This... Is C-R-A-P.

Memo to the Washington Press Corps: GROW A PAIR.

What the fuck is "negotiating with myself", and how can you sit there and let it pass as an answer to a question, or even an excuse for getting out of answering a question?

I was sitting there, watching the year-end presidential news conference, and on top of the usual array of evasions, talking-point restatements, complete diversions into entirely unrelated topics, and half-assed jokes the press corps let Dubya use to get out of answering their questions, now Bush is proclaiming repeatedly that he refuses to "negotiate with himself" over Social Security.

How does anyone with even a remote understanding of journalism and its nature not just snap and revolt and start yelling at that point? What does it take to provoke these people into standing up for themselves? How many times do you have to get pissed on from the podium before you realize that maybe you should spend a little less time trying to one-up each other and spend a little more time not getting your balls handed to you time and time again by a trained monkey and his handlers?

"You're trying to get me to negotiate with myself." You know what "negotiating with myself" means? THINKING. It means the President is not going to think about the point you raised, consider the question you've asked, because the question you've asked might contradict the path he's chosen.

They call journalists "the fourth estate", which is appropriate, since "estate" is increasingly associated with CORPSES. I know why they do what they do, why they let this shit go, why they roll over and play the game. Because now that their parent companies are making money off of the news, the ability to provide the product is more important than the quality of the product. CNN can't be shut out. CBS can't be shut out. They're asking pussy questions and accepting non-answers to preserve their ability to ask pussy questions and accept non-answers in the future. Which is compeltely useless as news, but is great when you need to fill 24 hours a day with random, meaningless footage and government propaganda.

Oh, and to CNN's anchors and analysts: TAKING TOUGH QUESTIONS is not a virtue when you don't have to answer them. You can be asked all the tough questions that you want, and when there's no penalty for dodging them, no penalty for answering a completely different question nobody asked, no penalty for providing an answer that's inadequate, inaccurate, ridiculous, or an outright lie, "tough questions" becomes an oxymoron.

Beyond that, an hour-long news conference, in which the first fifteen minutes are spent reading a prepared speech, is not "exhaustive". Stop lowering the fucking bar. If spending 45 minutes answering questions, something Dubya does only a couple of times a year anyway, is "exhaustive", then maybe there's something wrong with the person in charge. If it takes that much effort to fire up the old neurons and send the result to his lie-hole, he cannot do the fucking job. Which we knew anyway, didn't we.

And another thing. Why has nobody reported Bush learning a new word? He whipped out "complex" three or four times in a short space yesterday, and only screwed it up once, using "complicated" instead before correcting himself. This is big, big news! Now, when people say Bush is incapable of understanding "complex situations", at least the right can now counter that he knows what both those words mean.

In any proper world, a performance like yesterday's should have damn near sparked a bum-rush of the stage. Riots in the newsrooms. Loud demands for follow-up questions, instead of allowing Bush to smack you around with his down-homey "wit" every time you dare consider asking more than one question of the guy who thinks he runs the country. No matter how much you pretend otherwise, that is supposed to be your fucking job.

Thirty years ago, the press took down a president who was grossly abusing his power. Five years ago, you got used as a tool to try to take down another president for getting his dick sucked. And now, you're just getting used. Money doesn't buy happiness, but it does seem to make a fabulous substitute for self-respect.

Spastic Topic Monkey Goes To Washington Friday

The Topic Monkey got into the Halloween candy last night, which wouldn't have been so bad, but the Halloween Candy was chocolate-covered espresso beans sprinkled with a fairy-dusting of crystal meth. Gets the little bastards to the next house really fast.

Memo to everyone, what with Halloween actually upon us. DON'T DRESS UP YOUR PETS. They're ANIMALS. They don't know shit about Halloween. They want to be fed, they want to have a place to take a whizz, they want their heads petted, maybe chase something. They don't know what a fairy princess is, or why they look like one, or what that crap is on their head, or why you're laughing.

If you want to make your pet look ridiculous, that's why God made Photoshop.

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And speaking of shitty costumes... "Azzam The American"? AZZAM THE AMERICAN? If you don't know, ABC and FOX have been running an as-yet unauthenticated tape that appears to be the Star Wars Kid from the Internet with a Pizza Hut tablecloth on his head, saying he's an American Al Qaeda operative, that we're all gonna die, and mentioning, among other things, Bill Maher, the Massachussets gay marriage ruling, the 9/11 commission, and the "defiling of our lovely falafel by that O'Reilly infidel". I may have made that last one up.

The CIA, while not authenticating the tape, said it bore "all the hallmarks" of an Al Qaeda production, including "being on videotape", "Arabic letters on the screen", and "guy in a headdress threatening America and saying he was from Al Qaeda". Come on, people. Pretty soon, Azzam The American will be what parents use to scare their kids. "If you're not good, Azzam the American will come to your bedroom and your sheets will run red with blood!"

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And speaking of our favorite falafel fetishist, O'Reilly The Superfreak settled out of court with Andrea Mackris. I'm both pleased and disappointed. Disappointed because, under the terms of the settlement, we'll never get to hear the tapes we all know she had, plus the settlement includes both parties agreeing that "no wrongdoing" took place, so O'Reilly can fall back on that for the rest of his life. But I'm pleased, because the man who said "I'm going to take a stand. I'm a big mouth on the air and I'm a big mouth off the air." a few weeks ago is now saying "I will never speak of it again." Which, when translated into English, means "I did it, she had tapes, I paid her off."

By avoiding a messy court battle, O'Reilly knows that his story will soon be forgotten. He should know, he's on the front lines of determining which stories stick and which ones get forgotten. In the interests of comedy, however, I urge all my readers to mention the whole falafel thing any time Bill O'Reily comes up in conversation from now on. It's the least we can do for a man who's given us so much.

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And speaking of "the least one can do", George W. Bush has now described John Kerry as "the wrong man for the wrong job at the wrong time". It's meant to be a play on Kerry's Iraq war statements, but the more I look at it, the less I'm able to parse it. Is Bush saying the Presidency is the "wrong job"? And how can he say it's the "wrong time"? November is when we have these things, George. Every four years.

It's a triple negative, which means it's still negative, but if you discount the "wrong job" part for making no fucking sense, then it's a DOUBLE negative, which makes it a positive, but then you have to discount the "wrong time" part for not making a lot of fucking sense, and then it's a single negative, but then you have to discount Bush entirely for being El Fucktardo Primero, so you're back to square one. The grammar of the politics of the rhetoric of politics can be oh so very confusing.

Getting The Most Out Of Old Household Tools

Memo to George W. Bush, the entire Justice Department, Ed Gillespie, and Kimberly Parmer: FUCK YOU IN THE EAR-HOLE WITH A RUSTY AWL.

I know that sounds harsh now, but trust me, I have my reasons. And here these reasons are, in the very words of the potential earholefuckees themselves:

"My opponent has no plan, no vision, just a long list of complaints. But a Monday morning quarterback has never led any team to victory." - George W. Bush. Fuck you in the ear-hole with a rusty awl*. Happening to mention that you've fucked up is not Monday morning quarterbacking. War is not a sport. Three hundred and seventy tons of explosives is not the ball between Bill Buckner's legs. People like John Kerry HAVE to keep pointing out that you've fucked up, because you keep fucking up, and you won't admit it.

Plus, you imbecile, you only "Monday Morning Quarterback" the LOSERS from Sunday. There'd be no second guessing if the people in charge had gotten their first guess right. Perhaps, someday, you will know what a job done properly looks like, so that you will be able to recognize it and distinguish it from everything else you've ever done ever, but until then, just trust me. And try not to hand over any more huge quantities of explosives to our enemies between now and January 20, OK?

"Many Democrats in this country do not recognise their party anymore. Today, I want to speak to every one of them: if you believe that America should lead with strength and purpose and confidence in our ideals, I would be honoured to have your support." - Mr. President, you have two ears. I would explain to you that the reason Democrats don't recognize their own party anymore is because all the Democrats are TRYING TO BE LIKE YOU, but the metaphorical awls keep getting in the way. Plus, you're an idiot.

"This administration has made it clear from the outset that members of al Qaeda and other terrorist groups do not necessarily enjoy the protections of the Geneva Conventions. Al Qaeda members and other foreign terrorists in Iraq illegally would not be entitled to the Geneva Convention protections. That's consistent with our opinion on Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan." - An unnamed senior Justice Department official. Fuck you in the earholes with a rusty awl, the lot of you, and a second bonus awl for your Imperious Leader Ashcroft.

Go back to covering up stone titties and arresting Tommy Chong, why don't you? You want to take prisoners, ship them off to other countries, hide them from the world, and we're supposed to take your word that it's OK 'cause you say they're terrorists? You lost an election to a rotting corpse. You have less credibility than the kind of lying bastard governments the Geneva Convention was designed to thwart. I hope you get the first pink slip handed out on January 21. Maybe you can sell it on eBay as a collectible.

"Look, the Republican candidate will never win the contest for editorial board endorsements. The major dailies across the country tend to skew liberal." - RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie. Fuck you. Guess where. Guess with what. And guess how many rusty awls we're going to have to scrounge up for all the fucks in the media who let you come on their shows and say things like this, which are demonstrably and patently FALSE.

You know how many times the Republican candidate won the contest for editorial board endorsements? Thirteen. You know how many times they've lost? Two, plus, it seems, the current one. You know who won the contest in 2000? BUSH. The statistics only go back to 1940, so while we can set a lower boundary on how big a lying, fuckwit monkeybrain Ed Gillespie is, we cannot set an upper limit. Plus, there's six days to go. That's plenty of time for ol' Ed to rack up his retardo quotient.

"If you actually look at him, and he stands up next to Kerry, you just kind of feel sorry for him. I feel he's more of an underdog, he's had a hard go of it in the last four years." - Kimberly Parmer, of Michigan, quoted in the New York Times about why, despite being an "undecided voter", she may end up voting for Bush. EARHOLES! AWLS! RUSTY! NOW! In fact, I'd like to get a team of surgeons to add approximately FIVE MORE EARS to you at various locations on your body. I'll tell you it's an extreme makeover or something. Because two rusty awls simply doesn't seem like enough earfucking for a sentence this stupid.

You do not support someone for Leader Of The Fucking Free World because you feel sorry for how badly he's doing the job. And frankly, the rest of us would appreciate it if you would not ruin things for the rest of us because of your inexplicable desire to give George W. Bush an electoral pity-fuck. If things go badly on Tuesday, it will be largely on the heads of the Kimberly Parmers of this country. Hooray for the rusty awl of democracy, which fucks us all in the ear-holes sooner or later.

*Metaphorically, of course.

Ponies Of Mass Destruction

Memo to everyone excited and psyched up by this year's democratic process: HOW DO YOU DO IT?

I can't do it. Fuck knows I've tried. I tried to get excited about the primaries, but Kerry, my least favorite of the eight Dmocrats running*, got picked before my state even got to vote. I tried to get excited every time Al Gore got all lefty and pissed, but all I could do is ask where the FUCK he was four years ago when it would have made a difference?

And every single day, every SINGLE FUCKING DAY, George W. Bush gets away with things that would have gotten Nixon impeached so fast he wouldn't have had a CHANCE to resign. Things that would have gotten Clinton hanged, publicly, from the top of the Washington Monument. And Bush just breezes on by with about the same half of the country behind him he's always had.

It has been said, by Molly Ivins and others, that Bush was "born on third base, and thought he hit a triple". Funny line. True line. But it masks the insidious nature of the Bush organism, which has somehow also developed the ability to convince OTHER PEOPLE that he hit a triple, even if they were there in the stands at Shea Stadium watching him get squeezed out of Barbara.

This WMD thing... fuck fuck fuck fuck FUCK this WMD thing... you've all seen the stories. Huge, epic, WMD report. Years in the making. The weapons inspectors Bush sent in HIMSELF. Finally put out their official report, said they not only found neither jack nor shit, but that even though Saddam had wanted to make more of both jack and shit, he'd have had to wait for everyone to stop checking up on him before he could even start repairing the shit factory. Contradicts everything the administration has ever said, except for the obvious fact that Saddam Hussein really, really, really wished he had a nuclear bomb. And a pony. Of mass destruction.

So now, before we go into Actual Quote Time, I ask you to take a second and listen to a happy song. Maybe some Shonen Knife, or some TMBG, or whatever. Something light and cheerful. Because when you're done, it's ACTUAL QUOTE TIME.

"This was a place where if there was a potential nexus between the terrorists and one hand and access to knowledge and the technology of WMD on the other, it's Iraq." - Dick Cheney, claiming that the WMD report proved the war was justified.

"The Duelfer report also raises important new information about Saddam Hussein's defiance of the world in his intent and capability to develop weapons. The Duelfer report showed that Saddam was systematically gaming the system, using the U.N. oil-for-food program to try to influence countries and companies in an effort to undermine sanctions." - George W. Bush, claiming that the WMD report proved the war was justified.

And these statements are being given a fucking pass by the media, AGAIN. To hell with baseball metaphors. I think I proved yesterday that two thirds of the words in any given baseball metaphor just sit around not doing anything. This is more like a marathon. And the weapons inspectors ran the entire marathon, and John Kerry ran the entire marathon, and just as they got to the finish line, sweating in their tank tops and shorts, Bush steps out from behind a tree, in a suit and tie, and crosses the finish line with them.

And cameras from every major network, and several minor ones, have footage of him stepping out from behind the tree. And he's wearing a SUIT. And everyone takes a long hard look at the footage, and the evidence, and they conclude that the race is a dead heat, and really, there's no way to find out for sure who won. And everyone gets a hug and a cookie. And then Bush knocks the cookie out of Kerry's hand, also on camera, and goes on the campaign trail talking about how Kerry demeaned the sacrifice of the flour and the sugar by throwing the cookie to the cold, hard ground.

And the absolute best thing that can come out of all this is... President Kerry. "The bad news is, you have to eat shit for the next four years. The good news is, it doesn't contain nearly as much mercury as the Bush shit would have." So really, I envy all you people with your signs and your bumper-stickers and your cheering. And I hope, for once, that you'er right, and I'm wrong. But I ain't fuckin' counting on it.

*He was my second least-favorite of the nine people running for the nomination, of course.

Don't Fear Change

Memo to the world: I LOVE YOU.

There is no hate in my heart today. Only joy. The kind of pure, effervescent joy that can only come from slamming fools into bridge pillars like they were Princess Di. I speak, of course, of Burnout 3, the holiest of holy driving games, a game so good that it makes me love everyone.

I love Dick Cheney. Thank you, Dick Cheney, for putting the lives of everyday Americans ahead of partisan politics. They may say the Bush administration didn't do enough to prevent 9/11, but they've learned from their mistakes. When Dick Cheney had concrete evidence that electing John Kerry would cause a devastating terrorist attack on America, they didn't sit on it. They ACTED. Cheney interrupted his own campaign speech to warn the American public that if they voted for Kerry, we would all die horribly at the hands of Muslim extremists who hate our freedom. You cannot help but love such an act of purest altruism.

I love George W. Bush, whose charming malapropisms and cottonmouth obviously belie a competence so understated as to be almost indistinguishable from random chance and background noise. Why, just the other day, in Missouri, he told a crowd of friendly, loyal Midwesterners that "Too many good docs are getting out of business. Too many O-B-G-Y-N's aren't able to practice their, their love with women all across this country." Thank you, Dubya, friend to horny gynecologists everywhere. You're just like a regular guy. Plus, if I vote for you, I won't die in a terrorist attack ever again.

This is so much nicer, isn't it? Maybe I should see if "youaredumbbutthatsok.net" is taken. Without that extra bit of reassurance, really, the site seems awfully harsh and judgmental for the newfound joyheart beating in my lovechest.

I even love Bob Ferdinand, of Fridley. He wrote an insightful letter to the local newspaper about how global warming can't possibly be real because it was a lot cooler in his backyard this summer. Oh, sure, others have made that point beforehand, usually in jest, but Frigid Fridley Bob was deadly serious. He even used numbers (74% below average days!), so you know he must be a real scientist. I think it's great that scientists have stopped publishing the results of their climate studies in stuffy old scientific journals and put them in the editorial pages of newspapers. I can only hope that one day, there will be a scientist who learns to draw, and then he can teach us all about science right next to "Ziggy" and "Love Is". After all, the editorial page is still a bit hoity-toity, what with it being near all those long, boring stories at the back of the main section of the paper.

I love George Lucas. He's a brilliant writer and an epic filmmaker whose best moments, ironically, are in the small scenes, like when C-3PO got his head stuck on a Battle Droid's body, or when Anakin Skywalker compared Queen Amidala's skin to sand. His only real flaw is that he is, like all great artists, a perfectionist. I think it's great that he's changed the Special Editions even MORE for the DVD release of the Star Wars trilogy, with a new Jabba, a new voice for the Emperor, and putting dreamy Hayden Christenson's ghost where that lumpy Sebastian Shaw guy was in "Jedi". I mean, if I could go back and change my eighth-grade history papers and get them regraded and then bought by millions of devoted Bryan Lambert's Eighth Grade History Paper fans, you know I would.

Actually, that's a great idea! The Web is impermanent! It's all-digital! It can be seamlessly changed. I will follow the example of my new hero George Lucas and create You Are Dumb: Special Edition. Reflecting the newfound joy and love in my heart, I'll go back and "digitally remaster" all my old columns! Zell Miller's not that bad a guy! It's not pigfucking, it's piglovemaking! Ninjas and Mormons CAN get along in peace and harmony! People aren't dumb and wrong, they're just... misguided! Differently-thinking!

Plus, now that I'm a more experienced web-columnist, I can go back and add technological innovations I didn't have available to me back in February, like Flash animations! Multi-colored text! Blink tags! You'll be able to experience You Are Dumb Dot Net all over again, for the first time! Only nicer! And friendlier! And full.... of.... love.........

Why are you all looking at me like that?

Clang Clang Whoops Too Late

Man, I sure hope Dubya isn't a robot.

Follow me here. You know how, in all the movies and TV and whatnot, when a robot starts to malfunction? It starts making small mistakes, then it makes bigger and bigger ones, then it starts shouting incoherent nonsense, then it sparks, and then it explodes? Usually 'cause Kirk told it that up was down or some other bullshit?

Man, I sure hope Dubya isn't a robot.

'Cause first there was that whole harming America thing, which we touched on last Friday. I mean, even for Bush, that was a pretty significant fuckup, mostly because he didn't pause, he didn't stammer, he didn't appear to say something he didn't mean to, he just appeared to have an obviously badly-written speech prepared.

Then, he started talking about maybe "abolishing the IRS", and replacing income taxes with some regressive, flat-tax, national sales tax delusion, which is the kind of campaign rhetoric that is usually reserved for the LaRouches, the Perots, the Keyeses... you know. Only the completely bat-shit crazy candidates run on a "flat tax". If Dubya were a robot, I'd suspect deterioration of the logic centers.

And then, after that, he started telling people in speeches that we can't raise taxes on the wealthy, because they just find ways to get out of it anyway. Which makes no sense, because if all those ultra-rich people weren't paying any taxes anyway, why were they giving thousands and thousands of dollars to get Bush elected so he could (and did) CUT THEIR TAXES? Fuckers are probably getting refunds on their zero taxes paid and due. Either that, or, again, Dubya is a robot and is quickly spiraling into a feedback loop of sparking and smoke and exploding and shrapnel and carnage everywhere.

Now, all of these things could be explained by Dubya being an idiot, a desperate Republican flagging in the polls, and a complete asshole respectively. So I'm afraid Ockham's Razor slices through the robot theory like a knife through warm bullshit. But if you take Bush's most recent TV ad into account, the robot theory engages some kind of diagnostic self-repair routine and comes roaring back for a second look. Yes, the metaphor is a smidge on the shaky side, but bear with me. Here's the text of the ad, with commentary.

"I'm George W. Bush, and I approve this message."

Now, I know this is required by the new campaign laws, and I support it in principle, but assuming the message is delivered either by a rapidly deteriorating psychotic robot OR a retarded, desperate asshole, the fact that he approves of his own ravings is of little comfort in this cold, cold world.

"My most solemn duty is to lead our nation to protect ourselves."

Fair enough, although really, his job is more to lead some of the people, the trained ones with the guns, to protect the rest of the people, the untrained ones with or without guns. As far as the "protecting myself" part goes, I think I'll try and manage that one on my own, 'cause if someone hits me in the face, odds are, I won't kick the guy four seats over in the groin.

"I can't imagine the great agony of a mom or a dad having to make the decision about which child to pick up first on September the 11th."

Oh, I know, I myself have often wondered.... WHAT THE FUCK?! What dilemma is this? Who faced that agony? The World Trade Center was not a day care facility. It was not some kind of forty-story Montessori school. This makes no sense. All the news stories about this ad, by the way, merely quote this sentence without explaining what the FUCK our "leader" is talking about here. Which means either it's obvious, or they don't understand it either, and don't want to admit it. I know where I'm placing my bet. Which child to pick up first? How about whichever one gets out first? Or whichever one is closest? Or whichever one isn't on the way to the store? What agony, George?

This oughta be the first question in all three presidential debates. The first words out of the moderator's mouth after "Let's begin" need to be "Mr. President, in that ad... the one with the picking up the children and the agony? Do you have any idea what you meant by that? Because we've been trying to puzzle it out for a month or so now, and frankly, we're stumped." Is it too much to ask for a President that, in a scripted, rehearsed, filmed, and edited television appearance, does not spout complete incomprehensible nonsense? Yes, it apparently is.

There's another sentence of bullshit after that, but this is the point at which the Exploding Robot Theory really kicks into high. Those of you with Lexis/Nexis access may want to start keeping an eye out for occurrences of phrases like "DANGER", "ILLOGICAL", "DOES NOT COMPUTE", or "KILL ALL HUMANS" cropping up at campaign stops. Just saying.

Either that, or Bush has hired Halle Berry as his new speechwriter.

Da Prez

Memo to President Bush: YOU ARE DUMB.

The big boy finally headlines. What did it finally take for the big cheese, the top banana, the Rancher-in-Chief, to get top billing in You Are Dumb after three and a half months of columns?

Well, let's see. 70 coalition troops dead in April, or about seven per day. A couple of cities in rebel hands. A shaky cease-fire with hundreds of militants in Fallujah. And the whole thing most likely sparked by US troops shooting protestors and shutting down a newspaper. At difficult times like these, we turn to our leader for answers, for guidance, and for direction. Surely, the man whose administrators assured ut we would be cheered as liberators would have something profound to say about the recent violence.

"It was a tough week last week... I just know this, that we're plenty tough and we'll remain tough." 

Ah. Right. You know, Dick Cheney's had to fly to Japan, because the taking of three Japanese hostages has put quite a bi of pressure on the government there. You know, one of the "Coalition of the Willing"? So, yeah, the Vice President, the guy who you need by your side to help with your private testimony to the 9/11 commission had to head over real quick to make sure the Japanese stay "willing" if they know what's good for 'em.

>"It was a tough week last week... I just know this, that we're plenty tough and we'll remain tough." 

Interestingly, we just celebrated the one year anniversary of the toppling of the Saddam Hussein statue in that Baghdad square. Sure, there are some who say it was a carefully stage-managed event, but there's no denying that it was a strong (and VERY frequently used) image of Iraqi liberation. Also interestingly, a year later, Iraqi citizens aren't allowed to visit that square. Huh.

>"It was a tough week last week... I just know this, that we're plenty tough and we'll remain tough." 

Some fun numbers have been circulating, prompted by Bush taking the majority of the past week as vacation time on his ranch in Texas. Seems Bush has spent 233 days, accounting for 40% of his entire presidential term, on vacation. During a war, no less. Of course, the White House is quick to mention that he works on those vacations. Oh, how he works. He barely has any time to have people take pictures of him clearing brush or petting cows or inviting the NRA to enjoy his little slice of Texas nature. But still, 40% seems like a bit much...

>"It was a tough week last week... I just know this, that we're plenty tough and we'll remain tough." 

I dunno. It just seems to me that if you're going to use the hell out of one particular adjective, maybe you don't want to overuse "tough". A White House spokesman suggested that Americans would understand Bush wanting to spend Easter weekend with his family. I understand that part. Hey, I'm an atheist, and I spent Easter with my family. I even fed the cats of a friend who spent Easter weekend with HER family. Of course, I didn't take any days off work to do it. She only took three. Seems to me a guy with Air Force One at his beck and call does not need to take seven days off work. He's the PRESIDENT. He does not need a Sunday stayover to qualify for DISCOUNT FARES.

It just seems to me that if the country you've occupied under false pretenses for a year now suddenly explodes in violence, you might wanna look at your schedule and see if perhaps flying down Saturday morning isn't an option, what with everything going to shit and all. On the other hand, it was a tough week last week, and he just knows this, that we're plenty tough and we'll remain tough.

Did I say "tough"? I meant DUMB.

The Bush Administration

Memo to various and sundry in the Bush Administration: YOU ARE DUMB.

Riddle me this, Batman: When is news... NOT NEWS? And I'm not talking about my usual hatred of the media wasting time and effort on unimportant shit, I'm actually asking a Gorshim-style riddle here. When is news not news?

When it's a government-prepared, ready-for-air video puff piece handed out to local news, complete with fake reporter and fake lead-in for the real anchor.

Apparently, Bush has an entire team of people working tirelessly to come up with new, outrageous shit they haven't gotten away with before. And after their success with "Let's give Cheney's company billions of dollars by bypassing the contract bidding process" and "Look! Over there! Uranium!", they've thought outside the box once again.

Faced with an increasingly uppity press occasionally willing to risk royal disfavour by mumbling "hey, that's not, um, true, you know" once in a great while, the administration figured they'd just eliminate the middleman and create their own fake press to get their own fake news out.

So they sent a happy little video about Medicare reform to local news stations. It's full of happy people talking about how happy they are now that they can finally afford their life-saving drugs since the President singlehandedly fixed Medicare.

The videos have everything. Well, ALMOST everything. They have an actress portraying a fake reporter, Karen Ryan. Hispanic viewers get a different fake person, Alberto Garcia.

They have astonishingly realistic dialogue, such as the following exchange between a customer and pharmacist: CUSTOMER: "It sounds like a good idea." PHARMACIST: "A very good idea."

It even tells the anchor how to introduce the piece: "In December, President Bush signed into law the first-ever prescription drug benefit for people with Medicare. Since then, there have been a lot of questions about how the law will help older Americans and people with disabilities. Reporter Karen Ryan helps sort through the details." Presumably, there's a different script for the Hispanic video, lest people grow wise to the fact that the beautiful Karen Ryan has transmogrified into the hunky Alberto Garcia.

In fact, they only left out one thing. Any kind of indication in the video itself that it's actually political propaganda from Health and Human Services. As a result, someone -might- get in trouble over this. Maybe. Some Democrats are yelling, and someone'll probably look into it, and if you check page 17B six months from now, you may find out how it all turns out.

The amazing thing is that I honestly expected local TV news to have more pride than that. Not more ethics, of course. Just, you know. A certain amount of pride that, no matter what sensationalistic or insipid crap they throw on the air, at least it's THEIR CRAP. Not some Stepford news that Big Brother Bush asked them nicely to run.

I mean, there was a bigger uproar a few years ago when Sony made up a fake movie reviewer to pimp its crappy movies and get quoted on posters. That was a HUGE scandal. I mean, if our movie reviewers aren't real, then who ARE we all stealing our opinions from?

It's just like I said yesterday, when I was discussing this with my pharmacist, Alberto Ryan. "It sounds like a dumb thing," I said, and he replied, nodding sagely, "Si, a very dumb thing."