Author: Thomas More

So Republican crapweasel Sen. Lamar Alexander wants to make a law saying that the U.S. National Anthem can only be sung in English – banning, say, the recent Spanish-language version coming smack-dab in the middle of immigrant protests that have Republicans all around the country looking sideways at their maids.

Too bad the cat’s out of the bag – the anthem was already translated into Spanish. In 1919. Oops. Can’t unring that bell. Stop them before they translate again!

And don’t show Sen. Alexander this – he might have a seizure of some kind.

Just when you think these boobs can’t get any more stupid, venal or irrelevant, they prove you wrong.

Dean Esmay, my favorite HIV-denying crackpot, is miffed that someone didn’t praise the 9/11 movie “United 93” high enough for his taste. He links to a smirking review of the Salon review by someone called “Cranky Insomniac,” who calls Salon “smug and French-sounding.”

No doubt these people were captains of the debate team in high school.

Salon’s Stephanie Zacharek feels pretty much like I do about the movie (which I haven’t seen yet) – no matter how well-made it is, I wonder what the *point* of it is. Why does it exist? Clearly 9/11 is one of the most important historical moments any of us will ever experience, and as such I think it’s more than fair game for dramatizations and discussions of all kinds. I even defended the film to a friend, who also hasn’t seen it, who proclaimed it was “in bad taste” by definition. I disagree.

But unfortunately the project reminds me of “The Passion of the Christ,” Mel Gibson’s tragically wrongheaded version of Christ’s crucifixion. If all we’re shown is two hours of bloody torture, what do we learn about Christ’s death? Similarly, what is the point of immersing us in the terror that those passengers felt?

Of course for Bush cultists, who wrap themselves in the fuzzy blanket of 9/11 on a nightly basis, that *is* the point of this movie. Because if it were up to them, we would all be watching footage of the twin towers exploding 24/7, our eyes propped open Clockwork-Orange-style so we couldn’t look away, ever. No amount of outrage, and the reliving of outrage, is enough for them.

Well I have a message for those people: get the hell out of my mind. How dare you say that what I feel about 9/11 isn’t enough. How dare you presume to tell me how I should interpret that event.

The tragedy of 9/11 is that it changed everything, and changed nothing. And no movie, no pundit, no stupid country song on the radio is going to erase that truth. Ever.

Neal Gabler, who has the distinction of having Bill O’Reilly wanting him canned, had this to say about apparently true rumors that Fox News’ Tony Snow will become the new White House Press Secretary:

“It would be a change in job title, but not description.”

Is anyone else getting just a little sense of deja vu over the Iran war drumbeat? As Jon Stewart has said, it’s only one letter away from Iraq. And the tactics seem identical – hype the threat, compare their leaders to Hitler, and try to pretend to be considering anything other than war while the war plans are being drawn up.

As Kevin Drum has said, this administration doesn’t actually want to talk to Iran. Just as in Iraq, when they didn’t want inspectors because it might remove their rationale for war, they don’t want diplomacy in Iran for the same reason.

I believe the war is already set. The only thing we don’t know is exactly what form it will take.

Well, actually, there’s another thing we don’t know about the War in Iran – who will it be blamed on? The press? Cindy Sheehan? Bill Clinton? (Blaming it on “the gays” is so 2001.) I’ve got one – illegal Mexicans! Brilliant!

And the world rolls on. For now.

Digby says something I’ve been saying for a while now – are there any taboos left?

“You’re so far over the line, you can’t see the line. The line is a dot to you.”
-Joey Tribbiani, “Friends”

Because we all need a little humor these days.

“I do not think [Bush and his administration] are evil and I do not think they are idiots. But I am fairly sure that they are fairly bad, and fairly sure that they are unwilling to consider even the possibility that they might be wrong. And at least as much harm has been done to the world by men such as these as has been done by history’s pure villains.
…
OBL is a psychopath, but he has little power. Bush is merely a not-very-good man. But a psychopath with a pointy stick is nowhere near as dangerous as a not-very-good man with a wing of B-52s.”

–Philosoraptor

Now that the right wingers have settled on “throw the brown people out” as their chosen wedge issue for the 2006 midterm elections, we’re seeing the return of a great code word: assimilation.

Why can’t those brown people just stop speaking Spanish, stop waving flags around and get back to their jobs picking fruit and cleaning our toilets?

Frankly, the rhetoric surrounding “assimilation” and the brown peoples’ resistance to it reminds me a little too much of the right-wing rhetoric about gay people. Why can’t those gays just shut up about what they do in the bedroom? Why do they have to shove it in my face all the time? Why do they have to show up at the White House Easter Egg Roll and disrupt everything with their perverted desires?

There is a racist angle to all this. After all, Michelle Malkin isn’t writing columns about how the St. Patrick’s Day Parade is a rejection of American values.

But in the end, I think, the “assimilation” gambit is less about racism and more about the right wing’s insistence that they and only they know the “proper” way to live, the “proper” way to be an American. How dare they think they can decide for anyone else what it means to be an American? How dare they decide that they are the final arbiter of what American culture should look like?

How dare they.

UPDATE: I have to say, with all the caterwauling about the “loss of American culture” (translation: too many brown people speaking gibberish), I get a little rush of pleasure thinking about Rick Santorum or Tom Tancredo waking up one morning and realizing that *he* was the minority.

It’s not as pleasurable as the phrase “The Vice President shot an old man in the face,” but it’s close.

Well, now according to Seymour Hersh of The New Yorker, Bush is planning to initiate nuclear war with Iran.

Great idea! I want to be one of the first to get behind this plan. After all, the only thing that can make our silk purse of a world even better would be to allow a President with a self-acknowledged messianic complex to initiate unprovoked nuclear war. It’s the big prize we’ve all been waiting for. “Canticle for Leibowitz,” here we come.

Sweet merciful Jesus.

Apparently the administration has already been briefing some members of Congress on the plan, and true to form, they’ve basically shrugged their shoulders and gone back to taking bribes from lobbyists. Reminds me of Tyler Durden’s description of the people on airline safety cards: “Calm as Hindu cows.”

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: we richly deserve everything that’s coming to us.

Ann Coulter’s new book is coming out on 6/6/06.

Seriously.