All the news that gives us fits
Harrumph!
As Sidney Blumenthal wrote in Salon when the Foley scandal broke, the
Republican Party is “the biggest walk-in closet in town,” and there isn’t anyone
within 50 miles of
“TARRANT” signs are wrecking the landscape
all over
I don’t remember the number killed in
The New York Times reports that in
Washington they’ve started serving French fries again in the congressional
cafeteria, the idea of “Freedom Fries,” after five years, being a little too
stupid for even Republicans to contemplate.
Welcome to the
“Like most plots that you get before they
develop, it doesn't look that serious, but you never know."
Whew! Don’t tell me you can pronounce
“al-Zarqawi,” either!
GEORGE AND TONY SITTIN’ IN A TREE – K-I-L-L-I-N-G
Unlike their American counterparts, British
media generally refrained from fawning, swooning and carrying on about the
“subdued,” “repentant,” “almost remorseful” atmosphere in
The new, “Spanglishized” version of “The Star-Spangled
Banner” is evidently the greatest threat to national security and American amour
propre since French fries and the Axis of Evil.
We all know, Mr. Chertoff -- and you know
it, too -- that Bush doesn't give a damn how many people die of bird flu, any
more than he cares how many die in the
It’s always nice to see a Republican in the
slammer, even if there’s room for so many more.
So, what’s with these so-called
Democrats? Do they really have no
program and no ideas? Or are they all
just a version of Hillary Clinton, trying to play to “the center” so as not to
seem, you know, “liberal” or “soft on terror”?
Still dreaming? Then dream about Junior
pretending to be a statesman.
So long as everyone is huddled over their
Korans and their Torahs and their "Testaments" there will be no
peace.
Even the Bush boys wouldn’t bomb a pope with
high ratings.
It would help if people actually read
According to the latest reports, the Amazon
rain forest is decreasing “two-thirds faster” than we already supposed, which
was plenty. The “weather” isn’t what it
used to be anywhere in the world.
Note to Dubya: My Daddy really does come
from
Speaking of Marie Antoinette – well, let’s
not.
I was all set to write this week that I’m
getting tired of Cindy Sheehan. Then I
had a letter from a friend who has actually been to Crawford.
As frequently happens, Bush told the truth
inadvertently. “Conditions” in
We’re Number One, all right – number one in
military spending, arm sales, foreign debt and useless consumption.
The spirit of vengeance – the eye for an eye
– knows no creed, denomination or nationality.
It is the law of the ape.
Schizophrenic? Maybe, but let’s not use technical terms for
people of faith.
Of course, there’s no dearth of celebrity “news”
to keep the wheels of media spinning and ourselves entertained while the world
goes to hell in a hand basket.
Did anyone in “the liberal media” write last
week that Bush had “further burnished his reputation for illiteracy”?
Don’t blame “Newsweek” -- there are limits
to insult.
“The forces of decency always hope for the best,
and almost always wait until it is too late.”
Leave it to Ding-Dong to render the whole
thing as a matter of cosmetics.
I never thought anything could get me
yearning for the good old days of Terri Schiavo-mania, but if anything can,
it’s the death of the Pope.
In regard to the Terri Schiavo case, I really want to know – what happened to “the sanctity of marriage,” about which we’ve been lectured so long and so hard by the persistent vegetation of the Christian right?
Ho-hum.
Just another day in the liberation of
It's like Mr. Whipple and the Charmin. There
you are, desperate for a moment of solemn reflection, and all you can think
about are TV housewives running up and down supermarket aisles and wondering
which brand of toilet paper is the softest.
See how subtly I’ve led in to the one topic
I’m still so anxious to avoid – Bush and his lying, thieving, fake-Christian,
fake-compassionate, bloodthirsty regime in the White House.
My ongoing efforts to avoid thinking about
the nightmares of a second Bush regime have left me unsure this week of what to
write about.
Tsunami?
What tsunami? Leave it to
But who pays attention to the Constitution
anymore? Certainly not Ding-Dong, who
seems to regard the presidency as his personal fiefdom
Frankly, the features fried onto this
particular sandwich might just as easily be those of Catherine Zeta-Jones.
Look especially for a crackdown on the
Internet, the only place where free speech in
A stupid people deserve a stupid fate.
You’d have thought Kerry had accused Mary
Cheney of stealing Christian babies and drinking their blood.
There are too many things going on right now
to worry about who busted who in
This whole country’s having a nervous
breakdown, one voter at a time.
I love it when the Bible speaks directly to
current affairs, like Nostradamus.
Who’d have thought it would be Dick Cheney,
that fat Nazi pig, who became the poster boy for free expression in
Sunnis and Ba'athists and Shi'ites – oh
my! Let's talk about something funny for
a change, like George W. Bush and the spoils of war.
Stamping his foot like Shirley Temple, the
President of the
Still dreaming? Then dream about Junior
pretending to be a statesman.
The Lord doesn’t mind a little stealing,
really, because He puts it way, way down on the list of things thou shalt not
do.
Right now, Mel Gibson could say that the
world is balanced on the back of a giant turtle and half the population would
flip-flop itself into believing it.
THE BREAST THAT ATE PITTSBURGH
It’s hard to know if the sight of Janet
Jackson’s dexter mammary posed an “imminent” threat to public morality, or if
it was merely “urgent,” “immediate,” “serious,” “mortal” and “mounting.”
There’ll be Starbucks in
No
wonder you look worried!
Beheading is a very quick and easy form of
execution. It never fails; neither does
it light a man’s hair on fire and leave him burning alive, as the electric
chair sometimes does.
PRAISE THE LORD AND PASS THE AMMUNITION!
This really ought to be our national anthem
now.
Maybe what Dubya really meant to say on that
battleship was “
You’d think with all those bestselling
biographies of the Founding Fathers floating around people would be learning
something.
Hmm. Sounds like a question for Thomas
Aquinas.
Working on a computer is like leaving
You just
keep your eyes on Harry Potter!
Don’t ask Santorum to “apologize,”
folks. Vote Democratic and throw the
bums out.
Laura forgot to take off her gloves when she
shook hands with the Queen -- tsk, tsk!
“Risible” is as risible does.
Barbara Bush is said to regret that she has
sometimes been “too outspoken” in public life – outspoken by whom?
THE GANG
THAT COULDN’T TALK STRAIGHT
Take Colin Powell -- please.
I’m not surprised that Schwarzenegger
won. I was in
Really, if all you did was watch TV last
week, you’d have thought that 9/11 was all about Bush
I knew it wouldn’t be long before naked pictures
of
If Dean does
nothing more than rally the rabble to the “Dump Bush” banner, he’ll have done
his country an enormous service.
Monkeys
don’t need to stuff socks in their pants to convince the world that they’re
men.
Maybe the truth is funnier than the
jokes.
Poor Rummy. “Embedded” sounds so much like
“in bed with.”
The stench of lying is so thick in this
country we’ll all be wearing masks before the anthrax arrives.
What is it about this Iraqi war that just
won’t get off the ground?
Well, how about that -- a “preemptive” peace
strike!
You
probably didn't know that Christopher Robin was a dangerous terrorist.
Don’t tell me I’m paranoid -- the truth is
out there and its name is Henry Kissinger.
On a
good day, when confronted with Dubya, I fall into a dream, fantasizing that
some huge joke has been played on the nation and the world.
If
you're really angry about child abuse, you have to be angry about war.
When the
moral choice is clear, money always wins the day.
I suppose everyone knows by now -- don't
they? -- that the Pledge of Allegiance was written by a card-carrying
socialist.
On the subject of civil unions, I can see
all points of view, even the stupid, hateful, ugly, Christian ones.
It’s worse than you think.
Having been instructed for ten years to eat
anything and everything with fat in it, I’m now told to eat lettuce with lemon
juice and, if I like, a delicious carrot or two at bedtime.
For those of you who don’t have this kind of
news regularly thrust in your in-box, an update is in order.
The only thing actresses are called upon to
do in the movies anymore is stand around and look worried while the men save
civilization.
Truman Capote said you should never answer
your critics, and look what happened to him -- one pill too many in the effort
to bite his tongue.
If John
Jr. had been dull and dweeby, his plane could have gone down twice and the
British Open would still have been broadcast as scheduled.
Ah, the
good old days … too bad they didn’t last.
I'm talking about babies. Seven of them, to be exact.
The only thing I didn't know about Titanic
before I saw it was that Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet end up having
sex in the back seat of a car.
A slobbering fantasy about guns, the Emerald Isle, and
Whaht-A-Mahn's-Got-Ta-Dew, all of it spoken in Irish accents so phony you can
see the leprechaun on the box-top.
Pumpkins are selfish fruits -- they don't
forget.
What happens to a Rules Girl when a man
finds out how manipulative she is I don't want to know.
If people knew how disgusting 11-year-old
boys really are, they’d drown them at birth.
An Internet search turned up more than
300,000 "hits" on Demi, and if that's not fluoride in the water, I
don't know what is.
There was never a chance that we’d see
Bush’s backside as they ran him out of
Why be gloomy? The Bushmen want to revive
the space program, which will give us all something to feel manly about.
This column is written with a two-week lead,
so I don’t know how the cliffhanging drama of Christmas sales actually turned
out. Retailers were predicting “a
disappointing holiday season.”
At least we know which millennium we’re in.
For
a complete “Crank Call” archive, 2001-2007, click here
"No people ever recognize their dictator
in advance. He never stands for election on the platform of dictatorship. He
always represents himself as the instrument [of] the Incorporated National
Will. ... When our dictator turns up you can depend on it that he will be one
of the boys, and he will stand for everything traditionally American. And
nobody will ever say `Heil' to him, nor will they call him `Führer' or `Duce.'
But they will greet him with one great big, universal, democratic, sheeplike
bleat of `O.K., Chief! Fix it like you wanna, Chief! Oh Kaaaay!'"
-- Dorothy Thompson, 1935