Wonkette

Did you hear? Tom Vilsack, the lovable plain-spoken totalitarian furry who was once our next president until he realized he had no money and no one knew who he was just endorsed Hillary Clinton! This is the first sentence of his email: MORE »

We know Iraq is George W. Bush’s long-delayed personal Vietnam War, but this is getting ridiculous: America actually lost a Marine in Vietnam during Bush’s visit. MIAs in Vietnam again? Let’s rock it Apocalypse Now style!

The missing staff sergeant was a maintenance specialist assigned to the Marine One Presidential Helicopter detail. After a night out drinking with fellow Marines, the specialist “left his hotel on the back of a moped driven by a local national without telling anyone,” a Marine Corps spokeswoman confirmed to ABC News.

Despite his CO “suspecting foul play or terrorism” and shutting down various bars in Hanoi in the frantic search, the Marine was just out partying with a “local national” (hooker) and wasn’t even really AWOL as he was off duty for the night. MORE »

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All right, we’re taking the rest of the day off. NEWS CAN MAKE FUN OF ITSELF, THANK YOU. MORE »

Today, the President travelled to Rochester, NY, where he was met on the airport tarmac by local hero Jason McElwain–the 17-year old senior from Greece-Athena High School with high-functioning autism who came off the bench for his varsity hoops team a few weeks ago and proceeded to rain down the most bizzonkulous barrage of three-point insanity you have ever seen in what should stand as the most cockle-warmingest story of 2006. MORE »

We like the crew over at FishBowlDC and admire their work, which we link to frequently. But given our weakness for irony, as well as our obsession with all things media, we’d be falling down on the job if we didn’t pass along this reader email.

This may take a little concentration — so put down that plastic salad fork and focus. First, read this FishBowl DC item:

Washingtonian’s Kim Eisler is not at all happy with Howard Kurtz. Personally, we’re just amused that at the end of a column spent documenting some other reporter’s conflicts-of-interest, Kurtz profiles a correspondent on the network where Kurtz himself moonlights. Irony alert!

Second, read this “meta-irony alert!” from a Wonkette reader:

Stay with me here as I go all David Foster Wallace on your ass — Um…. the writer of said FishBowl item, Garrett Graff, is the editor at large of the Washingtonian. So — let’s say that Graff highlights how a colleague is not at all happy with Howie Kurtz (whom Graff blowjobish-ly profiled for, uh, the Washingtonian, and what a PLEASELIKEME hummer it was!).

And we are personally amused that Garrett Graff — at the end of his item on how a colleague is upset at a subject of a previous Graff profile AND how said subject has a conflict of interest by dint of his moonlighting job… neglects to so much as intimate that, in the very act of blogging about a guy who’s mad at another guy, who also has a conflict of interest… Garrett soi meme is moonlighting and creating an even more bizarre conflict of interest by reporting about a colleague and refusing to mention it.

Whoa! Didja get all that? If so, then here’s one more thing to note for the record. At the very end of his column, Kurtz at least discloses his potential conflict: “Howard Kurtz hosts CNN’s weekly media program, Reliable Sources.” As noted by our source, Graff does not.

Our musings on this tempest in a teapot — or bubbling in a fishbowl — continue after the jump.

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If you’re still recovering from last night’s Hollywood circle-jerk, just remember that you live in a city governed by metaphors too hackneyed for even the most unsubtle of scenario writers. The Department of Homeland Security can’t secure its own offices (oh, how appropriate etc. etc.) MORE »

We don’t often hear from Our Fighting Men — we suspect that they have better things to do, and that they’re getting more and better porn elsewhere. And, what do you know, it’s true. Wonkette’s Forward Operating Base Operative recently wrote in with a handy tip from a veteran bad-guy catcher:

You wanna know how we can tell we have found an insurgent safehouse? Porn. Yep-good ol’ decadently-Western porn. Sometimes porn and beer. Naked chicks, Tuborg Gold, Lebanese rap music, and some IED-making materials makes for a rockin’ Friday night in Mosul. The seedy underside of global jihad is revealed for you.

Normally, we’d consider all of these good signs. Things are so topsy-turvy in Iraq! Indeed, as FOBO reminds us:

[Journalists who cover Iraq] come with their own prejudices and bias, just like we do. Most are smart, funny people (except the Europeans, of course) I guess what SEC Rumsfeld might need to realize is that it takes about six months here to figure out what really happening here; I mean good six months…not a four day visit every six months. You can’t get that insight from watching FOX NEWS, CNN, CSPAN, or by reading policy studies from the Brookings Institution on the Metro.

Reading policy studies from the Brookings Institution while being shot at, however, starts to get you there.

FOBO’s full letter after the jump. NOTE: We have a policy of sending free Wonkette swag to operatives in war zones (Conde Nast does not count), and this letter was in response to that offer.

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Oh, those “ironic hipsters.” They’ll appropriate anything! First, it was lunchboxes and ringer tees, now it’s black people. Okay, it’s been black people for awhile, but the WP just got its subscription to Vice. Today, the WP reports that these “hipsters” dress up like they believe black people did in the ’80’s and then “get their freak on” at a dance party known as “Kill Whitey.” It sounds racist, but they make finger quotes around themselves while they do it so it’s okay. MORE »