Wonkette
HA HA HA we finally read New York Times “lightning rod conservative” Bill Kristol’s column from yesterday and the tears, the tears are STREAMING down our face from equal parts agony and hilarity. It’s clear that he’s not even writing this column anymore; he’s just paying a local donkey to google a few articles and slap something Kristol-y together, like, uh, how’s this work: Dick Cheney is good because he isn’t Rod Blagojevich, as prophesied by Rudyard Kipling, fart, the end.
FIRST SENTENCE: “You gotta love Dick Cheney.” …Alright fine, YOU’VE WON THIS BATTLE MISTER DONKEY, we’ll read on:
O.K., O.K. … you don’t have to. But consider this exchange with Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday”:
WALLACE: Did you really tell Senator Leahy, bleep yourself?
CHENEY: I did.
WALLACE: Any qualms, or second thoughts, or embarrassment?
CHENEY: No, I thought he merited it at the time. (Laughter.) And we’ve since, I think, patched over that wound and we’re civil to one another now.
No spin. No doubletalk. A cogent defense of his action — and one that shows a well-considered sense of justice. (“I thought he merited it.”) Indeed, if justice is seeking to give each his due, one might say that Dick Cheney aspires to being a just man. And a thoughtful one, because he knows that justice is sometimes too harsh, and should be tempered by civility.
“Indeed, if justice is seeking to give each his due, one might say that Dick Cheney aspires to being a just man.”
!!!!!!!!!!!
Now it’s obvious that Bill Kristol’s donkey only wrote this to get bloggers all huffy and worked-up. We respect that, truly, and so we’ll buy in. And what the donkey has told us here is, Dick Cheney has a “well-considered sense of justice” because justice hinges on what Dick Cheney thinks is just. In other words, if Dick Cheney does it, it is fair, because he is Dick Cheney, and Dick Cheney is just. Numerous Bush administration legal memos have used this logic almost verbatim, give or taken a few conjuctions and prepositions.
Then Kristol’s donkey decides to write about Rod Blagojevich:
Blagojevich is even more terse: “I want to make money.” And when an opportunity came along — a vacant Senate seat — he didn’t sit around studying polls and consulting focus groups. He got to work. He knows — as Americans have always known — that the good things in life aren’t free. As he put it eloquently in discussing the vacant Senate seat, “I’ve got this thing, and it’s [expletive] golden, and, uh, uh, I’m just not giving it up for [expletive] nothing.”
It’s also nice, in this day and age, to see an example of family togetherness and marital harmony. Rod and his wife, Patti, seem to be in accord on so many things. For example, in a disinclination to turn the other cheek. During a Nov. 3 telephone conversation between Blagojevich and an aide about a hostile Chicago Tribune editorial, Patti was heard in the background urging a receptive Rod to punish the corporation that owns The Tribune and the Chicago Cubs: “Hold up that [expletive] Cubs [expletive] … [expletive] them.”
Ah right, we remember reading this information at some point, but who knows where… oh that’s right, it was on every website and newspaper and teevee channel for several days, two weeks ago. New York Times op-ed page! Best real estate in the market!
The donkey kills off another seven lines of the column by quoting the Rudyard Kipling poem that Rod Blagojevich read at his weird press conference last week. (Your associate editor admires the donkey in this regard. As any English major knows, there is no better way to meet a minimum page requirement than by block-quoting poems at inappropriate length. Good donkey.)
And, well, here’s the comically disastrous waddle to good ol’ word #750:
But Blagojevich carefully cut off his recitation before the stanza’s last line: “And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise.”
Blagojevich must have known he’d violated this maxim. He’d tried to look too good, coiffing his hair with a special brush he keeps with him at all times. (According to The Washington Post, he “goes ballistic when he can’t put his hands on it.”) More important, he’d talked too wise — especially when being bugged by the F.B.I. But you’ve got to give Blagojevich credit for a kind of self-knowledge in omitting from his statement the damning last line of the stanza.
I’ve never heard Dick Cheney quote Kipling. But I suspect he might like Kipling, and that Kipling would admire him — a man who has never gone out of his way to look too good, nor talk too wise, but who has always, in four decades of public service, sought “to fill the unforgiving minute/With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run.”
Perfectly woven together. There’s a kernel of truth here! Dick Cheney really doesn’t go out of his way to put on an appearance. Instead, he OPENLY BRAGS ABOUT CRIMES IN INTERVIEWS. And gets away with it!
Dick Cheney, the vice president of the United States, shot an old man in the face. Yeah there have been so many terrible jokes over the years about this, but push all that out of your mind for a few seconds, and consider: THE VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES SHOT AN OLD MAN IN THE FACE. With a gun! This actually happened! In real human life!
Popularity Isn’t Everything [NYT]
Hey, he stole that jacket from my 92 year old father-in-law. I have no comment on his donkey’s writing
I no longer trust the opinion of anyone I don’t want to see topless. Kristol, dou you have what it takes?
The New And Improved Republican Party: Better Than Rod Blagojevich! Good luck with that one, guys.
http://detroitist.blogspot.com
Take up the White Man’s burden–
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain
To seek another’s profit,
And work another’s gain.
Take up the White Man’s burden–
The savage wars of peace–
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.
…I cant wait til Dick Cheney is out of office and on his way back to Mordor!
I’m having Shrek flashbacks.
Scrap some shit together and fill the page so we don’t have to pay our infographics artist to create some cheesy holiday shopping bi-annual price comparison graphic: good donkey. Have that article actually make sence and not excuse a man guilty of war crimes simply because he’s willing to admit he did everything: bad donkey.
Eat a bag of Cheneys, Blagojevich!
Glad you read Kristol’s column. Saves me from having to.
Kristol Defense: “But maybe the old man should not have been standing in the line of fire. Has anyone ever thought about it, in that sense? Seems unlikely. What we do know is Dick Cheney is an obviously good shot, and Kipling would have found his steady hand admirable.”
Indeed, if justice is seeking to give each his due, Dick Chaney should be sent to Judecca, the place in the ninth circle of hell that is reserved for traitors. He should be completely encapsulated in ice, while his body is distorted into all conceivable positions
You know what the quasi-legal term is for someone who provide “a cogent defense for his action - and one that shows a well-considered sense of justice”? Fit to stand trial.
Kristol, Cheney; collectivly go bleep yourselves in your [EXPELTIVES]..
Jesus Christ, you’re up early today, Newell. What time are we supposed to start drinking today? My Wonkette-based drinking clock is so messed up now!
Too bad old Harry Whittington didn’t strive harder “to fill the unforgiving minute/With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run.” If he had, he might not be setting off airport metal detectors as we speak.
Bill Kristol should die from festering ball boils. That is all.
A cogent defense of his action — and one that shows a well-considered sense of justice. (“I thought he merited it.”)
How, exactly does Cheney’s reaction show a more cogent sense of justice than the phrase: “He needed killin’… so I done it.”?
I was hoping we’d get a big-ass multi-layered omnibus meta-story with knotty rhizomic thread potential before all the editors went on their 10-day holiday. Ooops, I mean, Christmas vacation.
Is this it? Not bad. Better than one of those Mojavian reptilian stories that inspire about 1 comment every 5 hours We got Dicks and Rods and Pink-faced fundies all at once.
BRING BACK THE GRANT ADMINISTRATION!!!!1!!!!!!!
No seriously this is the Grant administration like 130 years later.
WHOO HOOO!!!!
It’s important to remember that he shot a lawyer in the face. A lawyer.
And Brutus is an honorable man… Dick Cheney and just only work as sarcasm. Also, the comparison with Blago is completely unfair since Cheney doesn’t really have any hair to comb.
According to The Washington Post, he “goes ballistic when he can’t put his hands on it.”
Reminds me of a line from an old Warner Brothers cartoon: “I wanna hug him and squeeze him and call him George.”
Harvey Birdman: It is also important to remember the lawyer apologised to HIM for getting his face in the way of his gun or something..Wehnnnggh Whenngggh..
Next column: “What the Fuck Do I Have To Do To Get Fired Around Here?”
My brain keeps looping the phrase “special brush”. It’s all “special brush, special brush, special brush…”, and then it inserts a “coiffing” maybe every six or seven “special brushes”, presumably to relieve itself from the monotony.
Bill Kristol, the deep-fried Twinkie of food-for-thought.
Also: “rudyard”!
…rudyard, rudyard, rudyard, special brush, rudyard, coiffing, rudyard brush, special rudyard…
As any English major knows, there is no better way to meet a minimum page requirement than by block-quoting poems at inappropriate length.
So true.
Harvey Birdman: I wish to hell I could do that to at least one of the lawyers I work for
magic titty: “maybe the old man should not have been standing in the line of fire” Speaking for all the victims of Cheney, it wuz our faults. We sowwy! Wun more fastly, sixty-five seconds per minute, whatever it takes.
I think Kristol’s setting the stage for the harder task next week, which is defending Cheney’s statements about torture. Having established that Cheney has a strong sense of justice because — uh — he told a Senator to fuck himself — Kristol will now be able to move on to “if we have to torture — and we do — who would you rather give that power to? Some sleazy moral relativist who thinks the rules don’t apply to him, or Dick Cheney, embodiment of Justice?”
If anyone can squeeze that camel through that needle’s eye it’s master rhetoritician Bill Kristol.
I get it… both Blago and Cheney are goal oriented. Just like Huey Long and Hitler.
Isn’t it about time for Kristolnacht?
I look forward to Kristol’s next National Review cruise, to see which of his fellow passengers–all refugees from a casting call for a Fellini movie–will be named the next savior of the Republican Party.
Easily qualifies as Frost/Nixon II. It’s the same logic: “If I do it, swagger like a cowboy (not a real one), spit in your face, it’s not illegal, not immoral, it DEFINES morality.” That is, see I’m good because I’m bad. Even after the house of cards has long blow away we are still left with the hollow bromides it was built on.
Kristol is trying to be a good little boy, “analyzing” and supporting the behavior. Kipling:Cheney. More appropriate, Poe:Cheney.
tiny mexican: Kipling is such a treasury of politically incorrect but beautifully stated thoughts:
Tho’ I’ve belted you an’ flayed you,
By the livin’ Gawd that made you,
You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din!
A woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a Smoke.
Ship me somewheres east of Suez, where the best is like the worst–
Where there ain’t no ten commandmandments, and a man can raise a thirst.
Harvey Birdman: So there was an upside–is that what you’re saying here? You’ll get over that difficult divorce one of these days.
I can’t wait for the next article on this subject, “Popularity Isn’t Everything: The Legend of Curly’s Gold”.
It’s a Paul Mitchell brush, thus conclusively proving Blago’s cheesiness. I mean, if it were a Mason Pearson one, I could understand it, but a Paul Mitchell one?
Oh yeah, and the Donkey Anti-Defamation League would like to have a few words with you, Jim.
Nantonaku, Kristol.
Please, that is an insult to donkeys everywhere (though as an English measure that block quoting thing is spot on)Also, if Cheney is a just man, I’m a pineapple.
shanemcgowan: Judas Iscariot does not deserve to be trapped in the same circle as Bill Kristol and Cheney. Judas at least knew shame at the results of his deed.
I’m amazed anyone has the time to read Kristol. Jim Newell, doing the dirty jobs so we don’t have to.
Polemarchus is the one who said that justice is giving every man his due. Socrates refutes this definition as circular, since what is “due” someone is what he ought to have, and what someone “ought” to have is what is just for him to have. So Polemarchus has said no more than that justice = justice.
This is in The Republic, which is not about a republic. Billy Kristol’s mentor, Leo Strauss, loved this book, because it was not about a republic, but about a society run by neocons, such as himself, and Billy.
Just sayin’.
The obvious conclusion is that both Cheney and Blagojevich have been completely corrupted by power. Cheney is your typical GOP Nixon-style felon war profiteer, but Blago is no Machine hack, because the dumbest pinkie ring precinct captain wouldn’t have made his mistakes — and in a Machine, only the Boss is allowed that level of hubris. Rod stepped out on his own and fell flat on his hair. Kristol is too corrupt himself to see the obvious conclusion, and way too lazy a writer to be interesting — a blind man refusing to admit that the elephant has left the building.
Anonymous Office Zombie: In the social sciences, our version is putting in diagrams and charts and graphs and tables and crap with a lot of incomprehensible stats that prove all sorts of important, crazy shit. Same effect.
Um, guys… Have any of you considered that perhaps Kristol was trying to be funny? That this column was a sendup and a complete hoot?
No? Nah, me neither. I wuz kiddin.
DoctorCulturae:
it’s BECAUSE Cheney does it that it’s NOT illegal.
SayItWithWookies: Win.
Billy Boy, you should’ve stopped at your personal motto, “You gotta love Dick”. The rest of your column proves why newspapers are dying.
Wow. I don’t have any snark left after this horrifying decade. Just die already Dick Cheney.
MarieDeGournay: I never heard that expression ” I am a pineapple”. Is this a common analogy somewhere?
Could be from the Friendly State, HI.
Hey, when Aaron Burr shot somebody, the motherfucker died and stayed dead — the Secretary of the Treasury, no less. Now THERE was a Vice President for the ages.
Hmm, having “a” sense of justice and justifying things by stating that “they were merited at the time”–isn’t that the defense of every terrorist group, like ever? Bill Ayers is “evil” but Dick Cheney can use the same logic and be a conservative hero?
Is it even possible to live in modern day America without cognitive dissonance anymore?
Shit. Kristol just went full retard on us.
randomsausage: Full metal straitjacket. Nice image.
http://democralypsenow.blogspot.com/2008/12/dangerous-not-this-dick_23.html
Is it too late for Bill to borrow Wrong Way Corrigan’s nickname?
tiny mexican: Kipling wrote that to advise the US to annex the Philippines, presumably because “the occasion warranted it”. They toojk his advice and unleashed an army, fresh from annihilating the Plains Indians on the poor country, murdering (by some counts0 about 1/4 of the inhabitants in the process.
Yes Kipling would have loved Dick. He may aso have loved dick, but that’s another thing.
nmmagayar:
Dr Zoidberg: You shot my lawyer!
Decapodian Ambassador; You’re Welcome!
Harvey Birdman:
HA-HA!!! Freudian!!!
Bill your wasting your time, you can rub this turd until it turns to mud, it aint gonna shine. Elvis has left the building, Dawg. You need to mosey back over to the American Enterprise Institute and wait for your next chance to take over the world. A giant pair of trucknutz hanging off Marine One as he waves his way into history is about the only hope for your useful idiots legacy.
what a fucking asshole!
Aurelio: Actually, the Republic is an analogy for the human mind. Strauss and other political idiots don’t get that, thinking it’s supposed to be a model society. Plato is smarter than them.
finallyhappy: That’s all drunken me honey
Bill looks pregnant in his picture- is this the new directions the Republicans are talking about? I don’t think he’s going to be up to it.