“Our First Guests Will Be Miss Ashley Alexandra Dupre and a Random Poor Person”

“On March 17, 2008, Eliot Spitzer was asked to remove himself from the governor’s mansion. That request came from the people of New York. Deep down, he knew they were wrong, but he also knew that someday he would return to the limelight. With nowhere else to go, he appeared at the home of his childhood friend, CNN. Sometime earlier, CNN became the lowest-rated cable news channel. Also sometime earlier, columnist Kathleen Parker, a notable twit, had won a Pulitzer Prize, apparently for her superhuman ability to see people without the lens of race, and her cheery knack for patronizing black people, gays, women, and other lesser beings. For that and other crimes against humanity, Wo’C had requested that she never return. So, CNN decided that smushing the two ninnies into one being called “ParkerSpitzer” was the way to win viewers and decrease the IQs of people everywhere. Can two annoying nonentities share the 8 p.m. news slot without driving me crazy?”

Too late! I already saw the promo where Kathleen says that Eliot is a politician and she is a “journalist,” and so wackiness is sure to ensue. (Dear CNN, if Kathleen is a journalist, then Scott and I are Marcel Proust. Please give us a prime-time spot in which we can chat about current events, deplore modern maners, and enjoy the favors of prostitutes.)

Anyway, I guess CNN has deduced that the big money isn’t in, you know, news, but in newstainment. Sure, they already have a sister channel, HLN, that features such explotationews stars as Jane “Buy my book about addiction” Valez- Mitchel and the “feisty” Nancy Grace (“All child-killers, all the time”), but I guess they needed to ramp it down another notch to compete with Fox News (“A wholly-owned subsidiary of the Republican Party and SatanCo”), and its “O’Relly Factor,” “The Glenn Beck Anti-Commie Comedy Hour,” and “Sarah Palin’s Seeing Other Countries for Dollars.”

So, anybody have any ideas for some other “news” programs for CNN, featuring clashing disgraced and/or third-tier “personalities”?

Here are mine. How about “Rappin’ ‘Bout Race, with Dr. Laura and Reverend Jeremiah Wright”? Or, “Billionaire Death Sports, featuring John Stossel and Paris Hilton (every week rich people are invited to hunt down and kill poor people for their pocket change, then the hosts make out for a while). Or what about, “BachmannTK,” a program wherein Michele Bachmann and the BTK serial killer discuss the issues of the day, and then bind, torture, and kill a CNN exec.

Feel free to add your programming ideas. They certainly can’t be any stupider than “ParkerSpitzer.”

The MSM | 31 Comments »

We recently learned that Wo’C favorite heydave hates the TV series “Bones” with “the burning fury of a bazillion evil suns scorching the surfaces of a gadzillion dead planets.” Good call, heydave!

So, question to the rest of you is: what television program do you dream of cutting to pieces with a machete, dousing the remains with jet fuel, lighting them on fire, and then flushing the ashes down the toilet?

My pick would have to be “CSI Miami,” partly because it tries to be super trendy, sexy, and edgy, but is really just dumb — and still gets in the top ten, ratings wise, every week. It’s just not fair! But the main reason I hate it is because of David Caruso. It’s obvious that the writers have specific instructions to make his character Horatio Caine (or Ho Canine, as I like to call him) the most knowledgeable, sensitive, macho, intelligent, desirable, action-star-who-is-looking-out-for-the-children crime scene investigator EVER! But he comes across as a humorless, boring, egomaniac, so the disconnect between what I am supposed to think of him and reality annoys me. Plus, he reminds me of an old boss. Oh, and I think I am still suffering post-traumatic stress disorder from viewing Jade, the “erotic thriller” Caruso made after deciding he was too good for “NYPD Blue.”

But maybe I am wrong, and there are other TV shows that I should be detesting instead of “CSI Miami.” What is your pick for the coveted honor of “TV Show That Should Be Shot and Then Forced to Watch Itself for All Etenity”?

…

The MSM | 56 Comments »

Dr. Melissa Clothier, the Chiropractor-Pundit (who was last seen around these parts working herself into a blood-thirsty, seat-dampening orgasm over Inglorious Basterds) is back, and doing what she does best — cracking, twisting, and popping the English language.

Obama’s Big War With Fox News Makes Him Look Small..And Reveals His Relationship With The Press

The interesting thing here is that President Obama has received nothing short of fawning adoration and tenderly delivered, incurious questions from the rest of the press corps save a few notable examples. He probably gets less love from basketball team members.

I think she means…because a lot of basketball players are black?  So they must love him?  But the press corps loves him more…and that’s bad, because…they’re not black?

The press, unfamiliar with physical endeavors and the kinship of teams, takes loyalty to a whole new level.

Because…the press doesn’t get as much exercise as professional athletes, or chiropractor/bloggers?

And then there’s Fox News.

And Maude.

Fox’s collective sin is not loving enough.

They love wisely, but not too well.

Bill O’Reilly makes me throw up in mouth a little

And that’s before he even mentions the vibrator in his ass…

…every time he opines about Obama’s bravery for coming on his show. Puhleeze. And all the round-tables have at least two Obama apologists for their “fair and balanced” coverage.

Roger Ailes, conscious agent of the international Communist conspiracy.  Just out of curiosity, where does one go to keep informed when the left wing tilt of Fox News finally becomes intolerable?  Are the Der Stürmer archives free, or behind a pay wall?

And Shepherd Smith? When he’s not gazing into a mirror, I imagine him gazing at glossy, signed 8x10s of The One.

In her spare time, Dr. Clothier writes the world’s dullest slash fiction.

People who actually watch all the networks know that a roomful of Depression-affected hookers couldn’t give the President more attention than the current press corps.

At first I thought she meant clinically depressed streetwalkers, but then I noticed she capitalized Depression, so I guess she means that strumpets from the 1930s were somehow introduced to the White House Press Room, but the President called on Major Garrett instead.

So his quibbling rings hollow.

But then, quibbling rarely produces a clear, strong tintinnabulation.  Therefore, send not to know/For whom the bell quibbles/It quibbles for thee.

And why do the rest of the press care about this cat fight? Well, it reveals their own bias, for one. By obsessing over Fox News, President Obama, by default acknowledges the rest of the press serves him and serves him well. While that’s the truth, the Press would prefer that it not be so overtly acknowledged. It’s embarrassing. Still, he does love us….sigh.

You’re like one of those people who advise victims of domestic violence to go back to their husbands, because splitting up would be hard on the children.  Listen, Doc, Fox News may say they’re sorry, they may promise things will be different, but they’re never gonna change.  It’s an unhealthy relationship, and I think a clean break is the best thing for all parties.

The press should be more embarrassed. So should the President of the United States. But they’re not.

Tell you what…When Fox News shows a little embarrassment about this:

…you can lecture the President of the United States on shame.

They’re just a little piqued that other people are seeing the love affair so obviously. They thought they were keeping a secret! Turns out, the joke’s on both of them. Everyone sees the “special relationship” between the press and Obama. Everyone.

Of course, during the run of Moonlighting, Melissa was also convinced that Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd were really doing it off-camera (even after Season 4).

People seek a bit of fairness. That’s why Fox News is doing so well.

But just as Moonlighting showed, once you finally get what you seek, the whole show pretty much goes down the toilet.

The MSM | 15 Comments »

Leave it to William Kristol to give the ascendancy of Barack Obama and the Democratic Party a much needed breath of historical perspective:

Since Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980, conservatives of various sorts, and conservatisms of various stripes, have generally been in the ascendancy. And a good thing, too! Conservatives have been right more often than not — and more often than liberals — about most of the important issues of the day: about Communism and jihadism, crime and welfare, education and the family. Conservative policies have on the whole worked — insofar as any set of policies can be said to “work” in the real world. Conservatives of the Reagan-Bush-Gingrich-Bush years have a fair amount to be proud of.

What a relief!  I was afraid Bill was going to choke in the final inning and actually say something that wasn’t instantly and flatly contradicted by observable reality, but he stepped up like a champ and protected his streak.

In many ways, Bill seems like a modern DiMaggio, if Joltin’ Joe’s celebrated record had involved getting beaned in 56 consecutive games.  But today, he most clearly reminds me of another baseball legend, Ted Williams, who capped a long and distinguished career by belting a home run in his last at-bat.  For like the Splendid Splinter, Kristol didn’t just strike out and limp slump-shouldered into the dugout; instead, he saved the best for last, concluding his trenchant pensées with perhaps the six most stirring and eloquent words that have ever appeared beneath his byline:

This is William Kristol’s last column.

Our long national toothache is over.

The MSM | 14 Comments »

Yesterday at lunch a friend was talking about David Foster Wallace, and how people whose work shows a tremendous breadth of mind are sometimes overwhelmed by “the finitude of life.”  I remembered his words this morning when I encountered a startling example of this finitude: an event horizon of idiocy beyond which even companies like Regnery will not, or cannot pass (and these are the people who willingly published America’s Biggest Problems Are No Match for Black Belt Patriotism, and Buckle Up America, Ted Nugent Is Driving).  It seems that Hugh Hewitt, author of Painting the Map Red: The Fight to Create a Permanent Republican Majority, and If It’s Not Close They Can’t Cheat: Crushing the Democrats in Every Election and Why Your Life Depends on It, has written another stunning work of Nostradamian prognostication: How Sarah Palin Won the Election…And Saved America.  But despite his obvious clairvoyance, he failed to predict that no publisher would touch it without oven mitts and a pair of ice tongs.

One campaign book that has already bitten the dust is right-wing radio host Hugh Hewitt’s How Sarah Palin Won the Election … and Saved America, which the literary agent Curtis Yates sent to publishers in New York last week.

When Media Mob reached Mr. Yates by phone on Monday, he’d already given up on trying to sell the book.

“The idea was to tell the story behind the effect that Sarah Palin has had on this election and how it is and why it is that she has basically turned the election around for McCain and why it is that she is resonating with so many people in the country,” he said. “The intent was to finish the book by a week after the election, and to have it out before the inauguration.” [...]

“If they were to lose the election it would have just been How Sarah Palin Saved America,” Mr. Yates said.

I agree that McCain-Palin losing the election would likely be regarded by future generations as the salvation of America, but I wouldn’t want to read a whole book about it.  Just her Turn Ons and Turn Offs on the back of the gatefold.

The title of the book, Mr. Yates said, “went through a couple of different iterations.”

At one point it was How Sarah Palin Won the Election…

At another point it was Wink!  Heels, Lipstick, and Rick Lowry’s Moist Underpants:  The Story of America’s Most Erotic Vice Presendential Debate.  Other suggestions included, Sarah T: Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic; Erection ’08: How Sarah Palin Made the Right Wing See Shooting Stars, and There’s a Girl in My Soup.  It’s rumored that Hugh has also failed to find a publisher for his next proposed project, an authorized biography entitled, C*NT!  The Cindy McCain Story.

BONUS: 

The MSM | 14 Comments »

It’s Sitcom Day here at World O’ Crap (more on that in a later post), and first up is Jonah Goldberg in the runaway smash comedy, Make Room For Flabby!  In tonight’s episode, Jonah runs out of toilet paper and is forced to repurpose a page of the Los Angeles Times, leading to a wacky misunderstanding when the results are accidentally printed in the Op-Ed section!  Let’s watch…

‘Pat Philbin, the man who staged a fake FEMA news conference on the California wildfires last week, has lost his promotion because of the event, which begs the question: What does it actually take to get fired from FEMA?” That was the lead story on the latest installment of Weekend Update, the faux news broadcast on “Saturday Night Live.”

Something bothered me about this, and not just Amy Poehler’s misuse of the phrase “beg the question.”

It’s mostly just her use of the word “beg,” which tends to trigger flashbacks in Jonah to his high school prom night, an occasion later immortalized in the movie, There’s Something About Mary. 

Nor was it the idea that FEMA’s staged news conference was scandalous simply because reporters, listening by phone, weren’t able to ask questions while FEMA bureaucrats lobbed “fake” questions. There’s no such thing as fake questions

Just ask Jeff Gannon.  (“No, no, I’m genuinely interested: how long do you suppose it would be if you’d kept the foreskin?”)

…only fake answers. Was FEMA’s fabrication any more fraudulent than, say, press releases written like real news stories? 

It’s important to remember that this would have constituted fraud only if they had tried to pass off the event as an actual press conference.  If, for instance, it had been carried live by various TV networks, or if the guy at the podium acted as though he was answering queries from the media and not his own staffers, or if the FEMA employees asking the questions pretended they were reporters and not political appointees pitching softballs at their boss.  But what most people don’t realize is that this wasn’t an attempt to escape accountability by deceiving the public, it was a team-building exercise.  Deputy FEMA administrator Harvey Johnson and his subordinates were just taking a brief vacation from the disastrous California wildfires to attend Press Conference Fantasy Camp – a tough but exhilarating three day experience that gives the average person a once in a lifetime chance to really get a feel for what it’s like to be Ron Ziegler.

Or take Stephen Colbert, host of a fake cable news show, “The Colbert Report,” itself a spinoff from the fake newscast “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.” Colbert was recently a guest on “Meet the Press” — the Thunderdome of real news — as he was trying to mount a bogus campaign for president (abandoned Monday). Colbert stayed in character. So did Tim Russert, grilling Colbert as if he were a real candidate, of sorts.

The exchange vexed Ana Marie Cox, Washington editor of Time.com, who rightly ridiculed the stunt as “painfully so-ironic-it-was-unironic.” Cox has a good ear for such things: Her own meteoric rise started with her tenure as the founding Wonkette blogger, where she mocked newsmakers the way robots mocked bad movies on “Mystery Science Theater 3000.”

Except with 100% more butt-sex than MST3K.

Cox sized up the Colbert-Russert show as cringe-worthy — bad journalism because it was bad entertainment.

No, it was simply bad entertainment, unless you consider it news that Tim Russert has the quick wit and comic timing of your average boozed-up heckler at the Funnybone.  Bad journalism, on the other hand, pretty much has to be taken as entertainment, since it not only fails to provide what it purports to — information — but actually succeeds in dispensing the opposite.  So either the smug yet furious blowhard you see on “The O’Reilly Factor” is a comic persona like Andy Kaufman’s Tony Clifton character, or he’s a grotesque whipped up by the sideshown performers in Freaks after they finished with Olga Baclanova.  Either way, he’s pretty damn funny.

Indeed, while the network news broadcasts are sustained by the consumers of denture cream, adult diapers and pharmacological marital aides, it’s “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report” that have a grip on the hip, iPhone crowd. And plenty of those younger viewers seem to believe that they can deduce what’s going on in the real world from jokes on a fake newscast. It’s no longer funny because it’s true. It’s true because it’s funny.

The obvious solution is to read Jonah’s column, which isn’t true and isn’t funny.

Now that’s begging the question.

Case in point.  (For this joke to work, by the way, you need to imagine that peppy music they always played at the end of a Love American Style vignette, when Gary Collins and Mary Ann Mobley would figure out it was all just a big misunderstanding, and then we’d go to a 60 second pantomime bit on a beach with Stuart Margolin and Carla Borelli, just before we cut to the commercial for Pillsbury Space Food Sticks.)

The problem of parsing fact from fiction, news from entertainment, has been inherent to broadcast journalism from the beginning. Radio newsman Walter Winchell got his start in vaudeville. 

Of course, Winchell was primarily a gossip columnist, when he wasn’t busy egging on Joe McCarthy, and his contributions to hard news are roughly equivalent to those of his contemporary, J. Fred Muggs, except the chimp was less of a shameless red-baiter.

But in the modern era, I blame “Murphy Brown,” the show about a fictional TV newswoman who talked about real newsmakers as if they were characters on her sitcom. When Brown had a baby out of wedlock, Vice President Dan Quayle criticized the writers of the show. Liberals then reacted as though Quayle had insulted a real person.

Whenever Jonah gets his facts exactly backwards, I often waste time trying to decide if he’s lazy, ignorant, or a liar, before I calm down and remember that, as Jonah comes from a cube-shaped world whose inhabitants butcher personal pronouns, this is really more of a diversity issue.  In our culture, of course, liberals laughed at Dan Quayle for attacking a fictional character as though it were a real person (if Dan were still around today, I can imagine the finger-wagging denunciations: “Hester Prynne is a bigger threat to the stability of the two-parent family than homosexual marriage!”).

Ever since, journalists and politicians have been playing themselves in movies and TV series, perhaps trying to disprove the cliche that Washington is Hollywood for ugly people.

Or we could simply prove the cliche by casting the entire NRO Corner staff in the next season of Big Brother.

The MSM | 23 Comments »

The call went out from Burbank:  “Whip me up a ripoff of X-Men, except make one of them a stripper and toss in a bunch’a random foreigners so we’ll have some implied tits and more ethnic cuisine in the catering tent!”

And so it was.

I was given a screener of the new NBC series and told to watch it by my agent, apparently because I failed to get him flowers and take him out to a liquid lunch at Applebee’s for Agent’s Day, and he’s feeling a tad bitter.  Seemed a bit harsh to me, but mea culpa, so I removed it from the DVD case with a pair of ice tongs last night and gingerly inserted it in the Sony.

I won’t spoil it for you (okay, I will), but before I do, let me just say that while Heroes was far from the worst thing I’ve ever sat through, it repaid my time and effort a thousand fold with what is unquestionably the second most unintentionally hilarious moment in television history (the first being Tucker Carlson’s Quina Mambo shirt on Dancing with the Stars).

Spoiler below the photo.

(more…)

The MSM | 8 Comments »

Besides Dr. Mike and Mark Steyn, you know who else I find really annoying (and not in a good way)? James Taranto, that’s who.

To demonstrate why, let’s look at a “Best of the Web Today” post about the revelation that Richard Armitage was the first to leak Plame’s CIA affiliation to Novak, and use it to illustrate some of the reasons why I find Taranto so insufferable.

Reason #1: Taranto is smugly confident of his own wit and intelligence, but he’s not very funny (and his work provides no evidence that he’s any brighter than your run-of-the-mill Marie Jon’ or Christian Hartsock)

As we observed on PBS 10 months ago, this was a “Seinfeld” scandal–an investigation about nothing.

Of course, much as this seemed like a sitcom, it had consequences in real life.

As we observed on Fox News many moons ago (or while we were watching Fox News – I’m not sure which), if Karl Rove tells journalists that, for purely partisan political purposes, a CIA NOC working on weapons nonproliferation is “fair game,” it doesn’t seem like a sitcom to us, it seems more like a black comedy (perhaps The Manchurian Candidate, with Karl playing the Angela Lansbury role.

Reason #2: Taranto will stick  with a talking point forever, even if it has repeatedly been proven to be false

Because Armitage did not come clean right away, many people suffered:

 * Millions of taxpayer dollars were wasted investigating a nonexistent crime.

James, even if you say this a million times, it doesn’t make it true.

Anyway, while it gets tedious, I guess the only way for the truth to prevail is to rebut the Right’s lies once a month or so.

So, here goes:

Even though “special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald ‘found no evidence that Armitage knew of Plame’s covert CIA status’” before he leaked her name to Novak, and so, per the statute, “there was no violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act,” this doesn’t mean that no crime was committed. James, honey, there is more than one law dealing with divulging classified material on the books.

And while I’m not saying that Armitage should go to prison, obviously he shouldn’t be trusted with classified material after this. And neither should those officials who confirmed Armitage’s slip about Plame to the press (because, one of the first things they tell you in your security briefing is that even though something has been leaked, it doesn’t mean its been declassified).

And personally, I believe that if Scooter was following Dick Cheney’s game plan, Cheney should have his security clearance revoked too (for at least a year).

I am amazed at all those who were up in arms because Sandy Berger, who had his clearance revoked and who had to pay a large fine, was perceived as getting special treatment for HIS security lapse (which didn’t result in the actual disclosure of classified material, mind you)  think it’s just fine for other people to let CIA secrets slip.  I guess it’s one of those “It’s okay if you’re a Republican” things. 

But back to Taranto.  In this piece Taranto also makes the claim that although “It was from a classified memo that Armitage learned Plame worked for the CIA, that the fact of her CIA employment wasn’t classified. (“By all available evidence, Plame’s covert status had expired by the time of her ‘outing’ anyway.”) 

So, per Taranto, even though the CIA devoting its resources to maintaining Plame’s NOC cover, Plame actually wasn’t covert (i.e., under cover) because the “available evidence” indicates to him that she wasn’t, and he is a much better judge of these things that the intelligence organization.

Buy a clue, James! While Plame’s status may or may not have met the definition of a “covert agent” as described in the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, she WAS UNDER COVER. She was COVERT. Her CIA affiliation was CLASSIFIED. That’s why the CIA submitted a CRIMES report to the FBI. And that’s why the DOJ authorized a CRIMINAL investigation. But, per Taranto, apparently the government shouldn’t bother to investigate crimes where there wasn’t first a retroactive guilty verdict. (I guess he wants to live in the world of Judge Dredd.)

And anyway, while no one was prosecuted for leaking Plame’s identity, that doesn’t mean that a crime wasn’t committed. (Just like even if there isn’t enough evidence, now, to prove that George W. Bush was legally AWOL from the Texas Air National Guard, it doesn’t mean that the American taxpayers, who paid $1 million to train him, weren’t ripped off.)

And who are the victims of this crime? Yes, the CIA, Valerie Plame, and the American public.

But wait, that’s not what Taranto is claiming!

Reason #3: Taranto is clearly full of crap.

 * Innocent White House officials were distracted from serving the country in order to participate in the investigation, which was in full swing a year ago when Hurricane Katrina struck.

Yes, the real victims here are “innocent White House officials” who had to worry about keeping their own lies straight during DOJ interviews, and who therefore couldn’t concentrate on dealing with Hurricane Katrina. So, Armitage (and Joe Wilson) are responsible for all the death and devastation caused by Katrina, and they should apologize to an innocent President Bush for causing his poll numbers to fall.

Reason 4: Taranto has no shame.

 * Scooter Libby lost his job and was indicted for actions that never would have occurred but for the investigation.

Yeah, don’t you hate when you lose your lose and get indicted for crimes that you never would have committed if there wasn’t some kind of an investigation?  Me too.And I guess that Scooter is the ultimate innocent victim here, in that the government FORCED him to commit a crime (by, you know, asking him questions and stuff).Reason #5: See reasons 1-4.

 * The Democratic left, putting its faith in scandal to bring down the Bush administration, became even more fatuous and ineffective.

But the scandal gave the wingnuts a great new vocabulary word, “kerfuffle,” so it all evened out.

Reason #6: Taranto seems to be unaware of the glass houses/stones law.

The only winner in this whole deal is Joe Wilson’s ego–and think of the toll it’s taken on his poor little superego.

You could probably come up with your own list.  This photo alone is reason enough for polite society to shun Taranto for about a thousand years: 

But hey, life is short, and so we will go back to our usual policy of ignoring the guy, just like we ignore most other Internet trolls (except for Ann Coulter, of course).

The MSM | 12 Comments »

Imagine if you will a network news program where the host believes that his obligation as a journalist is to place evil on the same footing as good (so that evil will stop complaining about how the media always favors good). Tonight on Media Twilight Zone, we will visit just such a program.

Yes, inspired by Ann Coulter’s recent appearance on NBC News (and many similar occurrences), Scott came up with this little eschatological drama, which is submitted for your approval.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Tim Russert: Thank you for joining us. Today on our panel we’re proud to have bestselling author and Constitutional expert Ann Coulter, and author and internet sensation Michelle Malkin. Our guest in studio this morning is Jesus Christ, leader of the Heavenly Host. Joining us by satellite is his opponent, Bob Satan, Chairman of the National Republican Committee for a New World Order, and author of the bestselling guides to conservative parenting, Fatherhood: of All Lies, and O-Me! O-My! O-Men! Raising Antichrists That Liberals Will Hate. He joins us from the Green Zone in Megiddo. Mr. Satan, thank you for being here.

Satan: Always a pleasure, Tim.

Russert: Mr. Satan, let’s start with you. Yesterday the New York Times reported that forces of the New World Order swept through a village, burned it to the ground, then decapitated every man, woman and child who lived there. They hung the victims by their heels until they were utterly desanguinated, then the soldiers made sausage from their blood and threw a large pancake breakfast while dogs and vultures feasted on the flesh of the innocent. This has caused some on Capitol Hill to question whether we have a clear strategy for victory. How would you respond?

Satan: Tim, this is just the Left’s way of saying, fine, let’s just cut and run. We shouldn’t even be in Armageddon, we shouldn’t even be fighting a battle to bring about the end of the world.

Russert: So you think this story is mostly partisan.

Satan: Absolutely! Look, this is war. We’re fighting an enemy that is determined to utterly destroy us and rule for a thousand years. If these allegations turn out to be true, then we may have a few bad apples in the barrel. But 99.9999% of our troops are doing a great job day after day, under incredibly difficult circumstances. And sometimes, in the stress of the moment, some of them may snap and make bloodwurst out of children. Can any of us honestly say that, given the same circumstances, we wouldn’t do the same thing?

Jesus: Yes! There are clear–

Satan: Well, look who’s casting the first stone.

Jesus: –clear rules of engagement design to prevent this kind of–

Russert: Mr. Christ, let him finish.

Satan: Look, the point is that there are lots of people who may have sincerely held beliefs about whether it’s appropriate to grind noncombatants into sausage, but I hardly think that Mr. Christ’s record entitles him to get holier than thou on the topic of children.

Jesus: That’s the most outrageous–

Russert: I’m sorry, we’ve got to take a break, but we’ll let you finish that thought when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK. FADE BACK UP ON MTP STUDIO, WHERE TIM RUSSERT IS STRIPPED TO THE WAIST AND SCOURGING HIMSELF WITH A NAIL-STUDDED LEATHER PLAIT).

Russert: Thanks again for joining us on Meet the Press. Now, I want to get back to Jesus
Christ–

Jesus: Thank you, Tim. As I was–

Russert: What do you say to those people who claim you’re a pedophile?

Jesus: What?!

Russert: I’d like to play a soundbite from — Jimmy, do we have that? I think it’s at Mark 10:14?

(JESUS ON MONITOR: “Suffer the little children to come unto me and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of God.”)

Russert: Are those your words?

Jesus: Yes, but–

Russert: Now there are those who say you were clearly defending the North American Man-Boy Love Association with that statement.

Satan: Tim–

Jesus: No! Look, that was taken completely out of context!

Satan: Tim, the point is, liberals like Mr. Christ and the New York Times think we shouldn’t even be in Armageddon because we’re just there to defend Israel. That is a completely anti-Semitic attitude.

Russert: Mr. Christ, what do you say to accusations that you’re opposed to fighting a battle to bring about the end of all life on Earth because you’re an Anti-Semite?

Jesus: Well, first of all, I’d like to point out that I myself am Jewish–
Ann Coulter: Yeah! Just like George Soros. Another Jew who somehow figured out a way to avoid crucifixion.

Jesus: I WAS crucified! (DISPLAYS WOUNDS IN HANDS)

Michelle Malkin: Why don’t people ask him more specific questions about the nails in his hands and feet? There are legitimate questions about whether or not they were self-inflicted wounds.

Russert: What do you mean self-inflicted? Are you suggesting Mr. Christ crucified himself on purpose?

Michelle Malkin: Did you read the book by Barabbas and the Golgotha Veterans for Truth? Some of the thieves who were actually crucified have made allegations that these were self-inflicted wounds.

Jesus: I did not NAIL MYSELF to the cross!

Michelle Malkin: These are men who were there, and they were just TIED to their crosses–

Russert: So you’re saying he maybe used a nail gun? That he did this for sympathy, or publicity–?

Michelle Malkin: So there are doubts about whether or not it was nails or not. And I wish you would ask these questions of Jesus Christ instead of me.

Jesus: I would like a chance to respond–

Russert: We’ve got to go to a break, but we’ll come right back to you, I promise. When we return on Meet the Press.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK. FADE BACK UP ON MEET THE PRESS STUDIO. TIM IS DRINKING A CHALICE OF GOAT’S BLOOD AND LIGHTING A BLACK CANDLE).

Russert: We’re back with our guests, Bob Satan and Jesus Christ, and our panel Michelle Malkin and Ann Coulter. Ann, I’d like to read you a statement by the Virgin Mary, Chairwoman of Mothers Against Armageddon–

Ann Coulter: Oh please. This broad is a millionaire, lionized on frescoes and in scripture about her, reveling in her status as a saint, and stalked by Madonna-parazzies. I have never seen a woman enjoying her son’s death so much.

Russert: Well, her statement — Jimmy, do we have–?

Ann Coulter: This is the left’s doctrine of infallibility. If they have a point to make about Armageddon, about how to fight the war on terrorism, how about sending in somebody we are allowed to respond to? No-No-No. We always have to respond to someone who lost her husband in the Apocalypse. Or some child of a soldier who died at Megiddo. Or some mother whose son died for our sins. God, I hate these bitches!

Jesus: I’d just like to–

Satan: Now I’m an old-fashioned guy. I believe in mothers, and family, and I think marriage is a sacred institution between one man and one woman for the begetting and raising of Anti-Christs. But my opponent seems to have a more casual view of it, since he married a prostitute.

Jesus: I did NOT!

Satan: Have you read the book?

Jesus: That was a novel!

Satan: Do you deny this story was widely printed?

Jesus: It was fiction!

Satan: Oh, I see. So 50 million people who read that book are all wrong, and you’re right. Tim, you see, this is why the people in this country don’t trust the media. This is a perfect example of the insulated, inside-the-beltway attitude of establishment liberals who are out of touch with everyday Americans.

Jesus: It was a NOVEL!

Russert: Yes, but he raises a good point about credibility. You position yourself as the Prince of Peace — I’d just like to play soundbite for you –

(JESUS ON MONITOR: “Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man?s enemies will be the members of his household.”)

Russert: Now there are some people who say that’s a very anti-family attitude.

Jesus: Look, you can’t just take Bible verses out of context and expect to–

Russet: I’m afraid we’re out of time. Satan, I’ll give you the last word.

Satan: Well, Tim, you and your kind will perish slowly, skinned alive then boiled in a cauldron of blood and urine until the meat falls from your bones, and your decayed and maggot-ridden flesh will be consumed by the Beast, and you will languish in torment in his belly for seven years, screaming all the while though you have no mouth –

Russert: Ha, ha! I’m afraid we’re going to have to end it there, just when things were getting good. Satan, always fun to have you on.

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