The Wit & Wisdom of Chuck Hagel
America's favorite ultra-conservative liberal sweetheart gets the full pornographic Esquire treatment this month, with enough homoerotic tough-guy imagery to make Norman Mailer glance wistfully at his shriveled member. For instance, Hagel's "face is too meaty for poetics, its tectonics shaped by old football injuries and one horrible day in the Mekong Delta when the flesh of it bubbled and burned." Get a room, dude.
Anyway, here are some quotes from the article that are sure to excite liberals and other Bush haters who wouldn't possibly vote for Hagel but love how he's not a total pussy like every single Democrat and every Washington reporter:
* "Congress abdicated its oversight responsibility," he says. "The press abdicated its responsibility, and the American people abdicated their responsibilities. Terror was on the minds of everyone, and nobody questioned anything, quite frankly."
* "The president says, 'I don't care.' He's not accountable anymore," Hagel says, measuring his words by the syllable and his syllables almost by the letter. "He's not accountable anymore, which isn't totally true. You can impeach him, and before this is over, you might see calls for his impeachment. I don't know. It depends how this goes."
* "You can't do anything about the president. He's gone. But you can do something about your congressman. That's why all these Republicans are so nervous."
* About the Rove/Bush campaign in 2000 and the "McCain has a black baby" smear: "These are people with no courage, on both sides," he says. "Cowards. Nameless and faceless. I called it the filthiest thing I'd ever seen."
* And just about his old friend WALNUTS: "He would kiss anybody's ass and say anything to whatever group if he figures it'll help him become president. He has given himself up to his ambition, and I wanted to vomit knowing what the Bush people did to him in South Carolina and watching him in 2004." (UPDATE, BREAKING: Actually, this quote is attributed to Hagel's brother .)
* "Jews did 9/11." Ha ha, he didn't actually say that last one, but we wouldn't be surprised if National Review claims he did.
"Before this is over, you might see calls for his impeachment." [Esquire]