Political Fucktardery, A La Carte

It’s becoming harder and harder lately to commit to just one topic for a political column, so I’m not even going to fight it this time. Like most Americans, I’m afflicted with a very short attention span, and it seems as if each day brings not one but several stories of political fucktardery at home and bloody violence-and-retribution abroad. In this column, I’m gonna regurgitate a buffet of current events onto your unsuspecting lap. Ready? Go!

Dixie Chickenshit

Let’s start with the most frivolous item to disguise itself as hard news in recent weeks – the Dixie Chicks’ new album. Somehow one comment, made on the eve of war three years ago, has become the cornerstone of this bland alt-country trio’s public image, transforming them from a mediocre-looking, okay-sounding, entirely forgettable singing group into a pack of firebrand harpies loved by the left and loathed by the right. For the uninitiated, shortly before the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, the Dixie Chicks were playing a concert for their British fans – all five of them, I guess - when Natalie Maines (or “the fat one”, as cranky Red State former fans now keep calling her, because that’s how Red Staters roll with their cutting-edge insults) slipped a barbed remark about President Bush into her leaden between-songs banter. “We’re ashamed that President Bush is from Texas” was the exact comment.

As a “flame” the remark was pretty weak, but a media-manufactured shit storm erupted, and angry country music fans, already irked at the Chicks for doing things like covering Fleetwood Mac songs and wearing designer clothes, bought up truckloads of their CDs to burn, bulldoze, rape and ruin. While mass Chick-burning parties did draw a lot of attention to the ire felt by the redneck swarms, it also made the Dixie Chicks rich and infamous, and they’re still all about humping that infamy dry now that they’re releasing a new album. The first single, of course, directly addresses the controversy, and makes it clear that the Chicks still (rightly) think President Bush is dumb as a box of rocks. Both red and blue media outlets have sprung for the bait as reliably as Pavlov’s dogs - TIME magazine put them on its cover and Hannity took a break from his protracted rant about illegal immigrants to bash them on his radio show. While the lead-in single about Bush has, of course, been pointedly and summarily overlooked by country radio, the album has perched atop the charts for several weeks and the Chicks are filling big venues on their support tour. How many of these sales have been buttressed by the Bulldozer Brigade is unclear, but one thing has been proven certain – if you want to become the most popular country-and-western act in the world, do something to infuriate and alienate your core audience. Don’t bother being anti-Administration if you’re a rocker, everybody’s expecting it. Imagine the yawn that would have erupted over this story if, say, Eddie Vedder had badmouthed Bush to a handful of Brits. But provoke the shit-kickers and – BAM! – an instant trip to Millionaire Media Darling City.

Dreamboat Annie

Still remaining firmly in the realm of the frivolous, a brief here’s an update on the subject of my Day of Slayer profile subject, Ann “Adam’s Apple” Coulter.

Standing in diametric opposition to the Dixie Chicks, Coulter’s book, “Godless”, has topped the bestseller list of the New York Times Book Review, buoyed to its lofty position by a wave of acrimony over some stupid remarks the archconservative maiden aunt made about a group of liberal 9-11 widows in her new book. Conservative pundits, not known for their sense of irony, blanched at Coulter’s insensitivity at first, but quickly changed positions when the numbers started coming in. What a clever girl, they scrambled to point out with forced jocularity, “overstating the case” and “employing hyperbole” by calling the women witches and harpies and accusing them of being “glad” their husbands were dead. Apparently what the offensive remarks were meant to do was draw attention to a “larger point”, although what that “larger point” may have been beyond selling more books is a bit more difficult for them to pin down.

Of course, anti-Coulter activity among Blue State media outlets also reached a frenzied pitch, since to ignore the book would have denied them the opportunity to balance out Red State “tsk-tsking” over the Dixie Chicks. Replace “the fat one” with “transvestite” and you have an idea of the level to which “the intellectual left” is looking to elevate the debate. The Democrats must thank God every day that they have “the smart people” on their side!

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly…

(Or Maybe Just the Bad and the Ugly)

The US scored one of the most significant coups in recent months in the Iraq war, which, of course, hasn’t officially been a “war” for three years. Head-loppin’ Al Qaeda stooge Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, whose star in the Terror World didn’t really rise until given a reason by a certain ill-advised invasion, exploded to death recently, aided by a few tons of American firepower. The weird part is that he apparently lived for an hour after having a bomb dropped, literally, directly onto his head – which makes for a handy microcosmic analogy for the American strategy in Iraq since the war’s inception – we always seem to have to break two things for every one thing we fix there. Of course, a requisite sickening revenge move, in the form of the kidnap, torture, mutilation and murder of two US soldiers, took place in an insurgent-heavy city not long after Zarqawi’s death. But one absolute positive in all this is the cool pictures circulating on the Internets of Zarqawi’s dead mutilated head, which the “blame America last” crowd quickly appropriated for use as a totem of how much ass we’re supposed to be kicking over there. Not in the same way as Muslim fundie terrorists like to show off pictures of Americans THEY’VE dusted, though! Our appropriation of ghoulish and sickening images is totally different…because we’re white.  No, wait, that’s not it – uh, it’s because we’re the final remaining Superpower! Um, no, wait, that’s not it either…oh, wait, of course – it’s because we’re “the good guys”. Yeah, that’s the ticket. Or that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it. Yeah. Okay, moving on…

Line Item Fever

The White House, in a move that should surprise nobody, is pushing for a restoration of the line-item veto in time for the new budget. Having a party majority in both legislative bodies just isn’t security enough to suit this Administration – they want to see to it that not a penny gets spent on anything that could benefit anyone in the bottom 90% of income earners in any manner whatsoever. This latest power grab from the White House is fairly naked in its self-interest – it can’t be couched in a “war effort”, an “anti-terror measure” or even a “tax relief initiative”. Nope, this is strictly for the benefit of the administration and their friends, and they make no bones about it. I can almost respect it. But it isn’t quite…

The Cherry On Top

In closing, one final anecdote, as a sort of revisitation of one of my early columns for DRS. When I came on board a year ago, the walls appeared to be closing in on fat psychopath and Bush bagman Karl Rove vis-à-vis the Valerie Plame spy-outing scandal; a Dick Cheney yes-man named Lewis “Scooter” Libby had admitted to his part in the leak of Plame’s name – a direct violation of a law signed by George HW Bush over fifteen years ago. “Scooter”, it was whispered, was feeling the heat and calling in favors, as was Judith Miller, a New York Times reporter who’d been jailed for refusing to name the source of her piece on Plame. Hell, Bob Novak, a pundit who had named Plame as a spy nearly two years prior, had told numerous people that he’d gotten her name straight from Rove, although he backpedaled furiously once under official scrutiny. I even called it -- I thought Rove, my least-favorite scumbag in the Administration, would end up getting served. Well, color me wrong, if not exactly surprised, that despite his ponderous bulk, Rove managed to officially slip from the noose last week. He was cleared of all wrongdoing and will go on to hose some other hapless secret agent the next time he throws a tantrum. Good times, good times.

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