…because he was “always spilling his seed.”

From Instaputz:

Jonanism, the second-greatest word ever*, is roughly defined here (“any and all loose examples of [Jonah Goldberg's] self-contradictory, tedious piffle”) and coined by my new hero, Calling All Toasters. Pinko Punko speaks the awful truth:

The fact that no one came up with “Jonanism” before the above suggests that the entire snarkopotamia should hang their heads in disgrace and possibly turn in their commenting badges.

It’s sad. But this wrong can righted, can it not? Let’s get this puppy in the vernacular.

I agree. This neologism is like a soothing balm. Let’s apply it generously to the inflamed, throbbing ass of the English language, and help to heal the chromosomal damage that two older, previously useful words, “liberal” and “fascism,” suffered through prolonged exposure to Jonah.

It’ll be like those old commercials they used to air during the holidays, with a stop-motion Santa tobogganing around on a Norelco shaver: “Jonah: Even his name says ‘I’m wanking.’”

Uncategorized | 20 Comments »

Perhaps the world’s greatest prank:

Click here for the back story.

Video Village | 7 Comments »

In his Los Angeles Times column today, Jonah Goldberg bitches that former radicals who engaged in domestic terrorism in the 1960s are allowed to rejoin society and even obtain teaching positions at reputable universities, while neo-cons who sponsored terrorism in Central American in the 1980s can only get jobs in the Bush Administration.

But the real point of the piece is to reveal Jonah’s Two Patented Secrets to being a smartypants. Number 1: You don’t have to worry about being able to answer the question if you only ask questions that answer themselves!

“Okay, repeat after me in unison, and all together, at the same time: Us am smart!”

Here’s a few brief examples:

I don’t think such associations should cost people their careers or place in polite society. But shouldn’t this baggage cost something?

If you’re United Airlines, the cost is $25 for each bag. Unless your baggage contains cocaine designed to fund a guerrilla war in Nicaragua, in which case it’s on the house, and please enjoy the complimentary beverage service.

Why is it only conservative “cranks” who think it’s relevant that Obama’s campaign headquarters in Houston had a Che Guevara-emblazoned Cuban flag hanging on the wall?

Because the only other person likely to care whether you have a Che poster on your wall is your Mom, and once you move out of the house, she’s not the boss of you anymore. (By the way, Jonah, whinging about these kids today, with their inflammatory decor and their electoral support for mulattoes, is pretty much the job description of “conservative ‘cranks,’” at least according to the listings on Monster.com.

Indeed, why is love of Che still radically chic at all? A murderer who believed that “the U.S. is the great enemy of mankind” shouldn’t be anyone’s romantic hero.

You want romance? Do what conservatives do and stick with the classics: Abelard and Héloise. Apollo and Hyacinthus. Peggy Noonan and Reagan’s shoe…(I first saw President Reagan as a foot, highly polished brown cordovan wagging merrily on a hassock. I spied it through the door. It was a beautiful foot, sleek. Such casual elegance and clean lines! But not a big foot, not formidable, maybe a little …frail. I imagined cradling it in my arms, protecting it from unsmooth roads.)

Why are Fidel Castro’s apologists progressive and enlightened but apologists for Augusto Pinochet frightening and authoritarian?

1) Because the latter group is in authority, and they’ve made a frightening mess of it. And 2) Because none of Castro’s apologists, no matter how much they might admire him, want to see Fidel put in charge of Iraq: (I THINK ALL intelligent, patriotic and informed people can agree: It would be great if the U.S. could find an Iraqi Augusto Pinochet. In fact, an Iraqi Pinochet would be even better than an Iraqi Castro.)

Why was Sen. Trent Lott’s kindness to former segregationist Sen. Strom Thurmond a scandal but Obama’s acquaintance with an unrepentant terrorist a triviality?

Probably because Senator Obama didn’t appear at William Ayers’ birthday party and declare, “I want to say this about my state: When the Weather Underground tried to bomb the Pentagon, we supported them. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years, either.”

I have my own answers to these questions. But I’m interested in theirs.

Because that’s the second of Jonah’s Two Patented Secrets to being a smartypantload: Cheat off the other guy’s paper.

In the Democratic debate this week, maybe moderators can resist the temptation to repeat healthcare questions for the billionth time

…because who cares about that crap? Voters in this election must deal with issues of war, national security, civil rights, a ballooning deficit, a housing crisis, a deteriorating job market, skyrocketing fuel prices, and increasingly costly healthcare, and the only way we can determine who is best qualified to lead us through these challenges is for the media to stop dwelling on trivialities and find out who Obama sat next to at the board meetings of a local charity.

…and instead ask America’s foremost liberal representatives why being a radical means never having to say you’re sorry.

And if there’s one thing Jonah’s career has demonstrated, it’s that being an idiot means never having to say you’re sorry, either, since you can usually get by with “oops,” “Mommy!” or “here’s my column — oh, and that stuff that’s making the pages stick together is mayonnaise. Honest.”

Waaah! | 14 Comments »

Hello, I’m Lorne Greene. You may remember me as Ben Cartwright, a man who succeeded in fathering three sons by three different women, without ever getting denounced as a welfare cheat by Ronald Reagan, appearing on an episode of COPS, or being Norman Mailer. You may also recall my stint as Commander Adama, star of the original and infinitely superior version of Battlestar Galactica. But in addition to my lengthy list of film and TV credits, and my inexhaustible supply of neckerchiefs, I’m most proud of my long-running role as a spokesmodel for meat by-products.

Meat is a dog’s natural food. It’s full of protein, energy, and nourishment. And meat’s what he loves most. That’s why I feed my dog ALPO. ALPO Beef Chunks Dinner is meat by-products and beef — without a speck of cereal. Unfortunately, we can’t say the same about today’s movie.

Some chapters of the 1943 Batman serial are filled with fistfights, supervillains, car chases, racism, middle-aged zombies, and The Batman falling from buildings, planes, trestles and trucks. Unfortunately, this isn’t one of those chapters. This episode of the Batman serial has, I’m afraid, more than a speck of cereal. Welcome to Chapter 8: Lured By Radium. Caution: If You Are A Dog, This Episode Is Not To Be Taken Internally.

As you may recall, last week The Batman started a brawl in a Japanese laundry, then turned into a floppy mannequin and was tossed down an elevator shaft. When last seen, the elevator was rapidly descending, threatening to crush our hero, and leaving the high school from Friday Night Lights without a tackling dummy.

Meanwhile, Robin has been beaten senseless by Daka’s spies, who then collected their crisply starched shirts and exited the laundry in an orderly fashion. Suddenly, Robin awakens from his concussion and instantly realizes that somewhere an elevator is about to squash a crash test dummy dressed like a bat, proving that while he can’t fight or wear pants, he did put his downtime to good use by flipping ahead in the script.

Robin runs downstairs, shouting “Broce! Broce!” (Not “Bruce! Bruce!” which he shouldn’t be shouting anyway, since it’s supposed to be a secret identity, but at least he bothers to mispronounce it.) A burglar alarm is ringing (the spy ring’s hideout has a burglar alarm?), and Robin suggests they run for it, because “we don’t want the police to find us in these outfits.” Yes, remember what they did to those trannies at the Stonewall Inn just for wearing false eyelashes and Famolares.

Meanwhile, at Wayne Manor, Linda is also reading the script, and suddenly realizes that she’s playing a nitwit. In a rage, she demands that Bruce drive her out into the middle of the desert, reasoning that her massive, Jiffy Pop-like dome of hair will protect her from the sun, and she’ll get more screen time when the rest of the cast succumbs to heatstroke.

Back at the Japanese Cave of Horrors, Ming refuses to tell the enemy spies where his radium mine is. So Daka puts the salon dryer hood on him and starts to give Ming the Zombification treatment and some highlights. The tough old prospector refuses to yield, until the spark effects set his crepe beard on fire, and he squeals like a pig.

And what have we learned today? That the Bush Administration is right: torture does work, as long as your victim is wearing a fake beard. So just as soon as Al Qaeda starts to recruit the bulk of its radical jihadists from the ranks of department store Santas, we should be able to bust their organization wide open.

Next, in a breathtakingly dull scene, Ming sits in the back of the villains’ sedan and gives them directions to his mine. Really. That’s all that happens. “See where the road branches about two hundred yards ahead? Take the left fork and stop at the turn.” The thugs comply. “Go up the hill,” Ming advises, “and to the left.” And they do. I can just imagine the closing credits: “Action sequence by Mapquest.”

Fortunately, the whole thing comes to a thrilling climax when the traitors find a shady spot to park, and then everybody gets out to stretch their legs. Eventually, the bad guys force Ming to lead them into the Mine Shaft ride at Knott’s Berry Farm, but the wily old prospector realizes that the set isn’t big enough for a chase scene, and escapes his captors by sauntering off camera and going to the commissary.

Meanwhile, Bruce, Dick, Alfred, and Linda drive out to Ming’s cabin and stand around waiting for something to happen. But Bruce and Dick are getting edgy — they’ve been in men’s clothing for hours now, and the strain is starting to show — so they tell Alfred to force-feed Linda from the picnic basket while they run off and change into their costumes.

Suddenly, in the middle of Linda’s entree, Ming pops up through a trapdoor. He’s decided that the only way to save his mine is to blow it up (Ming later gave up prospecting to serve on General William Westmoreland’s staff in Vietnam) and grabs a box of dynamite.

Meanwhile, our heroes wander into the mine shaft, mistaking it for a bar on First Avenue that specializes in rough trade.

Then the action heats up and things really get dull. Ming goes back down the trapdoor with the explosives, while Alfred sprints toward the mine to warn Bruce and Dick not to don their fetish gear because there’s dynamite involved. But he gets captured by two men in business suits who are either wandering Japanese spies, or friends of Dick Cheney who are hunting pen-raised quail and fey butlers on a game ranch. Cut back to Linda, who climbs down through the trapdoor just in time to see the Batman and Robin stage a lame fight scene. And, as usual, the Batman gets his ass kicked. Seriously, he couldn’t win a fight with a boxing nun doll.

But one of the thugs turns out to be even clumsier than our hero, because he trips and falls on the detonator like Alec Guinness at the end of Bridge on the River Kwai, thus breaking a longstanding tradition. Because instead of falling down, the Batman blows up.

Join us next week, at this theater, for Chapter 9: The Sign of the Sphinx!

Movies | 7 Comments »

Updated below

From the transcript of the Corny Collins Hugh Hewitt Show: “Mark Steyn on Hillary Clinton’s electoral strength, the supergay, gay superdelegates”

HH: I’ve got a special treat today, because I’ve pretaped an interview tomorrow with Jonah Goldberg…

…allowing us to edit out the long interregna during which Jonah just sat and made fart noises with his armpit.

…author of the bestselling Liberal Fascism, and I’m on my way tonight to the Southern Hemisphere. I’m talking today with Columnist To the World, Mark Steyn. You can read all of Mark’s work at www.steynonline.com. Get America Alone if you haven’t already…

…because I’m telling you, America’s a sure thing, dude, she’s a total slut! Just make your brother buy you a sixpack of Mickey’s Wide Mouths, and get her under the bleachers…

Mark, good Wednesday to you.

And Good Sabbath to you, Reb Hewitt.

MS: Happy Wednesday to you, too, Hugh, and that is a great book, that Jonah Goldberg book.

HH: It really has gotten under the skin of the left, because I think it talks in an unpleasant for them terms about the reality of the leftist impulse towards totalitarianism

MS: Yes, and I think he’s absolutely right about that, that totalitarianism in the Western world today, it’s not Il Duce strutting about in preposterous uniforms in a semi-militarized state.

Yes, indeed.

HH: You know what I think the left hates, Mark, about Jonah, and you share this with him as well, is they can deal with the Russell Kirks of the new millennium. They can deal with the furrowed brow and the people who are talking in hushed tones. They hate the humor. They cannot stand dealing with people who are funny in replying to them.

MS: Yup. No, I think there’s a big part of that, because again, their sense of themselves is that they are the funny guys, that in fact, they take the view, which I think is almost exactly wrong, that humor is by definition left wing. And of course, that cannot be, because humor is about recognition and observation. And if you hedge yourself in with as many absurdities as the modern left does, so that you cannot accurately identify facets of radical Islam or whatever, you can’t actually identify the comedy in life.

Jihadists call it “suicide bombing,” Republicans call it “observational humor.”

HH: Let’s not duck from the reality of what’s going on again with the cartoons.

“Josie and the Pussycats were a necessary, and I daresay, resonant clarion call for the right of young women to compete on equal terms in the male-dominated field of arena rock, so long as they wore animal-print bathing suits on stage and had the word “pussy” somewhere in their name to differentiate their compositions from the music of bands that rocked out with their cocks out. But I think you’ll agree with me that Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space trivialized the very real stakes in the Cold War space race.”

HH: That’s true. Mark, we’ve got about a minute as well, I’ve got to make sure I get your reaction. Is the Hillary Clinton Humpty Dumpty incapable of being put back together again? And if so, why?

MS: Well, you hear all these theories now. I linked at National Review earlier today to some story in a gay Washington newspaper that says Hillary still leads among super gay delegates…not super gay delegates, gay superdelegates.

HH: (laughing)

MS: I don’t know, maybe they are super gay delegates. Maybe they’re super gay gay superdelegates.

HH: Are they gay supermen delegates?

MS: Only in the Democratic Party.

And by popular request…

“I am not gay, I have never been gay. I’m sure if I even tried to be gay, I’d really, really suck at it.”

“You try texting with only one thumb!”

And of course, representing the conservative blogosphere, Corporal Matt Sanchez and his enormous dick:

Smell the Man Musk | 16 Comments »

Welcome to the latest installment in our continuing effort to get through the 1943 Columbia serial The Batman, one episode per week, the way it was intended to be seen, and to make you all suffer along with me.

Chapter 7: The Phony Doctor

When we last left our hero, he’d turned into a chunky stuntman who’d doubled over and collapsed after getting punched right in the Bat-fat. Meanwhile, hydrochloric acid pours out of a bullet-riddled Doughboy Pool and washes over the live wires writhing on the floor, touching off an explosion. The entire ceiling collapses, and the Batman is simultaneously crushed, electrocuted, and asphyxiated by chemical fumes while his corpse is hideously disfigured by the spreading puddle of acid.

Robin runs out of the cardboard vault screaming “Bruce! Bruce!” at the top of his lungs. Really, Dick, do you even care about the secret identities anymore? Admit it, this whole thing is just an excuse for you to put on a cape and run around without pants on.

Anyway, they come upon the burnt, crushed, rapidly dissolving body of Bruce, but before anyone can puke, the Batman just shakes it off.

“Boy, you were lucky,” Robin says. “Those beams formed an arch to protect you.” Yeah. Actually, I think what protected him was the writers’ need to throw together some lame solution to last week’s cliffhanger so they could punch out and start pounding whiskey sours at Formosa.

In all the excitement, Alfred’s fake beard has come unglued, prompting the Batman to pat his butler’s bare cheek and teasingly murmur, “You think that half a beard is better than none at all, Alfred?” The fey factotum responds by making a moué and squeaking, “Ooh! Ooh!” I don’t know what kind of cuisine Alfred is serving Bruce and Dick at Wayne Manor, but I’m pretty sure it’s heavily seasoned with soy.

Back in mufti, Bruce phones Miner Ming to say the villains are probably on their way back to his hotel. Ming doesn’t appear concerned, as he stuffs a .45 Colt Peacemaker down his pants and declares, ‘I’ve handled tougher hombres than them before,” which sounds like really cool, authentic frontier gibberish, except that he pronounces the “H” in “hombre.” Ming hangs up, then dons a special rig under his coat that delivers a Derringer into his hand with the flick of a wrist. Okay, The Batman doesn’t have a Batmobile, he doesn’t have Batarangs, and so far the only thing he’s pulled out of his utility belt is a pack of smokes, but this grizzled old hardscrabble prospector has cool, James Bondian gadgets? WTF?

The Batman drops a pack of Lucky Strikes as he climbs down a fire escape (h/t to Happenstance)

Suddenly, a doctor shows up. Apparently, the studio’s insurance company requires that Ming have a physical before he’s allowed to participate in a fight sequence. For a miner, however, Ming seems surprisingly delicate, because he passes out at the first whiff of a chloroform-soaked handkerchief shoved into his face. The Phony Doctor signals for a Phony Ambulance, which we can tell is phony because on the front of the vehicle, “Ambulance” is spelled “Ambulance” instead of “ecnalubmA.”

In keeping with tradition, Bruce and Dick arrive too late, and the bad guys get away, but not without leaving a clue behind. Bruce instantly recognizes the all-too-familiar smell of chloroform in the air, then he locates the doctor’s discarded handkerchief, and he and Dick take turns sniffing it. Call me a prude, but it seems a bit frivolous to indulge your chloroform fetish when a man’s life is in danger. But then, it’s pretty clear by now that the Batman and Robin’s whole crime-fighting crusade is just an elaborate excuse for their cos-play, and other pervy shenanigans. After trading increasingly deep snorts, Bruce giddily snatches the handkerchief away and they chase each other out the door.

Back at the Bat Lab, Bruce gazes at the captured handkerchief under a blacklight, because he is so high right now. “See that mark in the corner?” Bruce asks. “That’s a Japanese laundry mark.”

Dick scoffs, “I’ve never heard of a Japanese laundry.” Yeah, why can’t these ethnic types keep their stereotypical occupations straight? The next thing you know, we’ll have the Quaker Oats guy show up as a Pullman porter

However, Bruce just happens to know of a Japanese laundry in the warehouse district, and they make plans to go there later that night. But first they eat a bag of Bugles, then Bruce shows Dick how cat urine glows under the blacklight, and they totally get the giggles.

Back at the lair, Dr. Daka’s minions bring in Ming on a stretcher, and the string tie-sporting superspy interrogates him about the location of his radium mine. But not only is Ming merciless, he’s stubborn, too. Daka changes tactics and uses his Mr. Microphone to summon Uncle Martin – Ming’s old friend and benefactor. The middle-aged zombie shambles in, and a stunned Ming seizes him by the arms and shouts, “Marty! Marty! Don’t ya know me?” Suddenly, It’s A Wonderful Bat-Life.

Daka can’t resist showing off how strong his flabby, dew-lapped, above-draft-age zombies are, and orders Martin to strangle Ming, then signals that he’s laughing by slowly, painstakingly annunciating the words, “Hee! Hee! Hee!” Ming can’t stand Daka’s affected chortling, however, and before the supervillain has a chance to laboriously over-pronounce the words, “Har-de-har-har,” Ming pulls the ol’ Derringer up the sleeve trick. He takes Daka hostage and tries to escape through the Japanese Cave of Horrors, but he gets clubbed senseless by one of the exhibits. This struck a chord, since I was once beaten to a pulp by the dolls in It’s A Small World.

Back to our heroes. The Batman and Robin drop through a skylight into the Japanese laundry and start hitting people, who obligingly smack them in return. I understand, and even admire the Batman’s refusal to use firearms, but I have to say, I’m even more impressed by the way Gotham’s criminal underworld respects his scruples and refrains from pulling a gun whenever he shows up and starts punching them in the face. Anyway, the Batman and Robin have their usual fight scene, which consists of sloppy haymakers punctuated by the Batman’s efforts to disentangle himself from his own cape.

Suddenly, one of the thugs charges the Batman from behind. The caped crusader turns and delivers an uppercut, and the thug goes into premature rigor mortis, and slowly does the Nestea Plunge into a pile of laundry.

Well, we’re almost at the end of the chapter…about time for Batman to fall to his death. His options are limited, since he’s indoors, so he takes what he can get and falls down an elevator shaft. And this time, we actually get to see him land – face-first, right on the concrete floor of the shaft, with an impact so terrific it almost knocks the horsehair stuffing out of the dummy. Well, that seems like a sufficiently crappy end to a crappy day, but the thugs are apparently aspiring screenwriters who’ve taken Robert McKee’s seminar, and they “up the ante” by sending the elevator down to crush what’s left of the Batmannequin.

Well, this is where we left off last time, so next Sunday we’ll be heading into terra incognita with Chapter 8: Lured By Radium! (The sluttiest of all isotopes!)

If you’re a glutton for punishment, or just as confused as I am, click here for the previous entries:
Chapter One … Chapter Two … Chapter Three … Chapter Four … Chapter Five … Chapter Six …

Movies | 5 Comments »

I was pretty sure K-Lo completely covered this subject back in July with her “Coming Attractions with Substance” piece in Townhall. (Who can forget her pitch for the riveting biopic, Cheney!…)

He was White House chief of staff. He was secretary of defense. They thought his career was over. And then he became one of the most hated and feared politicians in the land, one heartbeat away from the presidency. But that was only the beginning. After months of the politicos’ eyeing the field, Dick Cheney surprised them all by storming in late in the race and taking the Republican nomination for president in 2008.

…at gunpoint.

But while K-Lo’s piece was in deadly — if not actually mass-murdering — earnest, screenwriter and novelist Andrew Klavan brings a puckish sense of whimsy to Hollywood’s upcoming anschluss with the liberal-run Reichsfilmkammer. In a commentary in today’s Los Angeles Times (my hometown paper, and the reason I recently bought a Hyacinth Macaw — mightiest of the parrot family, weighing in at nearly four pounds — because I wanted something that could crap on the Op-Ed page with authority) entitled “The Right Kind of Oscars, he takes us down a crazy rabbit hole where up is down and black is not allowed to vote:

Well, the writers strike is over, the Oscars will go on and, by golly, we conservatives just can’t wait to watch Hollywood pat itself on the back for another year of anti-American, anti-military, anti-traditionalist filmmaking.

“Traditionalist filmmakers,” for you rubes in Flyover Land, are those who reject the authenticity of any newfangled movie not made using William Lincoln’s patented zoopraxiscope method.

And while red-carpet anticipation is giving me the shivers, I can’t help but imagine an alternative Oscar ceremony in a different kind of Hollywood with this list of exciting best picture nominees:

“Oono.” Hilarity ensues when a 16-year-old girl finds herself pregnant and gives the baby away to a similarly unmarried neurotic so that the infant grows up to become a drug-addicted loser and dies of an overdose at 23, whereupon the hilarity abruptly stops. What struck me about this film was that Hollywood filmmakers finally ended their attempts to sanitize and glamorize the irresponsible lifestyles that are destroying their own children before the paparazzi’s very eyes. A production of Don’t Hold Your Breath Films in association with Not in This Lifetime Pictures.

Finally! Someone else who agrees with me that Juno should really just have gotten that parasite vacuumed out, rather than leaving her child to be raised by Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck, which when you think about it is really just a slow motion, time-release abortion.

“From the Jaws of Defeat.” A hard-charging general races against time to win an unpopular war before self-serving politicians can engineer a surrender. This film became a front-runner after a moving Time magazine interview in which impassioned studio head Bernie Wattle declares, “Look, I’m just a fat little man in a suit making movies, but these soldiers are out there risking their lives to fight some of the worst enemies this country has ever faced. What kind of people would we be if we made films attacking our soldiers and their mission?”

So does Al-Qaeda have a battleship? I’m just curious about where we’re going to sign this surrender. But I have to say, the Occupation of America couldn’t be better timed. Like the Japanese after World War II, we need a conqueror to dictate us a new Constitution, since the one we’ve got now is clearly as porous as a picket fence (I mean, we can’t even tell if our Vice President is part of the Executive or the Judicial Branch — for all we know, he’s in Accounting, or IT), and like all the Axis nations, we could use a Marshall Plan to lift our war-shattered economy out of the doldrums.

“All the Prosecutor’s Men.” Journalistic heroics based on a true story. Intrepid radio talk show host Sean Hannity…

Oh, so it’s a Dali/Bunuel film, like Un Chien Andalou, or L’Age d’or…

…fights for justice when the mainstream media attempt to railroad four innocent white students who’ve been falsely charged with the rape of a black woman. It’s the dialogue that wins the day here. Take the scene in which fanatical news weekly editor Chet Shallow (played by two-time Oscar nominee Phil Shallow)

…it’s little touches like this that remind you that Andrew is a highly paid professional writer!

…snarls, “This narrative is about race and gender. The facts don’t matter.” To which our square-jawed hero snaps back, “This is journalism, chucklehead. The facts are supposed to shape the narrative, not the other way around.” I mean, this stuff just crackles.

So does bubblewrap, but I’m not sure I can watch someone sit there and pop the stuff for two hours.

“Clayton Michaels.” A chemical corporation that employs thousands of people, enhances agriculture and protects millions from disease is nearly destroyed by money-grubbing lawyers who smack it with a bogus billion-dollar lawsuit. Most interesting here was the statement by the filmmakers that they “committed to this project because we were tired of feeding our families with corporate paychecks while making movies about how evil corporations are. This more honest depiction of the benefits of capitalism seemed to restore some of our integrity.”

“Also, Union Carbide slipped us a cool mil to finish the film after everyone who had ever walked by their plant in Jaffna, Sri Lanka spontaneously combusted.”

“The Hours and Hours and Hours.” An apparently committed lesbian reveals her true yearning to become a wife and mother.

I don’t see where the drama comes in. All she needs is a turkey baster and a trip to Vermont…

She gets married, devotes herself to her husband and two kids and looks back at 80 to find she’s lived a happy and fulfilling life. OK, this one was a bit slow for me, but I did enjoy the scene in which the heroine’s executive sister returns from yet another business trip and declares, “I feel so empowered!” before bursting into hysterical sobs.

Again, I don’t see the tragic potential here — hysterical sobs are common enough. For instance, if everyone who read the above paragraph and decided that Andrew needed a good cock-punching actually bothered to deliver it, he’d be feeling as empowered as all heck right now.

“Good Night, Uncle Joe.”

Oh you’re not really gonna go there, are you? Jesus Christ on a Sybian…

In the 1950s, a dogged congressional investigator hunts down a screenwriter who’s been propagandizing and organizing in support of a Soviet regime that has murdered millions of people.

Screenwriters were The Most Dangerous Game back then, and tracking them down often involved exhausting trips into the wilds of Ciro’s, the Trocadero, and the Coconut Grove before finally running your prey to ground at the bar in the Mocambo.

In this groundbreaking work, Hollywood finally takes responsibility for the many filmmakers who gave propaganda and financial and organizational support to one of the most repressive and homicidal governments in history.

Cyrus Nowrasteh, of The Path to 9/11 is the first up against the wall…Lionel Chetwynd, of DC 9/11: Time of Crisis is in the on-deck circle…

The ad line, “Ideas Matter,” says it all.

“If It’s Mattel, It’s Swell,” says just a bit more, however…

Of course, we’ll have to wait until Oscar night to find out who the winner is — or until hell freezes over, whichever takes longest.

Remember folks, these are the kinds of jokes that only a professional conservative writer can provide. For a complete transcript of this column and its many humorous japes, write to “The U.S. Government Guide to Mummery, Tomfoolery, and Monkeyshines, Pueblo, CO, 81001.

Really? | 29 Comments »

We’ve posted this before on the old site, but we hope to make it an annual holiday tradition.

A survey indicates that 78% of Americans are currently in a romantic relationship (and since we saw this on one of those VH-1 pop culture shows where they get all sentimental about Voltron and Shrinky Dinks, it must be accurate). For these people, there is Valentine’s Day, a time to show your loved one just how much you care by buying him or her a tacky gift and a pre-printed card. And while some cynics maintain that the holiday was invented by Fanny Farmer and FTD, we shouldn’t forget the person for whom the day is named, Saint Valentine, the Christian martyr who was shot by gangsters in a garage in Chicago over a shipment of bootleg Whitman’s Samplers.

Don’t get the wrong idea; we approve of Valentine’s Day, if only because a holiday celebrating romance is better than one honoring some of the other popular themes in American society, like random gun violence or daytime TV, thus saving us a trip to Wal*Mart to buy a heart-shaped box of hollow-points for that Special Someone.)

Nevertheless, we don’t think it’s quite fair that couples get Valentine’s Day and Sweetest Day, the third Saturday in October (described as “a day to honor and be kind to one’s sweetheart”). While Sweetest Day has never really caught on with shoppers (despite the urging of florists, who fail to see much Halloween business) it is still listed on most calendars and celebrated by many parochial schools. So, since people who need people are the luckiest people in the world, we think that it’s only right that the 22% of the populace who are not in a relationship get a holiday of their own. Thus, for everyone who won’t be getting flowers, a diamond, or dinner and an amateur strip show this Valentine’s Day, we would like to propose a special day, just for us. We call it Bitterest Day.

Bitterest Day, celebrated on the 15^th of February, will be the official anti-romance holiday. It will be a legal holiday, involving time off work with full pay, but only for those who are nobody because nobody loves them. Its motto will be, “I am not appealing to the opposite sex, so I have lots of disposable income to spend on consumer goods.”

Let us now explain some of the customs and traditions of this newest American holiday:

Cards

We all know that an integral part of Valentine’s Day is those frilly, mushy, overpriced bits of cardboard which all spouses and sweethearts are required to buy, under penalty of a booty moratorium. Bitterest Day also has its cards, but you don’t send them to that Special Someone. No, you send them to one member of that Special Twosome. Indeed, you choose the cutest, sweetest, ickiest couples you can think of, and “Care enough to send the very worst.” And although you may address the card to Marsha, your intended audiences is John (or vice versa). After all, they do share everything, right?

Here are a couple of sample cards:

Front cover: When you left, you took my heart. But you left behind . . .
Inside: THESE! (Attached is a pair of crotchless panties.)

Front cover: How do you make love last forever?
Inside: I don’t know. But I DO know how to make you pay for it for 18 years. (Attached are authentic-looking paternity test results.)

Food

While lovers get 5-pound boxes of chocolates and expensive candlelit dinners at French restaurants, what do we, the non-adored get? Well, we also get expensive dinners at French restaurants. This is how it works. You call up “Danny,” your ex-boyfriend, and you tell him that you read in Ann Landers that it’s “Reconciliation Day” today, and you want to invite him to sup at Chez l’Imbecile to demonstrate that you’ve “gotten beyond” everything. Mention that you also want to invite Klamidia, the stewardess he dumped you for, since you know she must be a special lady.

When they arrive, tell them that this is a special occasion, and urge them to order the most expensive things on the menu—you do the same. During dinner, offer small talk such as, “I’m so happy to see that the two of you are still together. It’s rare to see somebody forgive the person who gave them . . .oh, but I shouldn’t be talking about periodic discharge at the dinner table!” And, “Danny, I have such special memories of our time together–I think of them whenever I watch the videos. Hey, have you heard about those websites where they pay for amateur bedroom tapes? Kind of intriguing, huh?”

Then, while they are enjoying dessert, get up to “powder your nose.” Keep on walking right out of the restaurant, leaving the check for them. Worried about repercussions? On Bitterest Day, there are none. It’s the law.

Flowers

Okay, maybe you won’t be getting two dozen red roses, but that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy nature’s bounty. As a celebrant of Bitterest Day, you’ll get your fill of posies by spending time in a floral shop—whichever floral shop uses the most annoying Valentine’s Day ad this year. (My nominee is the one that cautions “Don’t break her heart this Valentine’s Day—get her the roses she deserves, if you really care.”)

On February 15^th, the florist will be exhausted, stressed, and probably suffering from methamphetamine withdrawal. So, use Bitterest Day to choose massively complicated flower arrangements for your upcoming wedding! Surely you’ll need to look at LOTS of design books and at TONS of samples to plan the floral arrangements for the extravaganza your daddy, the Senator, will be giving his little girl. And since you are something of a bubble brain, you will have a hard time remembering just exactly what they call those white blossoms that you’ve always dreamed of for your bouquet. (“Bougainvillea? Tuberoses? No, wait, I think they’re called carnations!”)

After five or six hours, when you have finally gotten everything settled, call your fiancé and tell him the plans. Sputter, stutter, mutter some profanities, and finally yell, “Then the wedding is OFF!” and slam down the phone. Inform the florist that you could never marry a man who didn’t love baby’s breath as much as you do. But feel no need to apologize for wasting the petal monger’s time–for you’ve just helped another curmudgeon learn the true meaning of Bitterest Day! Which brings us to…

Bitterest Day Holiday Specials

Let’s face it; we all lead rushed, harried lives that leave little time for the simple joys of an old-fashioned holiday celebration. That’s where the media comes in, since it often takes a showing of “It’s a Wonderful Life,” or “Frosty the Snowman” before we can begin to feel the Christmas spirit. So it is with Bitterest Day.Of course, in our version of the typical Rankin-Bass animated special, Frosty has nerve-endings, and he screams as he melts. Screams quite a lot, actually, until the children who pranced so gaily around him are left pale and shaken, and his last, whispered words, “I’ll be BACK again, someday…!” haunts the dreams of all who witnessed his hideous demise.

For the adults, meanwhile, there’s that Bitterest Day perennial, “The Bishop’s Wife,” in which an angel is sent to Earth to restore a churchman’s wavering faith, and help him to erect a cathedral. In short order, the angel cuckolds the hapless cleric, then hatches a ghost payrolling scheme with the mobbed-up local union boss to funnel the construction funds to an offshore account, leaving the Bishop behind to face charges of peculation while the angel and the Bishop’s wife enjoy an extradition-free life on Grand Cayman.

So, in conclusion, we urge you to open your heart to Bitterest Day, the one day a year in which it’s okay to be an old maid living with nine cats, or a quiet loner with a large collection of guns and porn. For the most important part of Bitterest Day is feeling good about yourself as a person in your own right, and realizing that you don’t have to be part of a couple in order to be okay. Plus, on Bitterest Day, you don’t have to wear anything that makes you look like a prostitute Care Bear, and can wander around your dusty house in the tattered remains of a wedding dress without enduring any snide references to “Great Expectations.” So get on the phone to Merlin Olson today, and say it with Bitterness.

Happy Holidays | 19 Comments »

Janet M. LaRue, a former Concerned Women of America, host of various SCTV programs, and current Townhall pundit, wants you to take part in a shocking thought experiment that will change the way you think…Forever!

Janet M. LaRue (far right) in undated file photo.

Sen. Barack Obama is highly intelligent, likeable, articulate (no racism intended)

It just slipped out.

…dynamic, well-educated and witty. He is receiving virtually worshipful coverage from the news media.

Now imagine the Republican presidential front runner is a highly intelligent, likeable, articulate, dynamic, well-educated and witty conservative.

Okay, but I’ll need drugs. You holding?

He is also black and formerly liberal. His name is Clarence Thomas.

Never mind. I see someone apparently licked the whole blotter before I could get to it.

What would be missing from the picture?

Melting clocks?

The adoring mainstream media, for one. What would we find? The rank racist comments, cartoons, editorials, speeches, etc., reserved for black conservatives by liberals of all colors.

When will conservatives finally summon the courage to take on all the liberal champions of racism, whether they be white, black, cranberry blush, soft azalea, heather graphite, tropical aqua, spring coral, celery, or loden.

Obama and Thomas are about as far apart politically as it gets. If they were cities, you’d need satellite tracking to pinpoint both, and they wouldn’t be in Georgia.

I have no idea what this paragraph means, but I do know that wherever Lewis Carroll is right now, he’s really, really jealous.

But there are important similarities. Both were deserted by their fathers and were primarily reared by their grandparents. And both have written an autobiography.

No wonder they keep getting each other’s mail.

In his book, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, he tells his boyhood search for identity and the rage he felt as a young black man…

You’d also need GPS technology to find any criticism of Obama’s “rage” or lashing out in the rave reviews of his book by the MSM…

Yes, Global Positioning Satellite technology is to today’s Formerly Concerned Woman what the words “space” and “atomic” where to yesteryear’s pulp science fiction writers: dimly grasped vectors for pizzazz!

Thomas also shares his transformation from liberal to conservative, which included intense interaction with Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams and other conservatives, black and white. Thomas also makes his case against those who would confine black Americans to liberal orthodoxy, as he did at his contentious confirmation hearing before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee.

Remember kids, it was all about liberating African-Americans from the intellectual plantations of liberal orthodoxy, and not about inviting female subordinates to lunch hour screenings of Long Dong Silver videos in your office.

Won’t it be wonderful when racism declines to the point that a black conservative has an equal chance to achieve the American dream without experiencing a nightmare at the hands of “abusive monsters?”

You’ll note that in the long history of abusive monsters, from Godzilla to Cloverfield, it’s always the black conservatives who die first.

I Pity the Fool | 23 Comments »

Roy Scheider. 1932 — 2008.

One Of The Good Dead Ones | 12 Comments »