You know how the New York Times turned down John McCain’s editorial because it was boring or whatever? We think we found it — it’s running in the Washington Post today, cleverly disguised under the pseudonym “Richard Cohen,” and it’s a full-on Andy Rooney-style rant about the youngsters and their awful tattoos (pictured, left). Today’s horrible tattoos are symptomatic of our decadent moral decline, whereas the horrible tattoos of yesteryear actually stood for something … or so says one angry, drunken geezer.
I recall a tiny scandal of some years back when it was alleged that George Shultz, then secretary of state, had a tattoo of a tiger on the nether reaches of his body. This was credible because Shultz had gone to Princeton, where such tattooing was once customary for undergrads, although not, I hope, for the faculty. (I am thinking now of Einstein.) I also know a Navy man who had a bicep done in World War II, not that it stopped him from becoming executive editor of The Post. I withhold his name out of consideration for his family.
Man, that John McCain is a stitch when he breaks out the gin and has sex with Peggy Noonan.
Ink-Stained Wretchedness [Washington Post]






The point is, he wore an onion on his belt, which was the style in those days.
I was surprised to see that “McCain’s” column actually does have his plan for Iraq, at the very end:
Seize the day — laser tomorrow.
The Times editor was way off base on this one.
That piece also contains this paragraph:
Here and there the occasional scold warned that all this was unsustainable. Social Security is underfunded. The government ought to — just occasionally — balance its books. But for a long time, the unsustainable seemed sustainable. The immutable rules were mutable. Virtually the entire political establishment insisted that tomorrow would never come. Republicans joined with Democrats in never calling in a loan. Who says bipartisanship is dead? Not when it comes to fiscal irresponsibility.
His premise is that people get tattoos because they’re afraid of change. My premise is that he’s a dickwad.
Cindy McCain has a tattoo of Ho Chi Min on her ass for when John is in the mood for some payback.
Best…tatoo…EVER
“I have written awful columns”….pretty much says it all…
The story of Barry being the son of a Kenyan and a girl from Kansas is a lie, that tattoo is actually a depiction of his conception…
worst…spelling…EVER
tattoo>tatoo
“Out of consideration for his family?”
Now THAT is a tat I want to see!
But he approves of Roger Stone’s Nixon Tramp Stamp.
it’s easy to love a woman with a tramp stamp.
“And what the hell do you call a tattoo like that?”
“The Hopeistocrats!”
Ann Coulter has a vagina tattooed on the crotch place.
Richard Cohen still writes columns? Most of the world hasn’t read his stuff for 20 years, since he lost his mind.
As much of an abortion as Bill Kristol is, Richard Cohen’s column deserves the back-alley coathanger treatment.
EnBuenOra: Also, his car gets 40 rods to the hogshead and that’s the way he likes it!
I read that column this morning and thought to myself, this is so bad I wonder if Wonkette is going to have some snark on it. And now here it is. GET OUT OF MY HEAD WONKETTE!
This is part of a “best of” series which includes diatribes on “Ye Dreadeful Hippe Hoppe Noife” and “Technologie as the DEVIL’s worke”
EnBuenOra: We can’t bust heads like we used to. But we have our ways. One trick is to tell stories that don’t go anywhere. Like the time I caught the ferry to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for m’shoe. So I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt. Which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on ‘em. Gimme five bees for a quarter, you’d say. Now where was I… oh yeah. The important thing was that I had an onion tied to my belt, which was the style at the time. You couldn’t get white onions, because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones…
Ahhhhh, grandpa McCain
Mahousu: Not only that, he has a tattoo of himself wearing an onion on his belt. That’s meta-appropriate.
“Anyone old enough and smart enough to get into college knows that only impermanence is permanent.”
The Dalai Lama’s on line 2. Wants his cosmology back.
Good job finding the Walnuts op-ed. But what about these other things?
Michelle’s Whitey tape
Our nation’s Cipro supplies
weapons of mass destruction
Atlantis
Tits LaRue
Next week’s column, Why I like fiber.
Deepthroat: honestly. i don’t care about the article, that tattoo was just awesome.
I’ve got several tattoos. Some of them I love even tens year later. Others…. well…. let’s just say you shouldn’t be too impulsive.
I have a friend who was roommates with a tattoo artist. He woke up one morning after a heavy night of drinking with “Ho’s Love It” written across his ass. The “H” was all stretched out because he flinched when the needle hit the flesh. Classy.
That’s not how unicorns and dolphins fuck.
…What?!
this is just par for the course for this guy. he is dreadful.
Darehead: What about AngryBlakGuy or did you find him already?
“In my day, we didn’t have microwave ovens. If you wanted a baked potato, you had to take the day off! And we were thankful for it.”
tunamelt: He’s in Detroit binging on crack. I know, I was with him all weekend. Remarkably, he’s much less angry when he’s getting his bell-rung.
I’ve always assumed unicorns were bottoms. I learn so much by reading Wonkette.
Tatoos on your knees mean that you kneel before no man. Bet Larry Craig doesn’t have them.
What a way to beat a metaphor to death with a blunt instrument.
Many, many tats are pretty stupid, though. Hell, my symbology changes daily. :p Except for the Mandala, of course.
C’mon, I thought you people were well read. Nobody has mentioned Adolf Loos’ (in)famous “Ornament and Crime”, where he states that any person with a tattoo is a degenerate, and anyone with a tattoo who dies at liberty simply hasn’t gotten around to killing anyone yet.
It’s hilarious, and well worth the 15 minute read.
“The permanence of the moment — the conviction that now is forever — explains what has happened to the American economy.”
Sure, Richard. Either that or a bunch of greedheads spent their shareholders’ money lobbying Congressmen for deregulation of their industries, which Congress sold to the voters as unleashing the power of the free market, at which point the greedheads traded their shareholders’ money for magic beans, got their golden parachutes and ditched everyone before the reckoning came down on them, leaving regular people screwed. But go ahead and turn it into a pointless rant about personal responsibility, because laissez-faire economics can’t possibly be a flawed system. Jackass.
MoodProcessor: This made me laugh. But seriously, have you ever tried to bake a potato in the oven, or worse, on the grill? How did our parents ever feed us?
SayItWithWookies: No no no. Surely this is all some magical pop-deconstruction bullshit, full of easy answers and empty aphorisms, that some third-rate newspaper column writer (making him by default a seventeenth-rate writer) can plop in the column inches.
And surely this rube wasn’t hired by people who are covering for the greedheads in the single biggest heist in world history.
/dick joke
ALIVE!: All the time. I use the microwave only to reheat leftovers. Now, it really helps if you work at home and have enough time to cook, but it ain’t hard to bake a potato. You just can’t do it in 5 minutes.
Popcorn cooked on top of the stove tastes a million times better than that microwave crap, too; doesn’t take any longer to make, and costs about 1/10 as much. AND it has less fat.
If you MUST microwave popcorn, just put a 1/4 cup in a paper lunch bag with a teaspoon or two of oil, shake, crimp and put one staple in the top and microwave as you would the expensive, lard-clogged stuff from the store. Alton Brown turned me on to that one; it’s better than the regular microwave stuff, but not as good as the old-fashioned kind.
THIS is the best tattoo ever: http://lordsofapathy.blogspot.com/2007/05/best-tattoo-since-skullface.html. Just in case there’s someone left who hasn’t seen it.
NSFW, but a better tattoo:
http://www.iheartchaos.com/2008/05/01/gay-rainbow-nazi-unicorns-are-hardcore-pic/
EnBuenOra: This was back in nineteen-dickety-two. We had to say “dickety” ’cause the Kaiser stole our number threes.
Hey, come on. There’s nothing like a nice set of ass antlers to get me going … in the other direction.
Richard,
The kid from Jerry Maguire called, he wants his glasses back.
http://www.capohedz.com/typebrighter/uploaded_images/cuntpuncher-726894.jpg
PrairiePossum: me too. I had that same thought.
can’t wait to see him try and raise his arms tonight.
It is only morally acceptable to have the following words as tattos:
Willow
Sarah
Bristol
Mehgan
ah fuck it, i forget all those snowbilly names