get ready to blow town, word reaches you that your son and heir is rotting in a Roman prison awaiting execution.
What do you do?
Well if you read the story of the Last Supper without changing a single phrase -- only shifting the context and the emphasis -- according to scripture, you call an Emergency War Council.
You make some brutally hard decisions, share a Passover meal and a prayer with your dearest friends and loyal lieutenants -- men who have sworn to live and die by your word -- and then pick out two of them to do the hardest things they will ever be asked to do.
As their leader, you start issuing orders.
Mercy first, so with staunch-but-not-very-bright Peter, you keep it simple. You tell him to escape. To lie his ass off, deny he ever knew you, and get out of town.
Pete doesn’t want to -- in tears he says, “If I should die with thee, I will not deny thee in any wise” -- so you have to insist.
Then onto the shoulders of your ferociously loyal security chief, Judas Iscariot -- Judas of the Sicarii? -- you place the heaviest burden of all; the life of your child. Judas will handle the exchange, including personally turning you over to the authorities, and since the Roman offer came strings attached including an insistence on secrecy, he can never, ever breathe a word about the real story to anyone or the deal is off.
You know it'll destroy him and his good name for all time -- “The Son of man goes as it is written of him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! It would have been better for that man if he had not been born." -- but you also know it has to be done, and only the strongest of your men can handle that burden.
"Truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me."
For god’s sake, these aren’t prophecies. They’re final commands, given to a platoon whose heart had already been shattered once that day.
And then you lead your brothers in a prayer, and walk out into the night and into history.
To save your son.
Factually/historically true or not, I've always felt this to be a more satisfyingly comprehensible, logical and deeply human explanation of the final days of the Rebel Christ than the one I was taught to believe in Faith Church Sunday school class.
The Mouse Circus really pushed the theoretical upper limit of shit-shoveling insults to the memory of Real Journalism today.
You want the short version?
Here it is
David Gregory: Num-num-num?
David Brooks: Num-num-num!
Some Republican Nob: Num-num-num x 3
Some Token "Liberal": Num-num-num - .05
David Gregory: Num-num-num?
David Brooks (reiterating his latest New York Times column): Num-num-num!
Seriously, that is all our Sunday Morning Communiques from Imperial Headquarters come down to anymore.
David Gregory: But the Tea Party sentiment of the Republican Party has won the day hasn't it David Fucking Brooks?
David Fucking Brooks: That's what I liked about the Bold Ryan Plan To Let Old People Die In The Street. I don't agree with every part of the Bold Ryan Plan To Let Old People Die In The Street, but in order to be taken seriously, President Obama will have to come out with charts-n-shit, Ross Perot-style.
GOP Panel Hack: The President of Hope and Change has become a divisive Commie populist!
David Gregory: But what about, y'know, those
In-De-Pend-Ent voters?
GOP Panel Hack: I like Barack Hussein Trotsky Ho Chi Minh Obama just fine as a person, but people are going to Send Him a Message.
David Gregory: What about that kookie Donald Trump
David Fucking Brooks?
David Gregory: Cool! As a fellow member of the Imperial Blarney Caste, you need never worry that I will pop a cap of Actual Journalism into your Reasonable Conservative ass on this show!
Any final thoughts David Fucking Brooks?
Of course if you had had the sense God gave turnips and had fled as fast as your tiny turnip feet would take you away from this loathsome Establishmentarian circle jerk on to more international and in-depth fare at, say, “Fareed Zakaria GPS” on CNN you would have found...
...wait for it....
...wait for it....
...David Fucking Brooks staring right back at you again
{because no single Mouse Circus venue can contain the sheer, tidal force of his brilliance) bringing the full weight of his authority as America's Greatest Conservative Public Intellectual to bear on the task of psychoanalyzing the President of the United States:
"He’s multiple animals,” Brooks said. “You know, I would say we’re all – we all have multiple personalities. My psychobabble description of him is he’s a very complicated person who has many different selves, all of them authentic, but they come out in different contexts..."
So then, five things:
1. I personally have "given up hope in the political system" precisely because well-insulated, over-paid bootlicking apologists for Empire like David Brooks and David Gregory are the cherries on top of it. Because...
2. Any path towards saving this wounded old country from extinction must begin with a frank and unsparing discussion about the causes of and solutions to the horrifying reality that one half of our political system -- the Right half -- has gone full bull goose loony bugfuck nuts and they ain't ever coming back. And as long as well-insulated, over-paid bootlicking apologists for Empire like David Brooks and David Gregory control our national political conversation, we are never going to have that conversation.
Never.
Never.
Never.
3. The political roots of the T. Boone Pickens ♥s Natural Gas (tm) matter are deeper and more tangled
than you could possibly imagine.
4. This week, the part of Generic "Meet The Press" GOP Panel Hack was played by Alex Castellanos, while President John McCain made his obligatory appearance on MTP from Libya "One-on-One" (as this was his one millionth softball appearance on "Meet the Press", President McCain's next complimentary David Gregory hot oil massage will come with a Peppermint Cream Mani-Pedi absolutely free.)
Today he used his Conservative Message Delivery System known as "Politico" to lie to his readers.
This is what apologists for the Empire do to protect the interests of that Empire.
I know it won't come as a huge shock to anyone who has ever read the kind of wildly profitable Conservative-masquerading-as-Centrist bilge that Politico extrudes every day to discover that when Ben Smith desperately went digging deeeep into the internet midden pile to find something -- anything -- he could use to refocus the outright, asylum-escapee zombie madness of the Birthers Who Wouldn't Die through the obligatory Beltway "Both-Sides-Do-It" lens:
I've been looking for a good analogue to the willingness of Republicans to believe, or say they believe, that Obama was born abroad, and one relevant number is the share of Democrats willing to believe, as they say, that "Bush knew."
Question: There are also accusations being made following the 9/11 terrorist attack. One of these is: People in the federal government either assisted in the 9/11 attacks or took no action to stop the attacks because they wanted to United States to go to war in the Middle East. Answers: ( respondents) Very likely 16% Somewhat likely 20% Not likely 59% Don't know 5%
don't exactly match this screaming headline under which Mr. Smith so promiscuously misrepresented them:
"More than half of Democrats, according to a neutral survey, said they believed Bush was complicit in the 9/11 terror attacks."
Not that it matters in the slightest.
Virtually every wingnut colleague or friend I have ever tried to patiently drag out of their ideological spider-hole by debunking one more...and then one more...and yet again one more crackpot email a raving about the latest imaginary Obama outrage (Jesus Fucking Christ don't you people ever just get plain fucking tired of letting the same fucking lying bastards use your skulls as their outhouse over and over and over again?) has been responded to in the same way:
"Well, ya know the Lefties, they're are just as bad! Worse even!"
It's too late.
The Centrist poison is in the groundwater now: Because the money to be made by relentlessly pounding home the Both-Sides-Do-It-Ism is simply too great; because the bulldozing disinterest of the Beltway press in anyone who corrects or contradicts the Imperial dicta is too relentless; because the success rate of trying to debunk this shit retail reached a diminishing return flatline long, long ago...
...and, finally, because it balms the conscience and hides the guilt of the Servants of Empire who got so much so fatally wrong for so many years (my goodness, even the Worlds Greatest Blogger cannot be bothered to dig one inch below the Beltway Pablum to look at what the actual data actually said.)
The best one can do now is, as we say, document the atrocities and hope that some future historian can be found who will be more interested telling the story of how the Right gutted America than our present-day, billion-dollar media obviously is.
"I believe this nation should commit itself, to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on Medicare and returning him safely to the Earth."
Outside of a dog, a Professional Left button is man's best friend.
Inside of a dog it's too dark to read (sorry, Groucho .)
You know you want it, so why not toddle on down to Blue Gal's Cafepress Store (and keep listening later in the year for an opportunity to win one). Also too, the Podcast Donate Button Button below allows listeners to throw a contribution specifically towards the podcast. Thanks for your listenership and support!
And will tell you any batshit lie you want to hear.
And since these are the three traits you screwheads revere above all else, doesn't it make sense to once and for all put this infantile infatuation with democracy behind you and turn your lives, your fortunes and your sacred honor over to me?
Blue Gal said many clever and insightful things, including remarking that Jake Gyllenhaal has the piercing blue eyes of a Paul Ryan "but without all the creepiness".
Which is certainly unimpeachably true.
In the longer-form category, Roger Ebert penned this review that I liked pretty well, especially for all the things it didn't say: all the points Roger generously omits creates a space for me to write something that was not simply a repetition of points Roger had already made far better than I ever could.
Which was nice of him.
I'll stick to three.
First, a purely science fictional gripe. Roger didn't mention the internal inconsistency of the movie's Fake Science. I like well-crafted time travel stories and know first-hand how tricky it is to both do something new with the idea and tidy up every loose end, so I don't mind a little Treknobabble to spackle over the raw edges of the non-science. But I do mind when a movie violates its own premises. Not to reveal any spoilers, but if our hero, Captain Colter Stevens, only has access to the universe of data that a) he is being given by his handlers and, b) whatever was in his doppleganger's head up until the moment the Very Bad Thing happened, he cannot then turn around and use a smart phone to search the internet for information to which no one in this "bubble universe" could possibly have access.
All the flux capacitors in the world do not allow the Mona Lisa to reach past her frame and grab a ham sandwich off the museum guard's desk.
Second, Roger didn't mention that Scott "Quantum Leap" Bakula plays the voice of Captain Stevens' father, which was a nice little touch.
But third, and most importantly, Roger missed that "Source Code" was clearly an attempt at creating a "Coming Home" or "Deer Hunter" or "First Blood" for our Afghanistan (and Iraq) veterans: a small, bittersweet "Welcome Home, Soldier" flick for all the parades they never got and will never get.
As was done in "First Blood", all of the real-world tropes that are seeping into our national consciousness as soon-to-be standard elements in the story of the forgotten veterans of our Forever War on Terror are present. And as in "First Blood", they have been turned loose in a new landscape to find different endings.
There is the Pasty Libertarian with his Stars-a-Stripes WMD who wants to remake the world by wiping out all the inconvenient lesser beings who are all presumably keeping him from getting laid.
There is the Capable, Beautiful Woman -- the symbol of civilization and all that must be protected -- who the hero fails over and over again (for some reason -- probably because half the movie is centered around a train, I could not help but think of Claudia Cardinale's "Jill McBain" from "Once Upon a Time in the West")
There is the Morally Crippled Neocon who has never served in the military but has all kinds of exotic, amoral ideas about how the lives of soldiers can be used up in the service of his career (and who has a prepping-his-hair-for-the-camera moment that absolutely had to be a call-back
to this little freak-show.)
There is our hero's Fellow Soldier, who follows ever-more painful orders from her relentless civilian authorities as her conscience boils along underneath her professional exterior. She is the only one to whom our hero cat talk "soldier to soldier" and the only was capable of truly thanking him for his sacrifice.
And, finally, there is Captain Stevens, the Soldier-as-Noble-Problem-Solver: underappreciated, shorn of family, near-fatally wounded in his service to his country, still trying to "save the world" and who is being "stop-lossed" in the cruelest way imaginable by the civilian authorities who have no regard for the Hell they are putting him through.
Also the ending was abrupt and weak did not render proper respect to what had gone before it, and Chicago was filmed as such an Oz of impossible beauty that it made "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" look like the last reel of "The Devil's Rain".
Overall, a solid C+ B+.*
Or maybe a C++ :-)
* (Commenters have convinced me that I'm too harsh a grader, even though it does slightly spoil the joke :-)
...there is something strange about Rove and Krauthammer dismissing this blow-dried creep as somehow unserious. You mean less serious than Palin, whose ticket you both endorsed last time around? You endorse unqualified crazy; you'll get even more unqualified crazy. But this time, with enough money to buy and bait his way into the affections of the unhinged base.
Listening to these Republican "elites" after the last ten years on Trump is a little like listening to them on the crippling debt. They helped create both nightmares. Some of us have not developed total amnesia.
Rove and Krauthammer aren't pissed that Trump in unserious: like all con men, they're just pissed that someone else is plucking their pigeons. Because the Right has always been a Pretty Hate Machine powered by the dark energies of imbeciles and bigots --
...if the entire Right Wing understands anything it is this – as frustrating and degrading as it is to men like Trent Lott, Tom Tancredo, G. Felix Allen and Rick Santorum who really, really want to shout their love for all things Segregated and/or Despotic from the rooftops, it is still not socially acceptable to publicly embrace and celebrate your Inner Klansman.
Thus they must commune with their Swine Army in code.
They must use lightly encrypting hatespeech to manipulate the Rove Rods to get the Electoral Reactor Core seething hot enough to activate the base...but always keep the Bobo Koolant level of soothing denial, spin and outright lies juuust high enough to keep the Moderates from being directly exposed to and freaked out by the unshielded Core of the GOP.
-- and the gibbering idiots who are pushing Trump into the lead are that unshielded Core of the Right, and always have been.
And speaking of con men, the part about Mr. Sullivan not developing total amnesia about this matter is perfectly true.
Conservative Expatriates like Mr. Sullivan have instead carefully annealed themselves inside a cartoonishly selective, self-righteous, self-absolving, career-insulating cocoon of
The testicles of the rich and powerful will always have a parking garage.
In today's airless, pointless, paean to Donald Trump: the King of Money, David Brooks pens yet another entry in his in his creepy, ongoing, "Rich, Obnoxious Daddy-Figures Under Whose Cruel Lash I Desperately Want to Find Meaning now that William Buckley is Dead" public memoir:
"These supremely accomplished blowhards offend some but also arouse intense loyalty in others. Their followers enjoy the brassiness of it all. They live vicariously through their hero’s assertiveness. They delight in hearing those obnoxious things that others are only permitted to think."
In addition to his ingrained masochism, Our Mr. Brooks' obsessively dishonest Fake Centrism was also on full, pornographic display today as he carefully paired Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh with "Howard Stern and George Soros" to help his tiny coterie of wealthy, Reality-Impaired readers continue to pretend that Both Sides Do It.
In fact, David Brooks would appreciate it very much if we could all just agree to pretend his Conservative Movement never existed, because while Mr. Brooks correctly identified the characteristics of poisonous soil from which the Trump phenomenon has sprung...
"There has always been a large clump of voters who believe that America could reverse its decline if only a straight-talking, obnoxious blowhard would take control."
"...he is actually riding a deep public fantasy: The hunger for the ultimate blowhard who can lead us through dark times."
"Now he spouts birther nonsense and calls Obama the worst president in American history. Now he leads rallies that make Michele Bachmann events look like the League of Women Voters. Even angry American voters want some level of seriousness, prudence and self-control.
But I do insist that Trump is no joke. He emerges from deep currents in our culture, and he is tapping into powerful sections of the national fantasy life. I would never vote for him, but I would never want to live in a country without people like him."
...he takes very conspicuous pains to avoid mentioning the name of the farm on which this toxic soil is located.
At no point during this complete waste of another 800 perfectly good units of the King's English does Bobo deign to mention the inconvenient fact this consarn "birther nonsense" is firmly rooted in and a pure product of David Brook's very own Conservative Movement.
In fact, at no point does Bobo bother to mention the words "Republican" or "Conservative" at all, nor the fact that the cultivation and of this grotesque crop of hate, bigotry and ignorance -- this methodical hate-iculture of the dark side of the American soul -- has been a the mainstay of David Brook's very own Republican Party for as long as Mr. Brooks has been alive.
No mention made of the billions poured into the Southern Strategy over the last 40 years by the same political forces that made Mr. Brooks' career possible. No mention of Fox News as a delivery system for Republican lies. No mention that this is all a rerun of the Clinton years with different inflections and accents, but featuring the same oligarchs playing the same fascist siren's songs for the same rubes and gas-sippers, but with the amps now cranked to 11.
Of course, when he was making his bones cheerleading the various lies, crimes and catastrophes of George W. Bush (Chapter IX of "Rich, Obnoxious Daddy-figures Under Whose Cruel Lash I Desperately Want to Find Meaning now that William Buckley is Dead") Our Mr. Brooks never had the slightest trouble whatsoever identifying Bad Americans by name and political affiliation.
And of course, exactly like Dubya's Excellent Iraqi Adventure, now that yet another Very Bad Conservative Idea has broken out of the Lee Atwater Memorial Moran Research Facility and is rampaging across the countryside smashing buildings and killing peasants, Our Mr. Brooks' prose has once again suddenly gone all gooey and soft and bipartisan, and the Trump phenomenon is suddenly the product of a group called the "public" and their "national fantasy life".
This is because David Brooks is America's Leading Conservative Public Intellectual.
And making a fine living by fucking up everything they touch, then lying about it, and then ducking out when the Devil finally comes for His due is what Conservatives do.
“Yeah. I think there is a compromise. But the compromise is not to raise taxes...
The compromise is where we cut, not where we raise taxes."
flick
flick
More like it. Everywhere.
Sigh.
So like any sane, sensible human being with an IQ above room temperature and a memory that encompasses more that the last 48 hours, I threw up a little into a Kleenex box I'd been saving for just such an occasion.
Then I hopped in my car to continue my Very Good Weekend: one which began yesterday with Susie Bright -- kick-ass author and the best erotic literature anthologist anywhere who is now on a national book-and-workshop tour to promote her extraordinary "Big Sex/ Little Death" autobiography -- live and in-person in the back seat of my car
reading splendid stories to me from her 2008 anthology in Full Dramatic Voice as we boomed down I-55 en route to dinner with Blue Gal on the first leg of Susie's sojourn from Chicago to St. Louis.
