Wonkette
New information has arisen concerning former mid/lower-level no-name douchey excerpt-mongering George W. Bush speechwriter, the very smart conservative person Matt Latimer! Last week we examined the useless, exploitative heap of self-preserving, unconfirmable anecdotes he passed along to GQ to publicize the release of his douchey tell-all piece of crap book, Speechless, which chronicles the Bush Administration’s greatest failure of all: tainting this wide-eyed Michigan conservative’s idealism, with its embrace of PETTY WASHINGTON POLITICS! Poor Matt! We hope this shittily written after-the-fact account of nothing makes a lot of money for him; he’s suffered enough, having to work (= eavesdrop on private conversations) at that STUPID Bush White House for like two days… Anyway, that new information: so the guy who hired this punk at the White House has written an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal slamming Latimer and more or less calling him gay for Donald Rumsfeld.
Bill McGurn, ex-chief speechwriter for George W. Bush, writes a number of funny things in this column about terrible Matt Latimer, whom he hired. He also includes a lot of “Why I thought George W. Bush was an excellent President, in fact!” space-filler, so let’s just ignore those parts.
As the senior staffer who brought Matt to the White House, let me start by adding some perspective. In a memoir that takes us from Matt’s childhood in Michigan through all the morons and phonies he worked for in Washington, only Mr. Rumsfeld gets the full gush. Left unmentioned is that Matt is on Mr. Rumsfeld’s payroll, working on the former Defense Secretary’s memoirs. Not that Mr. Rumsfeld need fear. If this book is any guide, an employer will read how stupid Matt really thought he was only after he’s no longer being paid.
GRRR! BAD KITTY!
In the same way, Matt neglects to mention that personnel took away his West Wing cubby when they needed space for someone more important. Or that he spent the next few weeks knocking on every door in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, looking for a room sufficiently grand to display his large and ever-expanding collection of framed testimonials to himself.
Ditto for Air Force One. Yes, he was on it, but not because he was important. To the contrary, I put him on it because he was failing.
(…Mommy??…)
Now get some popcorn for this closing blockquote, people. It is legendary.
In fairness, it’s not all yucks. On the day Mr. Rumsfeld resigns, Matt recounts a scene in the Defense secretary’s office. “You were my star,” (emphasis in the original) he tells Matt. “And, uh, I probably never told you that.” Right there in the secretary’s office, Matt reports, “I started to cry.’”
The fucking BYBEE MEMO is less painful to read than this.
When Speechwriters Kiss and Tell [WSJ]
Crybaby fattypants
So, if Matt was Rumsfeld’s star, what celestial body was Rumsfeld?
Ew … his idealism is tainted.
So, like everything else, Rumsfeld did douche-Matt standing up?
There’s nothing quite so fun as a literary bitchfest. But a girlie slap-fight between these two literary poseurs will have to suffice.
How much must you suck to fail at the Bush Administration? It’s like getting booed out of the Special Olympics. The guy who botched the FEMA response to Katrina got an atta-boy. Gonzo and Rummy got years worth of handjobs. CIA chief got the Medal of Freedom for leading us into Iraq. And this guy got the boot. He must be the Platonic Ideal of complete and utter epic fail.
there are known knowns, known unknowns, unknown unknowns and unknown nobodies like matt latimer. he’s a pansy also.
Today we’re all gay for Donald Rumsfeld.
Looks like Rumsfeld and Latimer were doing some COSMIC fucking in the NETHERWORLDS of like, his office.
So, in round numbers, just as a general back-of-the-envelope estimate, roughly how many ex-Bush speechwriters are running around out there? Good Lord - they must breed like mice. They are under every rock.
Personally, I think we should stop looking.
Why does this remind me of the feud between Jonah Goldberg and Ann Coulter?
Don’t you love it when they turn on each other? Nothing highlights the vast douchebaggery of the entire Bush team than one incompetent complaining that another incompetent was beyond the pale, incompetently speaking. If I was the head speech writer for a guy who left office with the 34% approval rating I might just change my name and STFU, but no…casting dispersions and taking moral umbrage are like catnip to these ass clowns…
Chain Tattoo: I’d say a pulsar since he makes loud, unintelligible noises at predictable intervals.
Hmmph, who knew, there is a subculture of Smitherses, toadies and lickspittles, and they have their own little lackey code of honor and they get into public bootlicker bitchfests.
Isn’t the world a wonderful place?
I have seen them in person, when two Smitherses who don’t know each other meet, they ask “who is your boss.” It lets them know which of them is licking the ass of the more powerful man, and therefore is owed deference.
Right there too we see Mr. Bush’s greatest failing: Never did he look into young Matthew’s moist eyes and tell him, “You are my star.” If he only had we would have a very different book. Really? That was his greatest failing? I’d say his greatest failing(s) are the “accomplishments” listed a couple of paragraphs up, Bill Mc. Douche. Moist eyes indeed.
I predict that future Republican administrations will require thier Matt Latimers to be entombed in their president’s pyramid the day he leaves office.
Chain Tattoo: Uranus, duh.
I bet they doing each other.
It’s like I’m looking into some dystopian alternate timeline where Gibby Haynes went totally corporate.
This is just like when Lennon and McCartney broke up except instead of boring old attack songs like “Dear Boy” and “How Do You Sleep At Night” we get these riviting, um, blog posts in the mainstream press!
So much dough, not nearly enough pantloads.
Tundra Grifter: With all of them out there you’d think they might have written a decent speech. Thousand monkeys and typewriters producing Hamlet and all that.
queeraselvis v 2.0: Grazie.
this whole thing hurts, these various levels of literary criticism bringing new meaning to the concept of “deconstructionism.”
anyhoo, these peeps of the bush league, top to bottom (and tops and bottoms), are all still handily pulling the ka-ching lever, and wasn’t that what their brand of loot-and-pillage conservatism was all about?
Chain Tattoo: Sub-brown dwarf? Rogue planet? Semidetached binary? Dark nebula? MACHO? stop me.
At least we’ll finally find out how big Rumsfeld’s cock isn’t, from this fine book.
What next? Is a frickin’ janitor going to write a tell-all book on the Bush administration? “Crapless: Unblocking the Toilets of George W. Bush”.
I love it when Newell starts talking Latimer! I saw him on MSNBC this morning and he truly is a wanker. But then again, what other kind of person worked in the Bush White House besides a bunch of wankers?
Jim Newell simply does not care for this Matt Latimer.
Latimer left details out of his book about the smell old man and mothballs when Rumsfeld was naked. …For an elderly neoconservative, he had the energy of a young male escort.
And then Bette Midler appeared, for an a cappella version of ‘Wind Beneath My Wings.’
jasper f. krone: Plutino — Tiny, far away, locked into a hopeless, unchanging orbit defined by larger more significant bodies…
Tundra Grifter: I’m sure Rumsfeld used Latimer as his spy in the White House. He and Cheney planted moles in every Cabinet office, so it would make sense. And I doubt Rummy, who famously wrote between 20 and 60 memos a day would let anyone write prose for him, so Matt probably had plenty of free time to snoop around.
Latimer started out as a spokesperson for John Kyl. More evidence that he has less than half a brain.
Oh, please please please, let Matty boy write an op-ed of his own in response to this. Pleeeeeeeeese!
Those quotes are merely the well-manicured fingertips of an increasingly sweaty, full-palmed, back-and-forth bitchslapping.
Politico’s Patty Hearst won the morning with a post that’s chock-a-block with even more backhanded cock punching.
To “wit”, here’s McGurn: “If you add up the other speechwriters and check with them, you will realize I sent many dozens of these, possibly a few hundred in my three years. I also tell my First Grader her fingerpaintings are masterpieces, for the same reason: to boost her confidence.”
When this first broke I wondered whose water he was carrying to be able to get away with all this “fuck you”-ing and still expect to have another job someday. Learning that he is a Rummy apparatchik explains so much. These Bushies have more vicious back-stabbing cliques than a high school cheerleading squad.
Crying? Bitchy slap fighting? I thought these were Frat Boys not “sorority” boys.
shadowMark: I love it! Contrast with collapsar: “an exceptionally large star that collapses at the end of its lifespan” (source: wiki-wakka)
Extemporanus: My favorite line:
Matt apparently has saved these like a teenage girl pressing roses from her prom.
Bitchslap!
This guy is on “Fresh Air” as I write; Terry Gross is ripping him a new one so politely that he doesn’t even know it’s happening. Nice! But scary to see what a panic the Bushmen were in when the markets tanked. They had no clue what was happening or what to do about it.
Extemporanus: Nice — essentially, “I say shit like this all the time — totally insincere.”
This is all so unseemly, but hey, this is the logical conclusion of the most inept, corrupt, puerile, inane, insane and asshatted collection of shitheads ever assembled in one administration in the history of the world. They deserve each other.
The Wall Street Urinal and their collection of twats who write op-ed pieces will continue to describe the Obama administration of thuggishness, though, when they respond to criticism with even the mildest of retorts. They can do that because they have no shame - no, I take that back - because they are assholes of the first order.
Extemporanus: Messy!
You are the wind beneath my wings…
Gallowglass: Or the modern version thereof: The Internets (and, yes, I do wish I’d thought that up first!).
V572625694: she’s letting some fresh air in.
Extemporanus: Also, maybe someone should call in Lanny Davis to moderate this tacky, boorish incivility.
Who posed for Latimer’s photo - Pierce Brosnan?
Speechwriting for Bush is like, uhm, preparing gourmet dishes for the residents of a pigsty. Or, as they say in India, “It is as teaching a peacock to sing.”
If I wanted tepid comedy regarding shitty writers and the ways in which they blow mad cock, I’d watch Ishtar.
omg i have actually slept with matt latimer. forgot his name.
blackdontcrack: Did you fuck him just to make him stop talking about himself? How disappointed were you when you found out this didn’t work? C’mon, spill!
SayItWithWookies: he doesnt like to talk about himself but he does like being called daddy. he is a little chubby but thats ok. though it looks like he may have “slimmed up” for his book stuff.
McGurn comes across as a huge prick in his WSJ piece. Dude, if you really need to go after some third-rate speechwriter who argued that George Bush was in over his head, then guess what: that just proves that George Bush was in over his head!
wow, I didn’t know Rummy was gay
SayItWithWookies: I have to ask…are you male or female?
pondscum: Male. What makes you have to ask?
SayItWithWookies: Sigh. I miss the Vidal/Mailer throwdowns.
I see a new daytime soap opera “The Blind Leading the Blind Guiding Light”
Rummy said he tried to resign twice and Jr. wouldn’t let him.
Jr. needed a “lightening rod,” thats some weird code for something.
Pussies like this one who speak up after the fact are just asking for a job in the Palin administration, Trigs, that is.
drrty martini: Yeah, the days when a couple of pissy intellectual powerhouses would go on Dick Cavett with about four martinis apiece in ‘em and just have at it are long gone. Now we just have Kanye and these mental midgets from the Dubya scrimmage team. Hell, Robin Ghivan hasn’t even gotten into a good feud lately.
SayItWithWookies: Wrong ask. Sorry. Should have been blackdontcrack.
“You were my brown starfish.”
/fixed.
blackdontcrack: pondscum: What say you, blackdontcrack? Male or female?
queeraselvis v 2.0: wait for my tell all book
When mat-TAY girly-man ghosts Rummy’s autobiography, I pray that he includes some choice passages from Psychopathia Sexualis (Krafft-Ebbing), as well as these splendid words from Don:
• Stuff happens.
o (DoD News Briefing on the issue of looting and chaos in Baghdad, Saturday, April 11, 2003)
- Death has a tendency to encourage a depressing view of war. (April 2003)
- I don’t do quagmires.
- The absence of evidence is not necessarily the evidence of absence. (March 30, 2003)
- I’m not into this detail stuff. I’m more concepty.
- There will be good moments, and there will be less good moments.
(April 7, 2004, in reference to the 2004 spring uprising in Iraq)
- [Osama Bin Laden is] either alive and well or alive and not too well or not alive.
Matt…You’re a bad little pony.
I don’t think I’m gonna bet on you.
There’s something strange about his expression. If he doesn’t start his day with a shot of cheap spirits, he ought to.
Gallowglass: More like the committee that designed a horse and ended up with a camel.
teebob2000: Speak for yourself. I think Rummie is more likely to get sex as a performer in a sex-with-a-donkey show.
V572625694: This is a surprise? They had no clue how to do anything but campaign.
drrty martini: Mary McCarthy and Lillian Hellman could show these two how to debate in the public print–even though they have been dead years.
To bad none of these literary endeavors will have any skillful use of words. Nothing witty, etc. Who buys these horrible “memoirs” anyway? You can stop a door with a cinderblock far more cheaply.
OMG! Enough of these smarmy, smirky, shitsacks!
Tundra Grifter: Only if Brosnan had a narcissistic personality disorder and enjoyed coaxing squealing gerbils into his anal orifice.
SayItWithWookies:That was unexpected. Thank you, good sir.
This Matt Lattimer person may be one of the biggest douches that ever lived for writing this unverifiable, self-important, gossipy book, but the way McGurn came back at him, in the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal no less!!, leads me to believe two things: a) the Bushies really don’t have a firm concept on pr — the surest way to bring more attention to the book you hope to discredit is writing a scathing hit piece about the author in a major news publication (way to make people even more curious about what else he wrote in the book genius!!!); b) ML’s account of what happened in the WH is probably 95% true.
I mean, goodnight, nobody comes on as strong as McGurn did over simple hurt feelings…the way he tore into Lattimer, you would have thought he burned down his house, slept with his wife, and kicked his dog all on the same day or something.
Wonkette, do you ever wonder if you’re encapsulations are so snarky and harsh that a reader can’t find the news item in them? …or that a “low-level douche” is undeserving of such copious villification?
Let me get this straight; Matt Lat is ghost-writing Rumsfelds’ memoires? Or just is he just the creature an “as-told-to” epic is told to?
Chain Tattoo: The Coalsack.
blackdontcrack: One of those mistakes you make when drunk?
I said this on the other post about him, but that Matt came out of Flint is nothing short of amazing. The city simply doesn’t produce (conservative) douchebags like him in any measurable number. Only a handful of other sizeable cities in the nation vote more Democratically then Flint, so this guy is truly a blemish.
That said, Flint also produced Michael Moore, but he more than makes up for this douchebaggery.
V572625694: I was LOL’ing at that interview. “All my life I wanted to write speeches for the President…” He rubbed the Republican lamp, made his wish, and the genie sandbagged him by putting him in the last six months of GWB.
I expect his next wish was, “Talk about my book on Fresh Air.”
WadISay: Amazing reference, I suddenly love WadISay
Count Spatula: Aw, did you forget where you are?
Matt seems to be one of the few people who worked for Rumsfeld who actually respected him. My source inside the Pentagon says that Rummy was not liked at all by the career people. He would dress down subordinates in public meetings and that is Just Not Done.
Recycled Neocons, profits, & protecting the 9/11 cover-up.