How's About Your Being An Unabashed Lying Cocksucker, Vinnie?

It seems Vincent Carroll has read the interview with Ward Churchill we linked to recently.

In fact, this is what News' reporters discovered: "Tyner family genealogists have found no evidence that Joshua Tyner had any Indian blood." Also, "(Churchill) has repeatedly claimed to have American Indian ancestry, but an extensive examination of genealogical records that traced branches of both sides of Churchill's family to pre-Revolutionary War times turned up no solid evidence of a single Indian ancestor."

We know we've said this before, but we will say it again. By extensive examination, they mean don't mean by anybody like, say, a fucking professional genealogist. They mean as conducted by one of their most rabid anti-Churchill reporters, a New Jersey cop, and two anti-Churchill bloggers.

Let me repeat, two fucking bloggers. The Rocky outsourced the lynchpin of its entire Churchill coverage to a pair of fucking bloggers.

Need more be said?

The Metaphysics Of Indian Hating 7

We have it on good authority (okay, we heard him say so on the radio) that Dan Caplis will be in attendance at the Columbus Day parade this year, marching on the side of the great explorer.

We would like to remind Mr. Caplis, what he's marching in support of.

This from Bartolome De Las Casas, whom we've been linking to like mad of late, because he was, like, there.

They attacked the towns and spared neither the children nor the aged nor pregnant women nor women in childbed, not only stabbing them and dismembering them but cutting them to pieces as if dealing with sheep in the slaughter house. They laid bets as to who, with one stroke of the sword, could split a man in two or could cut off his head or spill out his entrails with a single stroke of the pike. They took infants from their mothers' breasts, snatching them by the legs and pitching them headfirst against the crags or snatched them by the arms and threw them into the rivers, roaring with laughter and saying as the babies fell into the water, "Boil there, you offspring of the devil!" Other infants they put to the sword along with their mothers and anyone else who happened to be nearby. They made some low wide gallows on which the hanged victim's feet almost touched the ground, stringing up their victims in lots of thirteen, in memory of Our Redeemer and His twelve Apostles, then set burning wood at their feet and thus burned them alive.
. . .
They made bets as to who would slit a man in two, or cut off his head at one blow; or they opened up his bowels. They tore the babes from their mother's breast by their feet and dashed their heads against the rocks...They spitted the bodies of other babes, together with their mothers and all who were before them, on their swords.
. . .
A Spaniard...suddenly drew his sword. Then the whole hundred drew theirs and began to rip open the bellies, to cut and kill men, women, children and old folk, all of whom were seated, off guard and frightened...And within two credos, not a man of them there remains alive. The Spaniards enter the large house nearby, for this was happening at its door, and in the same way, with cuts and stabs, began to kill as many as were found there, so that a stream of blood was running, as if a great number of cows had perished.
. . .
The Indians saw that without any offense on their part they were despoiled of their kingdoms, their lands and liberties and of their lives, their wives, and homes. As they saw themselves each day perishing by the cruel and inhuman treatment of the Spaniards, crushed to earth by the horses, cut in pieces by swords, eaten and torn by dogs, many buried alive and suffering all kinds of exquisite tortures.

And if that's not enough, there's this letter from an Italian nobleman who sailed with Columbus. The "Lord Admiral" to whom he refers is our great explorer.

I captured a very beautiful Carib women, whom the said Lord Admiral gave to me and with whom...I conceived desire to take pleasure. I wanted to put my desire into execution but she did not want it and treated me with her finger nails in such manner that I wished I had never begun. But seeing that, I took a rope and thrashed her well.... Finally we came to an agreement.

Which, now that we think of it, sounds exactly like something Caplis might support. With his rumored penchant for the abuse of women of color, we mean.

But we say no more.

Hitchens-Galloway Update 8

Being the articulate, well-read motherfuckers that you are (unlike us, we might add), you probably know this already. But if you don't, it turns out Christopher Hitchens has a brother, Peter Hitchens, who is also a pundit. They had a falling out over a Stalin joke a few years ago, but reconciled a couple months back. On stage, of course.

It's actually a wee bit touching.

IK: Christopher, you've talked slightly with your tongue in your cheek about regretting the competition for your mother's attention, and you said in one interview with the Times: "Mothers aren't supposed to have favourites, are they? But boys know. And to know that your mother loves you most, more than anyone, more than your father, more than your brother which I always did know..." Did you have a firm conviction that you were favourite?

CH: No, what I was expressing there and badly, too, [was] an ambition, I hoped it was true but I am sure it was not. I don't usually use this term as a compliment but she was very even handed. Impartial. What I'm really saying there I think would be obvious to anyone who has even scanned the more accessible works of Sigmund Freud, is that had I been an only child, I could probably have handled it, to have mummy to myself and then of course to kill daddy and marry mummy. I thought I had all my ducks in a row, and suddenly to have to go to some nursing home and bring home a bundle was a shock and I may never have got over it. Took up smoking at around that time.

PH: I don't know about the parenting but there was a story, although I can't remember anything about this, of Christopher having been discovered gleefully releasing the brake of the pram in which I was lying...

CH: That's when I took up drinking...

PH: There was another occasion when Christopher was sitting on the edge of a flower bed, admiring the blooms, when he saw a sinister shadow, growing, and it was me staggering up behind him with a rake. I have no memory of that...

You probably also know this, but Galloway's roving circus has a blog. Enjoy.

The Metaphysics Of Indian Hating 6

Mike Rosen jumps in the Denver Columbus Day fray. As we've come to expect from Mr. Rosen, his command of the facts, not to mention the English language, is less than stellar.

Indian activists resent the depiction of Columbus as the man who "discovered" America, arguing that their people were here first. Of course they were. So what? The point is that Columbus discovered America - the "New World" - from the perspective of Europeans, who later followed him here and imported their ideas, customs and system of government. Spanish conquistador Vasco Nuñez de Balboa is said to have "discovered" the Pacific Ocean in 1513. But, of course, the fish were already there. Again, it was a European discovery. The only real "native Americans" were dinosaurs and cockroaches. Indians were Johnny-come- latelys, too, many crossing the land bridge from Asia.

Except that no activist I've yet to hear of makes any mention of the "discovery" angle. The activists make their reasoning pretty clear: Columbus engaged in the wholesale slaughter of the Taino Indians on Hispanola, entirely depopulating the island as documented by his contemporaries, and is unfit for celebration. You can agree or disagree with it, but that's what's at stake.

We'd also be remiss if we didn't point out the comparison of American Indians to fish, the matching of lower forms of humanity with wildlife being an old racist canard we consider unworthy of even Rosen. And then there's the odd land bridge comment, a theory long since dumped by every anthropologist we can think of. Not that you have to read very deep to find the holes in that one; the latest popular work on the subject will do.

What's amazing about the Columbus Day coverage this year is our local media pundits aren't even trying to keep up with the facts. They seem to be of the opinion they can just blurt out any kind of fucking nonsense and no one will bother to call bullshit on them.

And they're probably right.

By The By

If you'd like intelligent commentary on Hickenlooper's letter to the Columbus Day leaders (as opposed to the foulmouthed spewing which we tend towards) we recommend checking in with Colorado Luis. As usual he's being everything we're not.

Y'know, level-headed, articulate, politically well-versed, typo-free, sober, etc . . .

Entirely Off The Subject

Understanding that there are only about four people in this area who give a shit about this debate, the following piece of inane nonsense from one our favorite purveyors of inane nonsense, Jonathan Franzen.

Citing Ulysses as the ultimate scare text, he claims, in an online conversation with New Yorker editor Ben Greenman, that its frequent placement on top-ten lists of the best books of the twentieth century "sends this message to the common reader: Literature is horribly hard to read. And this message to the aspiring writer: Extreme difficulty is the way to earn respect. This is fucked up. It's particularly fucked up when the printed word is fighting other media for its very life."

Most recently, this anxious ideology has contaminated his fiction. A skeletal story in The New Yorker of May 23, 2005, depicts a husband-and-wife writing team whose relationship dissolves over their artistic differences. She stays in Hollywood, where her success and fame seem limitless, entirely comfortable with her vocation. And he, a husk of a character desiccated by Franzen's obvious scorn for him, retreats to New York and the austerities of marginal fiction writing, where his unhappiness is telegraphed so heavily that it seems gouged into the page. It's a cautionary tale for writers, and could very well be a public-service announcement: to leave the mainstream, to write experimental fiction, is to be a miserable narcissist, obsessed with the pleasures you left behind.

Difficult is bad, easy is good, got it? Put down your Melville to pick up your Cussler. Better yet, take it to the logical extreme, and put down your Franzen to pick up your remote. (Actually, we're not joking, please for the love of God, put down your Franzen and pick up your remote! That's an order!) We hate to sound old fashioned, but perhaps literature oughtn't be easy all of the time. We're not huge admirers of Harold Bloom, but we like his discussion of literature as a difficult pleasure, something which one must be engaged with in not altogether pleasant ways. Of course, that will mean there will be less literary readers than movie-goers, and serious authors will not be accorded the same fame as actors. So fucking what? Melville, as we recall, sold about 2,000 copies of Moby Dick in his lifetime. The only ones mewling about their lack of rockstar fame are marginal talents like Franzen.

Regardless. We subscribe to the New Yorker and didn't read the mentioned short story for the obvious reason: it was written by Jonathen Franzen. We may revisit it so we can properly sneer at it, but we highly doubt it. We had the misfortune to suffer through his insufferably bourgeois Oprah pick and have felt absolutely no fucking urge to repeat the error.

Metaphysics Of Indian Hating 5

Peter Boyles had Vincent Carroll and George Vendegnia on this morning. In a career of sublimely stupid metaphors, Peter Boyles may have outdone himself, comparing Vendegnia to Martin Luther King and the Columbus Day protestors to the Klan.

The rest of the interview consisted of what we expect from Boyles: a slobbering spit-shine of his apish counterparts' shriveled little cocks, all under the guise of discourse. Ah, Peter, what would we do without you?

* By the way, Boyles calls Carroll "Vince." We like Vinnie much better.

The Metaphysics Of Indian Hating 4

Well, it didn't take long. Mayor Hickenlooper has come out condemning both sides of our annual Columbus Day uprisings. Something which Vincent Carroll ain't happy about.

The mayor's letter does maintain a veneer of impartiality, pledging to protect free speech whether Hickenlooper approves of its content or not. But what else could a mayor say in the land of the First Amendment? He can't just give Glenn Morris, Ward Churchill & Co. the green light they seek to bully parade participants into giving up.

With the exception of a few lines, however, the letter promotes the grotesque fiction that the "volatile situations" of the past few years are equally the fault of the parade organizers and those who try to shut it down. In fact, those "volatile situations" are solely the fault of protesters who do not believe in free speech, do not respect the Constitution, and who elevate their political agenda above the rights of everyone else.

Which would make fucking sense were it not readily apparent that the protestors are also exercising their right to free speech. We'd also like to note that George Vendegnia is about as combative as is possible for a human being to be. In fact, his response to the mayors letter was to term it (and we quote the Rocky),

"b---s---" and "a joke."

This is Vendegnia's sole claim to identity, as far as we can tell, and the only fruit of it he enjoys is the annual agitation all around. Vinnie supports him simply because likes his political stance better. Which should be no surprise, predicated as it is on the celebration of slaughtered brown people.

And, please, let's lay to rest the pretense of debate about Columbus. Columbus absolutely, unqualifiedly was a genocidal madman motivated solely by the kind of avarice we've come to associate with vice-presidents. Whatever you think of the gentlemen's navigational ability, the contemporary accounts of his atrocity are fairly fucking substantial, and his writings provide ample evidence of his motivations. This is not open for intepretation, and those who argue otherwise are ahistorical, deliberately hypocritical or just plain fucking stupid.

In Vinnie's case, we think the latter.

And likewise, let's drop the argument that the protestors are judging Columbus by today's standards, and that he was simply a product of his time and place. The reason we know of Columbus' atrocities was precisely because others of his time were judging him by their standards, and finding him wanting. And, of course, if we are to absolve all of those who were products of their time and place from any sense of historical culpability, let's try it with, say, the SS, and see how that flies.

It wouldn't, of course. As a nation, we consider Jews as worthy victims.

Carroll's sole point is that Indians aren't.

New Skin For The Old Ceremony

A Chinese cosmetics company is using skin harvested from the corpses of executed convicts to develop beauty products for sale in Europe, an investigation by the Guardian has discovered.

Agents for the firm have told would-be customers it is developing collagen for lip and wrinkle treatments from skin taken from prisoners after they have been shot. The agents say some of the company's products have been exported to the UK, and that the use of skin from condemned convicts is "traditional" and nothing to "make such a big fuss about".

And The Daily Camera Never Misses An Opportunity To Miss The Fucking Point

From one Jonathan Gurwitz of the San Antonio Express-News, as reprinted in the Daily Camera.

The Israeli withdrawal to pre-1967 borders in Gaza offered the opportunity to illustrate that an independent Palestinian state poses no threat to Israel, to demonstrate that a culture of violence and hatred has not completely sapped Palestinian society of rationality.

After Israeli troops departed, Palestinian militants breached Gaza's border with Egypt, overwhelming Egyptian troops. Thousands of people and weapons crossed unimpeded, prompting fears that al-Qaida has established a new stronghold in Gaza. Is there any doubt now what would happen if Israel withdrew to its pre-1967 borders on the West Bank?

This is the kind of half-witted drivel that the Daily Camera editorial staff trolls the nation to reprint. Gurwitz's point being, we suppose, that Israel must remain to colonize the Palestinians for their own good. A point that we think has been best summed up by one Rudyard Kipling.

Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.

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.

This is entirely off the subject, but we'd like to note that a little pro-colonial treatise vomited up by an editorialist at the Wall Street Journal a couple years ago actually took its title from this poem.

Entirely unironically, as far as we could tell from the two hundred or so pages we managed to stomach.

Farewell, Rights Of Man

Well, we so enjoyed The Confidence Man that we read Billy Budd. It is fucking phenomenal, of course. As with all things Melville, most criticism focuses in on the metaphysical aspects of the tale (Melville's battle with God, and all that). We ignore the metaphysical as you might expect, and it seems to us nothing so much as a meditation on the vile slavishness that is military duty, with the best of all men being impressed onto a 74 and crucified - damn near literally - due to the logical servility of the ship's captain. A sort of anti Saving Private Ryan, if you will.

Which probably explains our admiration. We fucking detest Spielberg in general and that movie in particular, it being the pinnacle of his puerile genius.

The Metaphysics Of Indian-Hating 3

Remember the anti-Churchill sentiment expressed by local Indian activists in the Charlie Brennan article of a couple days ago? The Colorado AIM blog points out that far from being the grassroots organizers Brennan would paint them as, they're both city officials.

Brennan offers the opinion of only one American Indian, Darius Smith. Brennan describes Smith as the President of the Colorado Indian Education Association. What Brennan doesn’t reveal is that Darius Smith is also employed by the City of Denver as the director of the Denver Anti-Discrimination Office (DADO). In essence, Smith is a political appointee of the Mayor of Denver, John Hickenlooper. CO AIM has repeatedly asked Mayor Hickenlooper to demonstrate moral courage by denouncing the celebration of an indian killer; a stand which he refuses to take.

Another source in Brennan’s article is Darius’s boss, Lucia Guzman. Lucia Guzman is the Executive Director of the Human Rights and Community Relations department of the City of Denver. Like Smith, she is a mayoral political appointee. Also, like Smith, Guzman has nothing to say about the nature of the parade or the lack of a mayoral response but instead suggests that CO AIM and TCD members are exhausted. She doesn’t name a single person or organization as proof which is understandable since she hasn’t attending any TCD or CO AIM meetings. In fact, neither Smith nor Guzman have attended a CO AIM meeting within the past year and have no idea what strategies are being pursued, despite what they may be telling their supervisors.

A bit odd that Brennan failed to mention this, isn't it? Ah, that's what we love about the Rocky's Columbus Day coverage: under every sewer, a new sewer resides.

Hitchens-Galloway Update 7

In which Hitch attempts to fight metaphor with metaphor - including a dig at a University of Colorado professor whom we are liking more and more by the minute - and creates the kind of symbolic mess we usually associate with Vincent Carroll.

The two preferred metaphors are, depending on the speaker, that the Bin-Ladenists are the fish that swim in the water of Muslim discontent or the mosquitoes that rise from the swamp of Muslim discontent. (Quite often, the same images are used in the same harangue.) The "fish in the water" is an old trope, borrowed from Mao's hoary theory of guerrilla warfare and possessing a certain appeal to comrades who used to pore over the Little Red Book. The mosquitoes are somehow new and hover above the water rather than slip through it. No matter. The toxic nature of the "water" or "swamp" is always the same: American support for Israel. Thus, the existence of the Taliban regime cannot be swamplike, presumably because mosquitoes are born and not made. The huge swamp that was Saddam's Iraq has only become a swamp since 2003. The organized murder of Muslims by Muslims in Pakistan, Iraq, and Afghanistan is only a logical reaction to the summit of globalizers at Davos. The stoning and veiling of women must be a reaction to Zionism. While the attack on the World Trade Center—well, who needs reminding that chickens, or is it mosquitoes, come home to roost?

There are only two serious attempts at swamp-draining currently under way. In Afghanistan and Iraq, agonizingly difficult efforts are in train to build roads, repair hospitals, hand out ballot papers, frame constitutions, encourage newspapers and satellite dishes, and generally evolve some healthy water in which civil-society fish may swim. But in each case, from within the swamp and across the borders, the most poisonous snakes and roaches are being recruited and paid to wreck the process and plunge people back into the ooze. How nice to have a "peace" movement that is either openly on the side of the vermin, or neutral as between them and the cleanup crew, and how delightful to have a press that refers to this partisanship, or this neutrality, as "progressive."

Still waiting for the fucking Bill Maher transcript to hit the web, by the by. So far, we've gathered that it was a fairly tame outing for our blustering duo, sticking to primarly whether the Kennedy or Bush family contain the greater number of drunks. Being a drunk, we'd like to formally protest. We'd also like to note that our contempt for both families is fairly fucking wholehearted, and has more to do with their both being murderous fucking thugs with absolute contempt for the principles of the US Constitution, than whether or not they over-indulge in drink.

But that's just us.

Carroll And Zarqawi, Sitting In A Tree

Vincent Carroll begins the week by tying himself into the kind of logical knots we can only expect from the Rocky. We quote the section in whole as, well, it's fucking priceless.

Look Homeward, Arabs

Why is the U.S. unpopular in the Middle East? One reason, according to the Washington bureau chief of Al-Jazeera television, is that the United States talks a lot about the importance of Middle Eastern democracy but has supported dictators in order to ensure political stability and the uninterrupted shipment of oil.

Hafez Al-Mirazi also told a Denver audience last week that this U.S. government hypocrisy raises a persistent question in the minds of Arabs: "How come this liberty and freedom does not apply to me?"

It's a fair question (up to a point), but Arabs who ask it shouldn't stop there. They should also pose several other questions . . . to themselves.

For example: How come there are no Arab democracies, period, and only a handful of Arab countries that Freedom House ranks as even "partly free"?

How come Arab countries hostile to the U.S. are even more likely to be repressive dictatorships than countries allied with it?

How come other regions of the world where the U.S. has on occasion also supported or tolerated dictators, such as Latin America and East Asia, nevertheless have managed to gestate democratic government?

If Arabs are going to start asking tough questions about why their governments are as miserable as they surely are, they might as well not stop with the easy one.

So if we understand you correctly, Vincent, your position is that Arabs should be held accountable for not overcoming endemic US illegality to the degree that Latin America and East Asia did? It's a logically convoluted position, to put it mildly. Not to mention indicative of all the sleazy hypocrisy we've come to expect from you, in that you've been a cheerleader for a US foreign policy based on illegality as long as we've known you.

Only slightly more hypocritical is your rather idiotic assertion that Arab countries hostile to the US are more repressive than the ones we support. We'd like to remind you, sir, that one of the most repressive regimes in the region, by anyone's estimation, was that of Saddam Hussein. And his worst atrocities were committed with our support. We know you're not a real big fan of history, but that's a point Arabs haven't forgotten.

But more importantly, Vinnie (do you mind if we call you Vinnie?), we'd also like to point out that those Latin American countries that have gestated democracy have done so by, first and foremost, removing American influence. As with East Asia. Although I'm assuming you'd restrict your comment to South Korea, we'd like to point you to, oh, Vietnam - which was masterful in its removal of American influence, as we recall.

In other words, sir, I think you just posed the best argument in support of the Iraqi resistance we've heard yet: that in the interests of democracy, Arab people should take their own destiny in their hands, and kick the US the fuck out of their lands.

You fucking idiot.

Vinnie!

The latest installment of the Ward Churchill interview is up. The highlight for us, unsurprisingly, is his tearing into Carroll, Brennan and Flynn. Regarding any other newspaper, Mr. Churchill might seem paranoid. Regarding the Rocky, we are prepared to take his analysis on its face.

Besides which, we fucking adored the line about Vincent Carroll exhibiting all "the mythic symptoms of Hitlerian degeneracy."

Really, this is why we fire up the computer in the morning.

WC: Actually, there is one logical motive underlying both the manner in which the News has sought to discredit me on my home turf, and the sheer obsessiveness with which it has pursued that goal. This concerns the success with which Colorado AIM has been able to utilize a strategy of physically confronting Denver's annual Columbus Day parade, not only as a vehicle for radicalizing public consciousness around "Indian issues," but as a foundation upon which to build a coalition of progressive local organizations -- it's called the All Nations Alliance -- reflecting the full range of the city's ethnic diversity.

This, needless to say, has been anathema to Denver's white power structure, for which the News serves as head cheerleader, and so, since at least as far back as 1990, editorial page editor Vincent Carroll has been devoting considerable space to depicting us as being everything from "Brownshirts" to "common street thugs." But, [this] seems to have driven him absolutely wild; by 2002 (his frustration had become so palpable that it was conjuring delightful little images in the mind's eye of his foaming at the mouth, chewing on the carpet, and exhibiting all the other mythic symptoms of Hitlerian degeneracy), Carroll's spew has had no discernable effect. Utter impotence; he's been firing verbal blanks. If anything, his rants have helped solidify our credibility, and thus our success as organizers.

The best illustration of just how ineffectual Vinnie has been in convincing the general public to view us as "criminals" can be found in the fact that, thus far, the City of Denver has filed roughly 2,000 charges against upwards of 500 individuals in connection with our Transform Columbus Day (TCD) protests, and has yet to win a single conviction. Not one. There've been a few people who entered pleas for personal reasons (they were from out of state, or whatever), but the City had no viable alternative other than to dismiss the charges against almost everyone else. The reason is that in the two instances where they did conduct what amounted to show trials (select groups of "ringleaders" were prosecuted in 1992 and 2005), they suffered the humiliation of having juries return "not guilty" verdicts on every charge against every defendant. As it stands, if you count by the number of people prosecuted, they're 0 for 12; if you count by charges put to juries, they're 0 for 28.

There's a lot that should be said about how this came to pass, but, for the moment, let's just say that as a member of the leadership council of Colorado AIM, I've been highly visible in the process, a defendant in both trials, and that, in the most recent one, this past January, I not only testified but defended myself pro se. This is significant because we'd barely finished the press conference following our acquittals when the local media launched its campaign against me. In fact, it started the very next day and has only lately begun to abate. It was running full tilt in Denver for about six months, even though, at a national level, it only lasted for about 60 days or so with intermittent follow-ups by Bill O'Reilly.

JF: Can you explain how this all ties in?

WC: Sure. Here's how it ties together. The City Attorney's staff did a quick post mortem analysis of how they'd managed once again to lose such a high profile, slam-dunk case in so spectacular a fashion. Their conclusion, which I don't happen to share, incidentally, was that I myself had been the decisive ingredient in convincing the jury to acquit. This isn't mere speculation: prosecutors were quoted to that effect in the News. The story was by a reporter named Charlie Brennan, who's been a key player right from the start. He sat through the whole trial, watching, listening very attentively, and taking copious notes. So, the instant the prosecutors delivered their take on what needed "fixing" if we were to be prevented from dispensing still further humiliation to the powers that be, Brennan -- which is to say, the News and its collaborators in the electronic media -- were ready to roll.

They've taken my testimony, point by point, and assigned reporters -- on some cases whole teams of reporters -- to cast doubt upon what I said on the stand, as well as my character more generally. It's been in some respects rather systematic: they've gone after my scholarship, trying to undermine confidence in my historical and legal interpretations; they've questioned my military record -- even while conceding that I am in fact a decorated Vietnam veteran -- and ridiculed the quality of the university I attended on the GI Bill; my driving record has been analyzed in print, as have my credit history and the types of vehicles I've purchased over the past dozen years; Brennan in particular has adopted a cant worthy of the National Inquirer, interviewing my ex-wives and so on, trying to paint me as a violent abuser. All that's in addition to Kevin Flynn's persistence in raising the "Indian Question." Brennan's had a heavy hand in that one, too.

Got The Bombastic Embittered Alcoholic. Check!

If you're interested in actual protest coverage, by the by, we submit you won't do better than Ms. Em Rosa.

It’s as if the act of protesting as become some branded affair, an affair that only corporate psychopaths could fathom. Got the punk with the $ 20 Hot Topic band shirt? Check. Got the dreadlocked girl with peace signs on her chin? Check. Got the young idealistic person? Check. Good, we’re ready for democracy now! It’s all about appearance, and little about substance.

Now, let's work to change it. Let's turn protest in to something that is ours, something that has a point. Something that is real.

Because We Think Nothing Would Look So Good On Mr. Martin As A Spot Of Lead

It seems there were some anti-war protests over the weekend. Our friend, the Drunkablog was not impressed.

Everybody and his dog is going to post (Billy Bob's proofing his piece right now) about the evil and pathetic "anti-war march" in D.C. today. So am I.

Mr. Martin might be more convincing were he there. As it is, we would like to paraphrase Mr. Galloway of the other evening, and point out that Mr. Martin seems willing to fight to the last drop of anyone else's blood for his decaying ideology. With an understaffed military and volunteer rates plummeting, we refuse to take seriously any able-bodied war supporter who is not engaged in active duty. In fact, we have trouble not considering them as either fucking blowhards or fucking cowards.

Or, in Mr. Martin's case, both.

Invaluable Understrappers, All

We finally finished The Confidence Man over the weekend. As usual when we encounter Mr. Melville, we are entirely charmed and disturbed by the wholesome bleakness of his vision of America. We didn't think his bile could rise much further after Moby Dick, but we were heartily disabused of the notion. Unlike that other life-on-the-Mississippi novel which we shall not name - wholly overrated creature that is - Melville's American spirit offers no pretense of regeneration. What we get instead is the macabre hustle of capitalism, fueled by genocide and atrocity, dehumanizing everyone it touches and finally ending in an apocalypse that Melville convinces us we richly deserve. (Speaking of Ward Churchill, hm?)

It ends with our new favorite image in all literature, we think, wherein a confused old man closes his Bible and asks our protagonist, the confidence man, for a life preserver.

The confidence man hands him a shit-filled chamber pot. Then puts out the light and leads him into darkness.

The Metaphysics Of Indian Hating, Redux

Charlie Brennan, hypothesizing that the lack of mass arrests this year will have Ward Churchill to blame.

Darius Smith, president of the Colorado Indian Education Association, said Churchill has "absolutely" been compromised as a spokesman for American Indian causes because of allegations that resulted in an investigation of Churchill's scholarship by CU's Standing Committee on Research Misconduct.

Accusations that Churchill has no American Indian ancestry (he claims to be at least one-sixteenth Cherokee and teaches ethnic studies at CU) mean he's damaged goods, some activists say.

This might have some credibility if there were anyone interested in American Indian activism who hadn't heard of Churchill prior to this scandal. The man had his fair share of enemies prior to Brennan, and most of the shit we've heard from the Temple gang over the last six months we've long since heard from the Bellecourt gang - often verbatim.

Which is one of the major irritants of this entire fucking debacle. The Rocky and Post can tsk tsk about Churchill's loss of credibility for American Indian activism, but you can count the number of stories they've written about American Indian issues in the last decade on one fucking hand. These are a pack of shitheels who could, quite simply, care less about third-world life expectancies on reservations due to easily curable disease, malnutrition and ecological genocide. Not to mention, say, sovereignty rights and rampant US government illegality (Cobell vs. Norton, anyone?).

If anything, we humbly submit that American Indian issues have gotten more play in the last six months than at any point we can remember - precisely because of Churchill. We actually heard the propriety of reparations being paid to boarding school survivors being discussed on KHOW last week. Something we're fairly sure would never have crossed the minds (and we use the term loosely) of local imbeciles, Caplis and Silverman, without Churchill's influence.

So, be honest, Brennan. Excepting editorials chastising the uppity locals around Columbus Day, the only stories you run vis-a-vis American Indians is to question whether Churchill has the right to consider himself one. Your paper has been hostile to American Indian issues since day fucking one. You pretending some fucking concern for American Indian activism is somewhat akin to Col. Sanders professing solidarity with the chickens .

Demonstrably.

Were We President . . .

You've presumably heard the tales of Bush's drinking, as reported by the National Enquirer.

"When the levees broke in New Orleans, it apparently made him reach for a shot," said one insider. "He poured himself a Texas-sized shot of straight whiskey and tossed it back. The First Lady was shocked and shouted: "Stop George!""

Laura gave him an ultimatum before, 'It's Jim Beam or me.' She doesn't want to replay that nightmare — especially now when it's such tough going for her husband."

It was a startling revalation to us, and one to which we can only remark . . . Jim Beam? Christ almighty, man, we drink Jim Beam because we cannot afford better! We always pictured the President of the last superpower quaffing 300-year-old Scotch out of the skulls of Palestinian children. Or absynthe, perhaps, in some wild orgy in one of the barred-off rooms of Abu Ghraib.

But Jim Beam?

All of the sudden the gap between us and yourself seems completely surmountable.

He Seems So Gleeful On The Throat-Slitting Point, Doesn't He?

Mike Rosen, in fine form today, mocking the families of those dead on Flight 93. There times when Rosen advances from the reprehensible to the sublimely absurd. This is one of them.

Although some of the family members on the selection committee expressed concern about the perception of Islamic symbolism, their objections were dismissed. Other family members supported the design. Perhaps they were so consumed with grief that it deadened their other senses. While we sympathize with their loss, we needn't defer to their poor judgment. All Americans have a voice in the design of this national monument. Perhaps some of the family members share Murdoch's sentiments, but it should be noted that these families don't speak for the victims any more than Cindy Sheehan can speak for her late son, Casey. If the last memory of a Flight 93 hero was having his throat slit by a terrorist's box cutter, he might have a different idea about the memorial.

Wonderfully put, sir. The families don't speak for their loved ones, you and Tancredo do. How could they not be thankful to have the wishes of their families overturned to advance the basest forms of bigotry as espoused by two ultra-right neocons, who mock them all the while? Who wouldn't want to die for such a worthy cause? Christ, m'man, they're almost martyrs to you and Tom-Tom!

And, sir, we don't mean to overstep our bounds, but in a long career of poorly written summations to poorly conceived arguments, we humbly propose that this is your masterpiece.

The most fitting theme for the 9/11 memorial in Pennsylvania was captured in the spirit of Todd Beamer's immortal words as he and his fellow passengers took their fate and the nation's into their own hands: "Let's roll!"

And they didn't mean a crescent roll.

You sat awake over your laptop, burning muscle mass into the wee hours of the morning to make your voice heard around the nation, and this is the best you could come up with? This is the summation of your gigantic rhetorical skills, honed to a razor-sharp edge in decades of partisan debate? And they didn't mean a crescent roll?

Please, sir, plumb the depths of your shriveled cancerous little soul. Are you even trying anymore?

The Sixty-Niners

We finished Middlesex last night. We would probably recommend it, but we're not entirely sure why. It has all of the faults of books that revolve solely around identity, beginning with a fragmentation thereof and moving to an improbable and irritatingly cohesive whole. It is also an immigrant tale, of course, with all the mannered NPRish undertones that necessitates.

This will be our last immigrant novel, by the way. We've had enough of that particular trope. It no longer seems to us that it speaks to the American experience - whatever the hell that is - other than as a kind of incredibly reductive nostalgia.

However, it is well written. At times, wonderfully well. The description of the early Ford factory is in itself worth the time invested, we think.

Hitchens-Galloway Update 6

In the true form of a boxer meeting his inevitable physical decline, Hitchens is blaming his lack of come-back against Galloway on hot-flashes of some sort.

Hitch, Hitch, Hitch, at this point it just sounds pathetic. Now get up like a man and do some damage, you motherfucker.

Hitchens-Galloway Update 5

The show rolls on. They will be on Bill Maher together this Friday. We don't have HBO (though Deadwood has almost convinced us) but look forward to reading the transcript.

You Say It Like It's A Bad Thing

As 5280's Elevated Voices notes, Cherry Creek seems to be a becoming a happening crime spot.

A group of friends were enjoying at evening out at Cherry Creek North when they were attacked at gunpoint while walking to their cars, police said. The attack occurred at about 9:30 p.m. Friday night on Milwaukee Street between Third and Fourth Avenues.

Police say two men armed with guns forced the two couples to give up their purses and wallets before they ran away. One of the victims was punched in the face. Police have not arrested any of the suspects.

You know us well enough by now to know that we are a classist pig. As such, we would like to extend our whole-hearted support for the mugging of the loft-people who frequent Cherry Creek. Our disheveled appearance and ungainly manners have gotten us tossed from more than one of their eateries, and we have lived too long with the sneers and unsubtle asides of those overly-tanned shitheels.

So, please, sirs, mug on. Do it for the rest of us, who have yet to afford a single fucking cocktail in one of those yuppie hellholes.

What's More Offensive Than David Harsanyi?

This from David Harsanyi in the Post.

On July 29, Denver's FBI field office, along with the 56 others around the nation, received a message calling for recruits interested in working with a new anti-obscenity squad.

The initiative, as reported in The Washington Post, was "one of the top priorities" of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and FBI director Robert Mueller.

Applicants for a new elite porn squad were cautioned, however, that they'll need some moral fortitude to deal with material that tends to be offensive to local juries.

You know what's more offensive than pornography? Blue-nosed bureaucrat crusaders limiting personal freedoms.

Unquestionably, pornography has no redeeming qualities. And certainly, there's nothing inherently heroic or patriotic about protecting it. But when government gets in the business of deciding what sorts of activities consensual adults engage in, we should take notice.

Perhaps the only thing more offensive than the FBI's porn squad is Harsanyi's mealy-mouthed criticism of it. Unquestionably, pornography has no redeeming qualities? What of Ulysses, deemed pornography at the time of publication? What of Michel Houellebecq's latest? (Not that you'd know Michel Houellebecq had a latest, if the only book coverage you got was from our local rags.) Or to be a little less ambiguous, what of The Story of O? And if none of those have any redeeming qualities, are we to fucking assume the latest dropping from Clive Cussler does? The latest Dean Koontz? The latest Harry Potter? These are certainly lacking in all redeeming qualities considered literary - y'know, like character, theme, imagery and metaphor.

Harsanyi's column is exactly the kind of waffling bullshit that allows the FBI to get away with this kind of obscenity. Let us be very clear. This issue is solely that free people have a right to read whatever they so choose. If they do not, they are not a free people. This is not a matter of prohibition, this is a matter of governmental restriction of the most fundamental right of a citizenry.

Likewise, we are not to have our reading material limited by the prurient imaginations of Alberto Gonzales, Robert Mueller or David Harsanyi. His opinion of a literary work's redeeming qualities is about as fucking relevant as Bush's opinion of international law.

Roses Are Red/Violets Are Blue/Hey Laura Bush/Fuck You

Laura Bush invites Sharon Olds to the White House, and Ms. Olds is kind enought to publish her rejection.

I tried to see my way clear to attend the festival in order to bear witness--as an American who loves her country and its principles and its writing--against this undeclared and devastating war.

But I could not face the idea of breaking bread with you. I knew that if I sat down to eat with you, it would feel to me as if I were condoning what I see to be the wild, highhanded actions of the Bush Administration.

What kept coming to the fore of my mind was that I would be taking food from the hand of the First Lady who represents the Administration that unleashed this war and that wills its continuation, even to the extent of permitting "extraordinary rendition": flying people to other countries where they will be tortured for us.

So many Americans who had felt pride in our country now feel anguish and shame, for the current regime of blood, wounds and fire. I thought of the clean linens at your table, the shining knives and the flames of the candles, and I could not stomach it.

We wanted to post a poem by Ms. Olds, but we couldn't think of any that really grabbed us. There's the obvious choice - the one about her father's glass of mucus - but it doesn't seem to be online and we sure as shit aren't typing it out for you.

This will do.

Sharon Olds - The Pope's Penis

It hangs deep in his robes, a delicate
clapper at the center of a bell.
It moves when he moves, a ghostly fish in a
halo of silver seaweed, the hair
swaying in the dark and the heat -- and at night
while his eyes sleep, it stands up in praise of God.

Black Air

We'll admit the title has no fucking real correlation to this post, but it is our favorite bit from one of our favorite comic novels: The Third Policeman. Which some television show called Lost is now mining for plot material.

We don't watch much television, keeping the thing around for just hurricanes and wars. We're not particularly opposed to the idea in theory, mind you, it's just that we can't afford the pay channels and most of what reaches us via basic cable has been so well pruned by the censors as to be completely fucking dull.

However, we will be checking this one out.

You Play The Piano, We'll Play The Buffoon

For the record, we are a lout. Drunken, slovenly, frequently unreasonable, we have spent a lifetime leaving no bridge unburnt and no social relationship unsullied. We abhor decency and all it entails, and we absolutely fucking detest family values. If given the choice, we would happily spend our days in ill-lit spaces doing little more productive than stupifying ourselves with small-press books and very cheap wine. If given the chance, we would have everyone who is not exactly like us herded off a cliff. And, we keep even worse company than ourselves.

In other words, we are everything this square-jawed motherfucker is not.

However, unlike said sanctimonious prick, we would like to point out that none of our mentors and/our close personal friends have ever been complicit in child-rape.

Not one.

Hitchens-Galloway (And Palast?) Update 4

So Greg Palast, the decidedly less than Hitchensian journalist, decided to take up Hitchens' talking points a few days ago.

Friends and comrades, this is not about George Galloway. He's just another self-promoting fart. Six months from now, even his smell will be gone.

We're unimpressed. Whereas the performance of Hitchens and Galloway possessed the kind of vivid imagery and remarkable viciousness we do so adore, Palast comes across as a witless fucking four-year-old, smirking over a potty joke. As usual.

So, Galloway has responded. And it is also a markedly sub-par piece of rhetoric.

Crawl back under your rock, Mr Palast!

Right. Brilliantly said, Gorgeous George. Did we feel "I'm rubber and you're glue" was a little too hackneyed?

As much as we loathe his toadying to the Bushes, we do so wish Hitch would step back into the conversation. At least the motherfucker can write. And given a choice between political agreement and a well-turned phrase, you know where we stand.

And We Don't Even Have A Tutu

After reading that the Drunkablog had corrected himself due to a helpful email from PirateBallerina that sounded suspiciously like one of our posts, we assumed 'ol Jim Paine was a reader. Now, we are not so sure. Indeed, it seems that the Drunkablog may have us entirely confused with PirateBallerina. As he wrote last night:

Update IV: On his blog PB also points out the undeniable triviality of the Churchill misspellings and/or typos scandal. He's right, but don't forget, this is a scholar noted for his meticulous and exhaustive documentation.

The only problem is that if you refer to the PirateBallerina posting to which Drunkablog links, he says nothing of the sort.

Despite the risk of appearing to have absolutely nothing better to do, we can't help but notice (since Drunkablog so helpfully pointed it out to us) that Ward Churchill's official CU faculty webpage actually misspells the name of the school from which he got his master's degree. Ah well... nobody fact-checks Churchill over there at CU, so expecting spell-checking is probably out of the question.

We hesitate to brag, but in fact, we are the ones who called such shit-slinging undeniably trivial (though in slightly less kind terms). Bringing us to wonder, is Drunkablog just confused, or is he simply intent on responding to every point we make without actually referencing us? Either way is fine, but it's a tactic that seems a little fucking gutless, even by the standards held by Mr. Martin and Mr. Paine.

The fact is, gentlemen, that you concentrate solely on the fucking trivial, parroting the bullshit spoonfed you by the Rocky. Examples? Happy to provide them. How's about the Rocky's glossing over the fact that there's been historical debate about the fucking Mandan smallpox epidemic since, well, the smallpox epidemic fucking began? A tale, I might add, that both of you have repeated ad nauseum. Or, how's about the Rocky's using you, Mr. Paine, as a genealogical expert in its "groundbreaking" coverage of the Churchill scandal? The findings of which (and they were unsurprisingly negative) both of you have been happy to present as conclusive.

Most telling, though, is Mr. Paine's insistence that it doesn't matter what Churchill is fired for, as long as he's fired. As Mr. Paine put it “they got Al Capone for tax evasion.” Which would be a wonderful analogy if we were talking about crime, and not public discourse and the free exchange of ideas. As it stands it's the kind of insipid, intellectually dishonest, weak-kneed twat-speak which we have grown to expect from Mr. Paine and Mr. Martin vis-a-vis Churchill.

But don't fret, Mr. Martin, we promise we shall keep you on our blogroll.

Oh, yes, we shall.

Oh, Happy Day

Ladies and gentleman, I think we've hit the big time. Looks like we can count the afore-mentioned Churchill-obsessed cunt among our readers.

News to which we can only respond, hey Jim Paine: Fuck You.

Please Understand, We Still Love You

We like the Drunkablog. In fact, when he left a comment telling us that he added us to his blogroll and would appreciate it if we returned the favor, we happily complied. And are leaving it in our blogroll even though he fucking lied. We are big-hearted that way.

And, though we hesitate to correct our betters, we are afraid we must. This and this are separate products, dude. One's a book, the other's a lecture only loosely connected to the book - not an audio version of the same. We've been following your Carrollian blogging of the Churchill scandal, but please sir, the role of Churchill-obsessed cunt has already been filled. Jim Paine is out there like some gibbering ape, hurling any handful of feces he thinks might stick, no matter how trivial, useless or irrelevant. Your efforts are unnecessary, and far exceeded by your talents.

Humbly yours.

The Same Ace Reporters That Refused The Slightest Criticism Of That Other Gulf Disaster, We'd Imagine

Sometimes, one gets presented with the kind of knowledge which one cannot unknow (thanks again, Hitch), the kind that makes one want to disembowel one's self with a serving spoon.

Today that knowledge comes in the form of The Washington Point, pointing out that our national media is The Rocky.

The fact that most of those left behind in the New Orleans flood were poor and black is being treated by the press as a stunning revelation--"A National Shame," as Newsweek's cover put it.

But not exactly a national secret.

"Apparently none of these ace reporters has ever set foot in Washington's Anacostia district, or South Central Los Angeles, or the trailer parks of rural Arkansas," writes Los Angeles Times columnist Rosa Brooks.

Bombs, Not Bread

The Rocky Mountain News, lathered up over out of control Katrina spending.

The answer is that Katrina should be paid for by some combination of the following: postponing the prescription-drug benefit; scaling back on the pork in the just-passed $286 billion highway bill; requiring new spending programs and tax cuts to be offset elsewhere in the budget; and paying rigorous attention to existing federal spending, such as the billions squandered on farm subsidies.

This position seems to be gaining steam. Unsurprisingly, Peter Boyles jumped onboard this morning in a slobbering lovefest with the John Birch Society. We might have a little more sympathy for it, were there any kind of consistancy involved. According that bastion of leftism, the CIA, the US had 370 billion dollars in military expenditures last year, or roughly as much as the rest of the world combined. By way of comparison, China was in second place with 67 billion. We do hate to rain on anyone's parade, but our military budget is the largest pork barrel project known to fucking mankind, and it has been since WWII. Until we hear some mention of it in the Rocky, we'd suggest they exercise a little fucking restraint in expressing their disdain for spending on housing and food for US citizens who've had their entire lives decimated.

Not that we expect anything of the kind, of course. The Rocky's position is fairly clear. It's not that they really mind spending money on the poor huddled masses, they just prefer it be used to bomb them, not feed them. Certainly a Christian position, if I've ever heard one.

Hitchens-Galloway Update 3

There's a transcript up. Skimming through it, we have to note that our favorite moment of the debate comes when the Bush matriarch enters the discussion. The blustering duo may humbly choose to disagree on every single political point under the sun, save one: fuck Barbara Bush. We agree.

From Galloway:

That's where it ends. That's where it ends. You end up, you end up a mouthpiece and an apologist for the Bush family whose matriarch, you want to talk about racism? What about Barbara Bush? What about Barbara Bush who took a look at the poor, huddled, masses in the Astrodome and told us they'd never had it so good? Who told us they were better off than they'd ever been. Underprivileged people, now in an Astrodome, the only problem with whom she said was that so many of them wanted to stay in Texas. You know, Hitchens, you're a court jester. You're a court jester.

From Hitchens:

I must say Mrs. Bush Sr. does reminds me of, I think it was Lady Diana Cooper, who was once stopped outside Claridge's Hotel in London as she was waiting under the umbrella for the Daimler be brought around after the ball. A ragged man approached her and said, "Mam," he said, "I haven't eaten for three days." She said, "Well you're very foolish then, you must try. If necessary, you must force yourself, if necessary." It's called a tumbrel remark in some circles.

Hitchens-Galloway Update 2

We have the feeling this thing ain't going to die a quiet death. Seems Christopher Hitchens is a feeling a bit shaky about his performance, and so has decided to provide all the rebuttals he was a mite bit slow to come up with when in the spotlight.

In point of fact, having quoted Mr Galloway's recent speech in Damascus ("The Syrian people are fortunate in having Bashar al-Assad as their leader") and having further pointed out that Mr Assad decided not to show his face in New York last week, as the UN investigation into the murder of Rafik Hariri rolled up more and more Syrian agents, I was given a full answer by being told that I had metamorphosed back from a butterfly into a slug, with a consequent trail of slime in my wake. I did not have the lepidopteral presence of mind to point out, at that moment, that butterflies pupate from sturdy and furry caterpillars.

I reiterated my point that the Syrian people have no say in their own good fortune, since they inherit a Dauphin from an absolute monarch. That did me no good at all in some circles. What I should have done, I now realise, is to say that George Galloway knows all about slime because he's so far inside the posterior passage of a murderous dictator that one can barely glimpse his Gucci buckles. That would have won me golden opinions. I suppose it would also have re-defined the old term "slug-fest".

Proof In The Form Of A Mushroom Cloud (Or Two)

The Post’s editorial in an entirely throwaway Sunday edition comes out in strong opposition to a terrorist nuclear attack. Imagine.

Graham Allison has studied the threat for years and believes it is "possible that al-Qaeda is hiding nuclear bombs in one or several American cities today." Allison, director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University and a former assistant secretary of defense, is author of "Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe." Given that the amount of highly enriched uranium needed to build a simple nuclear weapon is smaller than a football, smuggling it into a major city is not impossible, he says.

Yes, and it is possible that we will someday be read by more than 13 lonely likeminded souls. Entirely fucking unlikely, but possible.

The highlight of the editorial comes at the end though. In one of those delicious moments when historical truth meets hysterical rhetoric, the Post notes that there have only been two nuclear attacks in the history of the world.

Last month marked the 60th anniversary of the day in 1945 when the United States dropped a bomb on Hiroshima. Descriptions of the devastation are eerie: At the point of explosion, the air temperature reached several million degrees. Then a fireball spread across the city accompanied by a chilling shock wave that obliterated everything in its path. More than 50,000 people died instantly and another 100,000 died over the next five months. Not since the attack on Hiroshima and the subsequent one on Nagasaki, thankfully, has a nuclear weapon been set off in warfare or anger. Governments must do everything in their power to ensure it never happens again.

Which makes us wonder if the world might do better to concentrate its terror of nuclear attack on other things than Islamic terrorists. After all, as we were continually told about Saddam’s weapons program, the best indicator of future behavior is past behavior.

Here’s hoping that this doesn’t bite us in the ass, but we are sick of reports of nuclear attack. Whether it be Communists or Terrorists, we have been hearing it for far fucking too long, and we’re over it. Besides which, as evidenced by Judith Miller and Condi Rice, we’ve yet to hear of anything like credible fucking evidence that any terrorist on the globe has anything like nuclear capability. After all, we consider the fact that Israel still exists as fairly strong evidence to the contrary.

And, in fact, the only country we’re absolutely positive has nuclear capability in the region is Israel. Illegally, of course, and developed with the aid of, well, the United States.

So please, stop with the hysterical guesswork and let’s put our resources to some problems that actually exist.

Like the continued publication of the Rocky.

Physician, Heal Thyself

So the Sunday Post gets all warm and tender about American Indians, pointing out racism in Montana. While ensuring we understand it runs both ways, of course.

Among the damage-control duties of the Havre mayor these days is juggling media interviews, and in almost all of them Rice begins by admitting the town has problems.

"We are not unlike any town near a reservation. We've got people who are bigots, and (American Indians) have got people who are bigots, too," he said. "I'm not saying it's a perfect world."

It ain’t exactly groundbreaking journalism, and we’re just about certain we could point to some example of Indian-hating a little closer to home. But the thing that galls us most is we’re pretty sure this is one of the Post’s token anti-racism articles sure to find print just before the third-worst of our local rags begins its best rendition of Judge James Hall in the annual Columbus Day uproar.

Which, we might add, we’re looking forward to. There’s nothing we find so intoxicating as the joining of hands in denouncing uppity Indians that passes for a public holiday in this neck of the woods. And this year we have the added Churchill factor. We have been stocking up on bourbon and ammunition, and await the fun.

The Alcoholic Thing Too

We are moving entirely to the first person plural. We think it better captures our sense of innate superiority to those we insult.

Likewise, we saw Christopher Hitchens doing it in the Grapple in the Big Apple, and you know we emulate all things Hitch.

We shall probably not be consistent.

Hitchens-Galloway Update

Full audio here. It will also be on Book TV Saturday evening, schedule here. Imagine! A debate here in the US about the war in Iraq! Of course, it's two Britishmen debating and it's a couple years late; after all, there wasn't a glimmer of fucking debate from our own political parties nor any members of our mainstream media when there was any actual chance of stopping the thing.

It ain't nearly as one-sided as the Times made it sound. Hitchens gets his licks in and it's good listening no matter what side of the political fence you're on. It's funny, but when I hear Hitch do his thing I'm always struck by how defensible his underlying arguments are. I often disagree with them, violently, but his point is usually there. Unfortunately, his stance is inseparable from Bush and he has to go through titanic rhetorical contortions to find ways to defend the buffoonish motherfucker. It's hard not to come off as clownish when saddled with that kind of dead weight.

I had the same problem in the nineties when I had the infrequent misfortune to agree with Clinton. I had to repress a gut reaction to reverse my own opinion just to remove myself from his ideological company, contemptible hypocritical bastard that he was.

Anyway. If any of our political debates had half this kind of spark - or for that matter, any tangible fucking disagreement at all - I'd, like, watch them.

Happy Friday.

But Must We Blame It On The Whisky?

I'll admit to considering Christopher Hitchens something of a role model once upon a time. In the late nineties it was a kind of fucking epiphany to watch him shuffle through talk shows with a glass of whiskey and a cigarette, calling out Bill Clinton as a rapist and a war criminal.

Which makes his subsequent decline that much sadder. And it looks like "Gorgeous George" Galloway buried the sword up to the hilt Wednesday evening.

Some of my favorite cuts, as reported in the Times:

"People like Mr Hitchens are willing to fight to the last drop of other people's blood . . . how I wish he would put on a tin hat and pick up a gun and go and fight himself.""

"What you have witnessed is something unique in natural history - the first ever metamorphosis of a butterfly back into a slug. I do not know what it was. I do not know if it was Vanity Fair or the lucrative contracts you have landed since. Maybe it was the whisky. "

"You start off being the liberal mouthpiece for one of the most reactionary governments this country has ever known and you end up a mouthpiece and apologist for these miserable malevolent incompetents who cannot even pick up the bodies of their own citizens in New Orleans. You know, Mr Hitchens, you are a court jester - not in Camelot like other miserable liberals before you, but in the court of the Bourbon Bushes."

Goose, Gander

Remember the brouhaha about Denver libaries carrying sexually suggestive violent material? Check out this week's Westword.

The difference being, of course, that the mags at the library were fucking comic books, while the Westword piece is a real-life account of real-life women getting really raped. And the editorial staff over at our free rag seems to be playing out some kind of personal rape fantasy in their pictorial (it's going around, ain't it?).

This is not a cry for the Westword to censor these pictures, by the way. Just for Welcome and Wipe over at KHOW to either get off their morally righteous kick, or take some shots Patty Calhoun's way.

Which they won't. Like Tancredo and Calhoun, the KHOW crowd are a conglomerate of loathsome little shitlickers who feign a posture of moral righteousness to attack those they disagree with.

While reveling in every sordid fucking detail of everything they decry.

With Apologies To George Carlin

I'd rather watch flies fuck.

Next, The Crescent Wrench

Unfuckingbelievable.

Planners of a Sept. 11 memorial in rural Pennsylvania plan to alter its crescent- shaped design after critics said it could be seen as a tribute to the hijackers.

U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., and others had called on the Interior Department to reject an advisory commission's preferred design, titled Crescent of Embrace, saying its arc of maple trees resembled the lunar crescent used as a symbol of Islam.

Who in their right mind would back off from this racist fucking cretin.

Oh, this racist fucking cretin. (And actually, for once that's not hyperbole. At least one Reagan appointee judge has referred to the Norton Department of the Interior precisely as racist. Among other even less flattering things.)

Even better, I heard shitbag Peter Boyles comparing the crescent to the swastika this morning. Again, Peter, you want to make those kinds of comments, fine. But back off wondering why people think you're a fucking racist.

I Ain't Saying He's A Gold Digger

Up until a couple weeks ago I'd never heard of Kanye West, let alone The Legendary K.O. Willie and Waylon are more my speed, and I'd rather have my kneecaps pounded into splinters with a ball-peen hammer than watch MTV.

But I'm becoming a convert. Fuck Anderson Cooper, Ray Nagin (yeah, I know I was sold for a second) and Keith Olbermann, this is the kind of reaction I've been hoping somebody would have the gumption to come up with.

Download it here.

And Now For The Stunningly Obvious

And the best part is Tancredo gets to represent Colorado to the rest of the fucking nation. And world.

Questions about the crescent shape were raised months ago and put aside, said D. Hamilton Peterson, spokesman for the Flight 93 families. The red crescent shape throughout history as been seen as a positive humanitarian symbol, he said.

"I see this as a very, very unfortunate distraction born of unsophistication," said Peterson, whose father and stepmother, Donald A. and Jean Peterson, died in the crash of Flight 93.

Unsophisticated is the kindest way to put it. I go with fucking brain-damaged as the result of beating the back of his head into the underside of Washington lobbyist's desks, but that's just me. As Jason Bane reminds us over at Elevated Voices, this is the same senseless cocksucker who once proclaimed himself "Tom Tom" Tancredo in honor of American Indians.

Naturally, the Rocky has a different spin on the story. As does Tancredo devotee, Peter Boyles, who could be heard on KHOW this morning bemoaning the fact that people are always throwing race into the discussion whenever he or Tancredo broach a question.

Hate to break it to you, Peter, but the reason people throw race at you and Tancredo is because you're fucking racists. You don't need a computer to figure that one out, buddy, it's just simple cause and effect.

Journalism, He Called It

There's something about Vincent Carroll condemning another for "scurrilous attacks on opponents" that makes my fucking teeth grind a little. Just in case you're wondering, Adrienne Anderson was an untenured CU Ethnic Studies instructor released last year for daring to question Coors' commitment to the environment.

This, of course, is what Carroll's referring to when he accuses her of "indoctrinating students": anything besides the whorish slavering over all things corporate.

Ah, more bad news for Adrienne Anderson, and such a pity, too. The year began with Anderson, an environmental activist famous for scurrilous attacks on opponents, being told she would be losing her job of indoctrinating students - teaching, she called it - at the University of Colorado. Overnight the quality of education at CU underwent a surge of improvement.

Get Thee To Counseling, Woman!

So, having particular trouble locking into The Confidence Man last night, I made a sad attempt to lubricate the old gray matter with a wee bit of cheap whiskey. After a drink or two, the book went by the wayside and it was just me and my little glass of gasoline-flavored heaven. Then the bottle.

Needless to say, imagine my hungover confusion when I stumbled blearily out into the sunshine and opened the Rocky to see this from Jennifer Rosen.

(Good lede, right? Did I mention I'm into hefty literature? Keep reading.)

From the Buffalo Commercial Advertiser, 1869: "Noted horse-tamer Professor D. Magner was introduced to a horse belonging to the Omnibus Company - a most vicious brute, with the habit of biting and striking with his forefeet, this large and powerful bay once killed a man by biting and trampling him and recently bit the hand almost off a person.

"In about 20 minutes Mr. Magner reduced this brute to perfect subjection - the former furious beast being as docile as a kitten."

This sort of news item was more common when horses were crucial to our economy, but the "horse whisperer" is still around. Having spent years training horses and training people to train them, I can vouch for the existence of these types. They often make a living teaching their "system," but the truth is, the secret is one you can't teach: These people have a seemingly mystical ability to communicate with animals.

I thought of this when I hung out at Chateau de St. Cosme, in the Rhone Valley, with owner/winemaker Louis Barruol. Vine growers for 14 generations, Barruol's family has owned the property since 1490. They still use the stone fermentation vats carved out during the Roman occupation.

Christ fucking almighty, last time I saw one of these she opened with three paragraphs proclaiming her own vivaciousness and popularity, this time I get her fucking resume? This is a column about fucking table wine, yet I've learned more about this insipid creature's personal life than I know about every other fucking Rocky staff member combined.

It could be worse, I suppose. At least she's yet to mention her belly-dancing.

Jeff Kass, You're Our Winner

I think we've found the single fucking dumbest line to come out of the entire month's Hurricane Katrina coverage. And unsurprisingly, it's in the Rocky, loaded with all the latent classism and racism you might expect.

The 71-year old - "That don't mean anything, I'm a member of the jet set" - says he recalled driving his 1996 blue Cadillac DeVille to the Superdome as Katrina hit.

"It's gone," he says of the car. "It's under water."

After five days in the Superdome, Taylor says he saw a 10-year-old girl raped, a man beaten with a pipe and backed-up toilets piled high with excrement.

Christ almighty, the horror! It's one thing to see a pre-adolescent raped or a man beaten with a pipe, but to force a Cadillac driver to see a backed up toilet!?! God, what kind of hell on Earth hast thou wrought?

It's also worth noting that the child rape shit is an urban myth. No less than the fucking London Guardian picked that up last week. The Rocky's refusal to drop the story could just indicate an overwhelming desire to paint the poor as the animals John Temple knows they are, of course, but I have a different hypothesis. Namely, that the Rocky staff's predeliction to indulge in child-rape fantasies creates a kind of uncontrollable urge to regurgitate the tale. Sort of like a certain kind of hooker can't help but relate every sordid detail of their fall from respectability at the slightest indication of kindness.

I mean, look into the beady little eyes of these creepy motherfuckers and tell me I'm wrong.

Vincent Carroll, White Sheet Removed

Vincent Carroll would like us to have a discussion about poverty. One that looks at all the faces of the poor.

such as the fact that nearly 70 percent of black kids are born to single mothers. As Kay Hymowitz points out in the current issue of City Journal, "The vast majority of higher-income women wait to have their children until they are married. The truth is that we are now a two-family nation, separate and unequal - one thriving and intact, and the other struggling, broken, and far too often African-American."

Translation, blacks are poor because they inhabit an inferior culture and overbreed. Nothing more complicated or nuanced than that. Hardly a novel position, but one you don't usually see in the editorial pages of a major American newspaper.

Unless it's the Rocky.

Churchill Responds

Pay attention, I believe we have an exclusive. At least possibly - I haven't actually checked to see if anybody else has already run this. Anyway, thanks to one of this website's three loyal readers, this statement from Ward Churchill in response to the University's Friday press release.

Statement of Ward Churchill, September 9, 2005

Once again, the University of Colorado has issued a press release about me that is a breach of its own “strict rules on confidentiality on the personnel process.” In addition, the University’s statement grossly misrepresents the facts.

The Rules of the Standing Committee on Research Misconduct require it, “from receipt of an allegation through the inquiry and investigation stages, to keep all information confidential.” Indeed, only two days ago, University spokesperson Pauline Hale invoked these very rules to explain why she could offer no comment on the dropping of several allegations against me.

Yet neither Ms. Hale nor the University administration more generally has displayed the least constraint in issuing statements to the press concerning the addition or forwarding of allegations. Self-evidently, these matters are no less integral to the personnel process, and therefore no less subject to the rules of confidentiality, than any others. Either the process is confidential or it isn’t, not whichever happens to be most convenient to the University at any given moment.

It comes as no surprise to hear that the Standing Committee on Research Misconduct has accepted several matters for investigation. It could hardly have done otherwise, given the intensity of the political pressure exerted upon the University to punish me for my having engaged in “controversial” but constitutionally-protected speech.

The way these matters are framed in the University’s press release today are quite simply false, however.

First, the claim that “7 of 9 allegations” have been sent forward for investigation is highly misleading, suggesting as it does that the great majority of the accusations hurled against me have been deemed worthy of further scrutiny. This “count” fails to accurately summarize even the information included in the University’s own statement, which indicates 5 allegations have recently been dismissed or rejected on their face.

More importantly, the University’s statement neglects to mention the fact that several dozen additional allegations have been made against me since February, and that all but the remaining handful have long since been dropped or rejected as being without merit.

Were my own scholarship as shoddy as this press release, there would truly be a basis for charges of “academic misconduct” against me.

The University’s statement moves beyond “spin” and enters the realm of sheer falsehood when it asserts that the 7 remaining allegations “remain unchanged from the time of referral by the Interim Chancellor.” To the contrary all of them have been substantially modified – narrowed, in fact – as is clearly reflected in the report from the Inquiry Subcommittee accepted as a basis for further investigation by the Standing Committee.

Any suggestion to the contrary is an insult to the Subcommittee, whose responsibility, after all, consisted of something more than merely rubber-stamping such allegations as were originally submitted by the Interim Chancellor.

Further, none of the remaining issues rank among “the most serious charges that can be brought against a faculty member,” as the University contends. The allegations as brought do not charge me with “plagiarism” or “fabrication of sources.” Instead, they devolve upon very specific matters of historical/legal interpretation and the conventions of citation and attribution.

Such questions might be raised with regard to the work of any prolific author.

At this point in my career, I have published well over 4,000 pages of text with more than 12,000 footnotes. As things stand, the contents of fewer than 5 pages and a half dozen footnotes are being subjected to further scrutiny. This is the net result of six months of exhaustive – in fact, unprecedented – parsing of my work, not only by other scholars but by entire teams of “investigative journalists.”

On the whole, I submit that no scholar with a comparably extensive publication record would have fared better. Certainly, my accusers would not.

The real question, then, is not the integrity of my scholarship. Rather, it is whether the University of Colorado is going to subject the writings of all its faculty to a degree of scrutiny similar in “rigor” to that visited upon mine, or whether such treatment is reserved for those who incur the wrath of extrinsic forces while meeting their responsibilities under the Regents’ Rules on Academic Freedom to “discover, publish and teach truth as the faculty member sees it.”

Speaking Of Frauds

It's worth noting that the same Rocky paper that ran Churchill's academic investigation front page had exactly this to say about the unfolding Michael Brown scandal.

In fact, Brownie - that's Michael Brown, the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, to you - was doing such a swell job that he is being recalled to Washington, D.C., like a Ford with a bad carburetor being recalled to Detroit.

The country may be shocked to learn that a patronage hire - one who couldn't run a horse show - was running the country's emergency management team. But the dumping of a Bush loyalist, while real news, is not the real issue.

Really? So a guy that may have misinterpreted 200 year old history is the real issue, while a grossly incompetent fraud who mishandled the worst natural disaster in the history of the US is not?

Any chance we could get a small Katrina over to 400 W Colfax Ave? Just a little one, to help reevaluate some priorities.

Front Page News: Same Story We Ran Last Week, Week Before

Charlie Brennan, reminding us for the sixth fucking time that seven charges are going forward.

Seven charges of possible research misconduct leveled against University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill are being forwarded for full investigation, a CU official announced Friday.

The allegations, including charges of plagiarism, misuse of others' work, misrepresenting his sources and fabrication of material he presented as fact, could lead to the tenured ethnic studies professor's firing.

Churchill's attorney, David Lane, played down Friday's development.

It was "completely predictable" that the charges referred by a faculty subcommittee will now be subjected to more thorough scrutiny, Lane said.

"The inquiry committee said, 'We don't know. We're botanists and biochemists. We don't know if this is all true or false,' " he added.

Lane did concede, however, that Friday's announcement may kill Churchill's chances for a spring sabbatical. Churchill requested one a year ago [sic].

Myself, I like the patronizing tone of the piece, as if David Lane were simply spinning the news as opposed to pointing out the fucking obvious. Brennan's all but jumping and down, screaming "you're a fucking liar" in Lane's face.

Likewise with Brennan's closing quote from Churchill.

Earlier this week, Churchill defended the historical accuracy of his work to The Associated Press, saying, "I interpreted data differently . . . Truth is the best defense. I'm not concerned in the least."

Connect this to Brennan's commentary on David Lane's veracity and we're supposed to come to the natural conclusion that Churchill's lying too. Which, sure, he may be. But that doesn't mean he's not correct. One of the historical points that seems to have pissed everyone off, for instance, is Churchill's contention that the Mandan were deliberately infected with smallpox by whites. The Rocky's grubbed up every amateur historian they can find to affirm the opposite, and have claimed repeatedly that Churchill invented the story. Only fucking problem is, no matter what you think of Churchill's argument, he's not the originator of it. The contention's been out there since the smallpox epidemic, and was initiated by no less than principal leader of the fucking Mandan - a guy known for his peacefulness, up until the smallpox epidemic - whose last words while dying of smallpox were:

I have never called a White Man a dog, but today, I do pronounce them to be a set of black-hearted dogs . . . I have been in many battles, and often wounded, but the wounds of my enemies I exalt in . . . I do not fear Death, my friends. You know it, but to die with my face rotten, that even wolves will shrink with horror at seeing me . . . Listen well what I have to say, as it will be the last time you will hear me. Think of your wives, children, brothers, sisters, friends, and in fact all that you hold dear—all are dead, or dying, with their faces all rotten, caused by those dogs—the whites. Think of all that, my friends, and rise all together and not leave one of them alive.

Funny how the Rocky missed that one, huh? Especially when writing up their five part series on the guy, including a front page story on this specific charge. It took me, after all, about 15 seconds to Google the exact quote.

Hanging Off Barbara Bush’s Left Hind Teat

Just when you’re thinking our local coverage of Katrina can’t get any lower than Vincent Carroll, local radio jock Mike Rosen steps in to chastise us for our partisanship.

It's my nature to be a problem solver, not a problem wallower. Recriminations aren't productive. The task is to turn this problem into an opportunity. Of course, we would erase the death and destruction if we could. But we can't. It's water over the levee. New Orleans has been an economically distressed city, in decline, for years, infamous for its political corruption. Now it will be the beneficiary of billions of dollars from outside the state in disaster aid and capital for rebuilding and modernizing the levee system. High-paying construction and related jobs will abound to remake the city. New Orleans is getting a new lease on life. Let's hope it's put to good use.

Start with the obvious: you’re a fucking lyer. You’re a talk-radio goon. The only problem you solve is how to translate the lowest-common-denominator prejudices of the local populace into fucking cash. Recriminations are what you do, you sanctimonious fuck. You doling out pleas for moderation in our criticism is like Jeffrey Dahmer dispensing dietary advice.

Best, though, that heap of shit at the end. It’s exactly Babs Bush’s point of a few days ago, ain’t it? No need to look too closely at FEMA, the president, or that horseshit pork-barrel monstrosity that we’ve been getting rammed down our throats for the last four fucking years, Homeland Defense: the poor will be better off at the end of the day.

Y’know, except for the thousands of corpses floating through the gutters and being gnawed on by rats. The ones that haven’t even been cleaned off the streets, that you’re already writing off? And except for their family members, who get to mourn them. And except for the hundreds of thousands of the poorest of the poor who’ve lost everything they fucking had.

Hunter S. Thompson Bids Us Farewell

No More Games. No More bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun -- for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your old age. Relax -- This won't hurt.

Not To Put Too Fine A Point On It, But That’s Because You’re A Fucking Cunt

And you’ll note that given the ambiguity of the statement, the above is not gendered. Admittedly still sexist, but not gendered.

Malissa and Scott Spero
Owners, ArmAzem Bookstore & Cafe
3215 East Colfax Avenue
Years on Colfax: One week (they just bought the business) "We spent a year teaching ESL in Korea, and we were dreaming about owning a coffee shop. When we got back, Scott saw an ad on Craig's List, so we came by and snooped. We both went to DU, but what we remember and what Colfax is now is completely different. I never would have walked around Colfax by myself. All the business owners just kind of wander in and have been very supportive."

Gentrification Without End

You know," says Buchanan, who put his school-board campaign headquarters in Chamberlain Heights, "there are places along Colfax that, if you kind of squint, it's cool. If you squint, there are places that could be Larimer Square. Granted, that takes some special goggles, but the bones are there. Add to that, Colfax is surrounded by our city's greatest density, and the tough part is done; it's just a matter of uncapping that potential. We've seen it work. We're at a tipping point. Absolutely, the time is right.

No, you cocksucker. When I look at Larimer Square I see all that is hellishly wrong with the yuppie-infested SoCal parody that this city has become. When I look at Colfax I see the last expiring breath of a city’s character, the last frontier between us and total domination by the loft-people.

Please, please, please, please, stop.

Like A Gathering Storm

It's been a Fuck You Rocky kind of day out in the blogosphere.

The latest from RockyWatch (y'know, the blog that actually provides intelligent criticism of the Rocky, as opposed to snide one-liners and vulgarity).

Since we're such good friends, John, I'd like to remind you of an interview that Thom Beal and other Rocky staffers conducted with FEMA topdog Michael Brown prior to your endorsement of Bush for a second term. You guys didn't comment on Brown's lack of credentials and lack of experience to head FEMA. You didn't press him for specifics. You loaned him your megaphone to spread the message of our Terror and Safety President.

And from Elevated Voices, 5280's blog, the best fucking line I've read in weeks.

Sometimes I can’t help but wonder if Carroll and his fundamentalist ilk see Katrina as some sort of supply-side Rapture, where the worthy are miraculously spirited away to safety in their Range Rovers, while the poor are left behind in Armageddon, waiting for redemption to trickle down?

God bless, gentle(wo)men. Here ye strike but splintered hearts together - there, ye shall strike unsplinterable glasses!

Y'know, It's Sort Of The Way Bush Means It Too

This from a consideration of one of my favorite novels. Again I have to give praise. It's one of those pieces of book coverage that makes the Front Range newspapers seem that much more cruel in their spectacular dedication to illiteracy.

Bah!

So it is, along with the nymphet obsession, that the lofty Hum beholds Lo and wonders about darkness, the light and determining a grade; she’s a child he will not leave behind.

And

There you are, the fateful action, the ruinous bump of love and sex, the brave new world and old Europe. It’s like George W. Bush having sex with Virginia Woolf, and Mrs. Woolf clinging to the notion of being the author and keeping control of it all. Or it’s Paris Hilton with the Marquis de Sade, when Paris comes so fast she rolls over in the required stupor and tells Sade not to be sad. Or it’s like the clash of David’s ichthyology and Susan’s very brimming and disturbing aliveness in Bringing Up Baby (1938)—yet another variant title for Lolita.

Nooses All Around

I do so hate to praise any participant in the hellish little circle-jerk we Americans like to call the mainstream media. And I sure as hell don't reserve my noose fantasies to solely Republicans. Still, I couldn't help but chuckle at the following.

If Bush cared about governing, he would have never appointed Michael Brown, the failed director of a trade association that ran horse shows, to run FEMA, which the president folded into the Homeland Security Department. That agency has little to show for itself other than an ineffective color chart and long lines at the airport as arthritic old ladies remove their shoes.

If Bush's first priority were managing the real crisis and not the political one, he'd fire Brown, who ignored the pleas for help from the thousands of people herded like cattle into the Superdome and the convention center. On the contrary, Bush praised his point man for the recovery that hadn't happened: "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job." If he keeps up the good work, he may end up like those other great officials - Paul Bremer and George Tenet - with a Medal of Freedom around his neck instead of a noose.

To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, we went to New Orleans with the government we have - replete with its Chertoffs, Brownies, Cheneys and assorted other ideologues, cronies and schemers who gorge on patronage, revel in politics and brush off the mundane responsibilities of the offices they hold. They're Big Picture guys who have brought the same management skills to the Gulf states that they brought to that other gulf.

Funny, I Was Just Thinking The Same Thing About Vincent Carroll

I applaud the sentiment, especially given the piss-poor response to Hurricane Katrina, but really, isn't this what we do in the voting booth every few years anyway? Meaning, mightn't this be exactly the problem?

So I'm asking Congress, please investigate this now. Take whatever idiot they have at the top of whatever agency and give me a better idiot. Give me a caring idiot. Give me a sensitive idiot. Just don't give me the same idiot.

- Aaron Broussard, president of Jefferson Parish, La.

Charlie Brennan's Got The Blues

Charlie Brennan, reporting that trumped-up charges initiated by pissed off inlaws, himself and two dipshit radio jocks are being dumped.

A complaint of possible research misconduct against Ward Churchill by the family of his deceased third wife has been dropped by the University of Colorado, according to his lawyer.

This is kind of fun, watching all the moral condemnation and outrage by our local halfwits just kind of trickle away, along with most of their arguments.

Not that I have much faith they ever believed most of the shit they were throwing out there.

This was a political smear, no more, no less. And like most political smears, none of the sleazy little fuckers had the intestinal fortitude to own up to their actual argument - that those who disagree with them should be violently silenced - so they dug up every backwards lunatic to hold a grudge against the guy, and ran with it.

Roundup

Hurricane Katrina headlines from the Onion. Again, strangely reminiscent of the editorial tone of the Rocky. Coincidence?

Officials Uncertain Whether To Shoot Or Save Victims

Nation's Politicians Applaud Great Job They're Doing

White Foragers Report Threat Of Black Looters

Bush Urges Victims To Gnaw On Bootstraps For Sustenance

And Down In Louisiana, The Poor Are Getting Exactly What They Deserve

Vincent Carroll, from oil money shill to used automobile salesman.

"According to the 2000 Census," O'Toole writes, "nearly a third of New Orleans households do not own an automobile. This compares to less than 10 percent nationwide. There are significant differences by race: 35 percent of black households but only 15 percent of white households do not own an auto. But in the end, it was auto ownership, not race, that made the difference between safety and disaster . . .

"On Saturday and Sunday, August 27 and 28, when it appeared likely that Hurricane Katrina would strike New Orleans, those people who could simply got in their cars and drove away. The people who didn't have cars were left behind."

Granted, those without cars were supposed to have been evacuated in advance by state and local authorities, who failed totally to carry out their own plans. But that of course is the point: A private car puts you on your own schedule, both in a crisis and during everyday life.

Subtle as ever. Last week it was the Big Easy's socialist tendencies that earned Hurricane Katrina, this week it's the citizens' refusal to embrace the Big Three.

Of course, Carroll doesn't mention, say, the rampant fucking poverty that might prohibit car ownership. But hey, we expect no less from the Rocky.

Barbara Bush: There Goes The Neighborhood

I'm sorry folks, but I just don't have the heart to read the Rocky or the Post today. I suggest you follow suit.

Meanwhile, let me leave you with this gem from Barbara Bush:

What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them.

Fucking sweetheart, ain't she? All the sudden W's lack of response is snapping into crystal clear focus.

Bush Lays Down Guitar, Checks Out Hurricane

Proving that it's never too late for a photo op, Bush spends some quality time with Hurricane Katrina survivors.

"I love you," he told one weeping mother and daughter who told him they had no home, food, or water, just the clothes they were wearing. "Hang in there," he added.

Bush kissed both women on their heads and walked with his arms around them. It was a scene that echoed his visit to Ground Zero after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, which for many Americans solidified his image as president.

Sleazy motherfucker.

Fuck Giuliani, I'll Take This Guy

The following from a radio interview with New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin. I tried breaking it up into quotes, but really, why bother? Top to bottom, it's the closest thing I've seen to real leadership coming out of a politician in my lifetime.

NAGIN: I told him we had an incredible crisis here and that his flying over in Air Force One does not do it justice. And that I have been all around this city, and I am very frustrated because we are not able to marshal resources and we're outmanned in just about every respect.

You know the reason why the looters got out of control? Because we had most of our resources saving people, thousands of people that were stuck in attics, man, old ladies. ... You pull off the doggone ventilator vent and you look down there and they're standing in there in water up to their freaking necks.

And they don't have a clue what's going on down here. They flew down here one time two days after the doggone event was over with TV cameras, AP reporters, all kind of goddamn -- excuse my French everybody in America, but I am pissed.

WWL: Did you say to the president of the United States, "I need the military in here"?

NAGIN: I said, "I need everything."

Now, I will tell you this -- and I give the president some credit on this -- he sent one John Wayne dude down here that can get some stuff done, and his name is [Lt.] Gen. [Russel] Honore.

And he came off the doggone chopper, and he started cussing and people started moving. And he's getting some stuff done.

They ought to give that guy -- if they don't want to give it to me, give him full authority to get the job done, and we can save some people.

WWL: What do you need right now to get control of this situation?

NAGIN: I need reinforcements, I need troops, man. I need 500 buses, man. We ain't talking about -- you know, one of the briefings we had, they were talking about getting public school bus drivers to come down here and bus people out here.

I'm like, "You got to be kidding me. This is a national disaster. Get every doggone Greyhound bus line in the country and get their asses moving to New Orleans."

That's -- they're thinking small, man. And this is a major, major, major deal. And I can't emphasize it enough, man. This is crazy.

I've got 15,000 to 20,000 people over at the convention center. It's bursting at the seams. The poor people in Plaquemines Parish. ... We don't have anything, and we're sharing with our brothers in Plaquemines Parish.

It's awful down here, man.

WWL: Do you believe that the president is seeing this, holding a news conference on it but can't do anything until [Louisiana Gov.] Kathleen Blanco requested him to do it? And do you know whether or not she has made that request?

NAGIN: I have no idea what they're doing. But I will tell you this: You know, God is looking down on all this and if they are not doing everything in their power to save people they are going to pay the price. Because every day that we delay, people are dying and they're dying by the hundreds, I'm willing to bet you.

We're getting reports and calls that are breaking my heart, from people saying, "I've been in my attic. I can't take it anymore. The water is up to my neck. I don't think I can hold out." And that's happening as we speak.

You know what really upsets me, Garland? We told everybody the importance of the 17th Street Canal issue. We said, "Please, please take care of this. We don't care what you do. Figure it out."

WWL: Who'd you say that to?

NAGIN: Everybody: the governor, Homeland Security, FEMA. You name it, we said it.

And they allowed that pumping station next to Pumping Station 6 to go under water. Our sewage and water board people ... stayed there and endangered their lives.

And what happened when that pumping station went down, the water started flowing again in the city and it starting getting to levels that probably killed more people.

In addition to that, we had water flowing through the pipes in the city. That's a power station over there.

So there's no water flowing anywhere on the east bank of Orleans Parish. So our critical water supply was destroyed because of lack of action.

WWL: Why couldn't they drop the 3,000-pound sandbags or the containers that they were talking about earlier? Was it an engineering feat that just couldn't be done?

NAGIN: They said it was some pulleys that they had to manufacture. But, you know, in a state of emergency, man, you are creative, you figure out ways to get stuff done.

Then they told me that they went overnight and they built 17 concrete structures and they had the pulleys on them and they were going to drop them.

I flew over that thing yesterday, and it's in the same shape that it was after the storm hit. There is nothing happening. And they're feeding the public a line of bull and they're spinning, and people are dying down here.

WWL: If some of the public called and they're right, that there's a law that the president, that the federal government can't do anything without local or state requests, would you request martial law?

NAGIN: I've already called for martial law in the city of New Orleans. We did that a few days ago.

WWL: Did the governor do that, too?

NAGIN: I don't know. I don't think so.

But we called for martial law when we realized that the looting was getting out of control. And we redirected all of our police officers back to patrolling the streets. They were dead-tired from saving people, but they worked all night because we thought this thing was going to blow wide open last night. And so we redirected all of our resources, and we hold it under check.

I'm not sure if we can do that another night with the current resources.

And I am telling you right now: They're showing all these reports of people looting and doing all that weird stuff, and they are doing that, but people are desperate and they're trying to find food and water, the majority of them.

Now you got some knuckleheads out there, and they are taking advantage of this lawless -- this situation where, you know, we can't really control it, and they're doing some awful, awful things. But that's a small majority of the people. Most people are looking to try and survive.

And one of the things people -- nobody's talked about this. Drugs flowed in and out of New Orleans and the surrounding metropolitan area so freely it was scary to me, and that's why we were having the escalation in murders. People don't want to talk about this, but I'm going to talk about it.

You have drug addicts that are now walking around this city looking for a fix, and that's the reason why they were breaking in hospitals and drugstores. They're looking for something to take the edge off of their jones, if you will.

And right now, they don't have anything to take the edge off. And they've probably found guns. So what you're seeing is drug-starving crazy addicts, drug addicts, that are wrecking havoc. And we don't have the manpower to adequately deal with it. We can only target certain sections of the city and form a perimeter around them and hope to God that we're not overrun.

WWL: Well, you and I must be in the minority. Because apparently there's a section of our citizenry out there that thinks because of a law that says the federal government can't come in unless requested by the proper people, that everything that's going on to this point has been done as good as it can possibly be.

NAGIN: Really?

WWL: I know you don't feel that way.

NAGIN: Well, did the tsunami victims request? Did it go through a formal process to request?
You know, did the Iraqi people request that we go in there? Did they ask us to go in there? What is more important?

And I'll tell you, man, I'm probably going get in a whole bunch of trouble. I'm probably going to get in so much trouble it ain't even funny. You probably won't even want to deal with me after this interview is over.

WWL: You and I will be in the funny place together.

NAGIN: But we authorized $8 billion to go to Iraq lickety-quick. After 9/11, we gave the president unprecedented powers lickety-quick to take care of New York and other places.
Now, you mean to tell me that a place where most of your oil is coming through, a place that is so unique when you mention New Orleans anywhere around the world, everybody's eyes light up -- you mean to tell me that a place where you probably have thousands of people that have died and thousands more that are dying every day, that we can't figure out a way to authorize the resources that we need? Come on, man.

You know, I'm not one of those drug addicts. I am thinking very clearly.

And I don't know whose problem it is. I don't know whether it's the governor's problem. I don't know whether it's the president's problem, but somebody needs to get their ass on a plane and sit down, the two of them, and figure this out right now.

WWL: What can we do here?

NAGIN: Keep talking about it.

WWL: We'll do that. What else can we do?

NAGIN: Organize people to write letters and make calls to their congressmen, to the president, to the governor. Flood their doggone offices with requests to do something. This is ridiculous.

I don't want to see anybody do anymore goddamn press conferences. Put a moratorium on press conferences. Don't do another press conference until the resources are in this city. And then come down to this city and stand with us when there are military trucks and troops that we can't even count.

Don't tell me 40,000 people are coming here. They're not here. It's too doggone late. Now get off your asses and do something, and let's fix the biggest goddamn crisis in the history of this country.

WWL: I'll say it right now, you're the only politician that's called and called for arms like this. And if -- whatever it takes, the governor, president -- whatever law precedent it takes, whatever it takes, I bet that the people listening to you are on your side.

NAGIN: Well, I hope so, Garland. I am just -- I'm at the point now where it don't matter. People are dying. They don't have homes. They don't have jobs. The city of New Orleans will never be the same in this time.

WWL: We're both pretty speechless here.

NAGIN: Yeah, I don't know what to say. I got to go.

WWL: OK. Keep in touch. Keep in touch.

Vincent Carroll: No Oil Executives Were Harmed In The Making Of This Hurricane

Unsurprisingly, the tackiest response to the devastation waged by Hurricane Katrina has come out of the Rocky Mountain News. Even less surprisingly, it comes from Vincent Carroll, gloating over New Orleans' lack of appreciation for oil money.

John M. Barry explains what happened in Rising Tide, his admirable account of the 1927 Mississippi flood: "Before the flood New Orleans had at least accepted transfusions of fresh blood. After the flood the city grew ever more insular. The Boston Club and the finest Mardi Gras krewes closed even more tightly about themselves and seemed to take special pride in excluding newcomers, especially oil company executives . . .

Got it, Carroll, Hurricane Katrina is revenge for those backwards Southern folk who don't properly appreciate our free-market economy.

With all the sincerity my black little heart can muster: fuck you.

And It Had To Be You

Needless to say, I hate Anderson Cooper and everything he stands for. His disgustingly self-serving style of news, seeming to consist mainly of having tousled hair and a great smile; his idiotic MTV approach; his reduction of complicated foreign politics into typically asinine "us vs. them" rhetoric; his refusal to engage the responsibilities of his journalistic role, i.e., as a final check and balance against the abuses of power.

That said, I'm still chuckling at this one:

Excuse me, Senator, I'm sorry for interrupting. I haven't heard that, because, for the last four days, I've been seeing dead bodies in the streets here in Mississippi. And to listen to politicians thanking each other and complimenting each other, you know, I got to tell you, there are a lot of people here who are very upset, and very angry, and very frustrated.

And when they hear politicians slap -- you know, thanking one another, it just, you know, it kind of cuts them the wrong way right now, because literally there was a body on the streets of this town yesterday being eaten by rats because this woman had been laying in the street for 48 hours. And there's not enough facilities to take her up.

Even A Blind Pig Finds An Acorn Now And Then

Never let it be said that I don't give credit where credit is due. So, mark your calendar, today's the day Vincent Carroll made a point I can't help but agree with.

Last month, Oregon's governor signed the nation's first law requiring a prescription for cold medications with pseudoephedrine, an ingredient used to manufacture meth.

In most states, medical authorities try to discourage people from pestering doctors when they come down with a cold or mild flu for which there is no actual cure. In Oregon they now have little choice.

I'm lucky enough to have been around for a revolution or two of these fucking drug hysterias. My favorite was the "crack baby" hoax. People want to get their knickers all awry over teenagers engaging in the time-honored tradition of blowing a few braincells in a parking lot, fine. But, for fuck's sake, leave me out. I survive the cold season on Sudafed, and don't need one more fucking errand to run when exploding with snot and hacking up phlegm. Especially to ease the minds of prudish politicians and overwrought soccer moms.