Author: Thomas More

John Gibson went out of his way to be offended that anyone could have concluded that he was racist from his recent racist remarks about how white people need to have more babies to catch up to Hispanics. (I love it when they dig themselves in deeper.) His defense boiled down to “Hey, I love Mexicans. I just hate Muslims.” Thanks for clearing that up, John. We were worried there for a minute.

Gibson’s remarks led to a fantastic comment over at Digby’s Hullabaloo site:

Once again, I spent the morning trying to explain ‘water’ to my goldfish. He listens well, but just doesn’t see it.

It’s like explaining racism to John Gibson.

How do you tell a blind person what ‘red’ is?

“I’m upset with the Democrats too. Because after all this time, they still haven’t found one woman willing to have oral sex with President Bush so we can impeach him.”

-Woman in the audience of the Stephanie Miller Show on Air America, broadcasting from the Barrymore Theater in Madison

Why can’t more Democrats stand up for what they believe in? Come on guys. The President’s approval ratings are in the 20s. When are you going to grow a backbone?

My favorite little tidbit about the anti-gay-marriage vote detailed in the above link is how Arlen Specter voted for the ban in his Judiciary Committee, even though he’s personally opposed to it, because it “deserves debate in the full Senate.” Full-on crapweaselry on display these days.

“People get so worked up over the historical accuracy of Jesus marrying Mary Magdalene and having a child. But they don’t seem to have a problem with him coming back from the dead.”

-David Farré, religious philosopher

Some highlights from the Ultimate Crapweasel Media recently:

Fox’s John Gibson says that it’s white Americans’ duty to make more babies, to counter the tide of brown people streaming across our borders.

A World Net Daily columnist says that deporting those millions of illegal Mexicans should be no problem – after all, look how quickly the Nazis got rid of 6 million Jews.

The thing is, I’m glad when the essential racism of the right wing gets thrust out in the open like this. I would much rather they be honest, than try to couch everything in mushy code-word rhetoric. Stand up for yourself, racists!

Tom Tomorrow’s latest “This Modern World” cartoon brings up a crucial point I think is too often ignored in all this: why does this administration have any credibility left? When Bush and his surrogates like the odious Brit Hume on Fox News pat our heads and assure us that they’re not doing anything wrong with all this spying and data mining, no, it’s just to catch the bad guys – why does anyone believe them? Their stories change more often than a killer on “Law & Order.”

And to those fuckheads like Brit Hume who are pushing the “hey, if you didn’t do anything wrong, you don’t have anything to worry about, right?” line of anti-American bullshit – and to those whom it comforts – I feel I need to again reprint some immortal lines from “A Man for All Seasons”:

More: And go he should, if he were the devil himself, until he broke the law.
Roper: So now you’d give the devil benefit of law!
More: Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get to the devil?
Roper: Yes! I’d cut down every law in England to do that.
More: Oh? And when the last law was down and the devil turned round on you – where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, man’s laws, not God’s, and if you cut them down – and you’re just the man to do it – do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the devil benefit of law – for my own safety’s sake.

29 percent.

Six point drop – in one month.

“I sort of feel bad for Osama bin Laden. All these years hating us for our freedoms – and now he has to find a new reason to hate us.”

-Bill Maher, “Real Time with Bill Maher”

Stephanopoulos: And is it curious to you that given how much control U.S. and coalition forces now have in the country, they haven’t found any weapons of mass destruction?

Rumsfeld: We know where they are. They’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.

-“This Week,” 3/30/03

Let’s face it: Donald Rumsfeld isn’t going anywhere. Bush firing Rumsfeld would be like firing himself – it would be admitting that his entire Iraq “experiment” (tm Dean Esmay), the centerpiece of his presidency, was a colossal mistake. So Rumsfeld stays.

But the quote above has always seemed to me to be a perfect encapsulation of the entire Iraq war, and in fact of the administration as a whole. In the first half of the quote, Rumsfeld “knows where [the WMD] are.” And then seconds later, he proves for anyone who was even half listening that in fact they “know” nothing of the kind. (The “somewhat” is the cherry on top of the sundae.)

The simple fact is, no one who supported the war in Iraq, administration or citizen, much cared whether those pesky WMD existed or not. We needed to kick some Arab ass and this was the easiest target. The bully always picks on the weakest kid. (Is it any wonder that Iran wants to bulk up a little bit before recess?)

Meanwhile, we watch “United 93” so we can refresh the hatred and fear and hopelessness we felt that day. And we step out onto the playground with our dukes held up defiantly, waiting. For something.

Writing about Stephen Colbert’s beyond-brilliant performance Saturday night at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, Scott Rosenberg of Salon wrote:

Just for a moment, Colbert brought a heavily sheltered President Bush face to face with the outrage and revulsion that large swathes of the American public feel for him and what he has done to our country.

Now see, I’m a word person. And when I or someone else use just the exact right word, I get a little chill of pleasure down my spine. That ever happen to you?

Well it happened to me when I read the word “revulsion.” What a fantastic, fantastic word. Don’t you just have the urge to find a way to work that into your regular conversation tomorrow? (Well, probably not. But I do.) It so perfectly characterizes the feeling I get when I consider our President and all he represents. Revulsion.

Of course, for those on the right that’s just my (uncommon) admission of Bush Derangement Syndrome, the whacked-out hatred of Bush that has no basis in reality.

The thing is, it’s all about reality. It’s about where we came from, where we are, and where we are going. It’s about our inability as a society to even agree on what “reality” is. Traitors and patriots staring at each other from each side of the looking glass, snarling and spitting.

It’s about not only not trying to suppress our worst instincts, but reveling in them. It’s about whittling the universe down to six inches in front of our faces – if that. It’s about money and power and privilege and religion. It’s about Dennis Hastert driving a hybrid car a block away from a photo op press conference, then jumping into an Escalade.

We know full well the Emperor has no clothes. And we don’t care.

It’s not really about Bush at all. He’s just a symbol, a pawn in a high-stakes game he only partially understands. But that’s part of the picture, too.

What I feel, all too often, is revulsion. Thanks, Scott Rosenberg, for giving me a word for it.