Dick Cheney

Dick Cheney's memoirs should be published soon, so clear out some space on your bookshelf!


Right about here.





I'd been trying to ignore the Dick Cheney historical revisionism tour as much as possible. There's only so much of "we only used torture because we had to, and also it wasn't torture, and also what's so bad about torture?" I can take. But on the way home from work, I heard the latest doozy:

"If you're going to be engaged in a world conflict such as we are, such as the global war on terrorism, if you don't have a place where you can hold these people, your only other option is to kill them," Mr. Cheney said. "And we don't operate that way."

REALLY? That's your defense for Gitmo? "Hey, we could have just killed them!" Kidnappers everywhere can now look forward to using the Dick Cheney defense, "I didn't kill her, so what's the big deal?" Every time this son of a bitch opens his mouth, he goes to a new level of assholishness. How in the hell did we have this guy running, or co-running, or whatever, the country for 8 fucking years? You know, it's one thing for people to have voted Bush/Cheney in 2000, they may have seemed pretty harmless, but by 2004, everyone knew how destructive these guys were. Every time I see some moron asshole driving around with a Bush/Cheney '04 sticker proudly displayed next to his Jesus fish, I feel like my head's going to explode. Hey, idiot in the Hummer in front of me at the stoplight, are you actually proud of your vote? Do you actually believe that these two dirtbags did anything positive in the last 8 years? You should be scraping off those stickers, hanging your heads in shame and converting to Catholicism so you can be assigned penance. (I'm not Catholic, but I imagine penance must involve some flagellation. At least in this case.)

Mary Grabar

I had never heard of Mary Grabar until today. I was happier not having heard of her. But today, in an apparent attempt to accelerate its plunge from respectability, The Atlanta Journal Constitution gave a guest column to Ms. Grabar. And here is the title of her foray into op/ed nuttery:

We Need Insights, Wit From Limbaugh

So, naturally I thought she must be calling on Rush to provide insight and wit instead of the blather, lies and smears that he normally supplies. But no! What Ms. Grabar 's column claims is that "I've enjoyed the insights and wit from Limbaugh."



She goes on: "I am always impressed by his ability to apply historical figures, ideas, events, and constitutional principles."

I'm sorry, who are we talking about here? Is there some other Limbaugh I don't know about, because this can't be Rush. Can you give me an example of this ability?

"Rush Limbaugh provided historical explanation for the public’s adoration of Obama: the same kind of emotional investment that caused gulag prisoners to cry at Stalin’s death."

That's not "historical explanation" that's idiocy. Rush sees some sort of parallel between the American electorate's affection for the charismatic Obama and the Stockholm syndrome of brainwashed Soviet prisoners. What the fuck? There is no parallel, no comparison. It's not apples and oranges, it's apples and circular saws. This is what you consider insight? Look, I can draw a completely absurd historical parallel, too. Um, let's see. The AJC"s decision to publish the fatuous claptrap of Mary Grabar is akin to William Nygaards's decision to publish "The Satanic Verses" in Norway.

See, it means nothing, but it does sound pretty ominous.

So what does Ms Grabar do for a living when she's not writing sheer nonsense? Apparently, she teaches at some college here in Georgia. Also, she writes several blogs, including one named. I kid you not, "The Other White People."

This is a blogsite run by Mary Grabar, who does not apologize for being white, who believes that "hope" and "change" come not from some academic, politician, or celebrity, but from within with the help of God, and that Western civilization is the best civilization.

Youch! Crazy alert!

So, as to her career as a professor, Ms Grabar writes:

This is what I miss about my profession as a college instructor. Rarely am I able to discuss ideas with my colleagues; indeed, I dare not speak my opinion nor say anything positive about any figures on the left’s “hit list.”

OK, do you know what a "hit list" is? It is not a list of people you admire or respect, it is a list of targets for a professional assassin. But that's really beside the point. I imagine that you rarely get to discuss ideas with your colleagues because they avoid you the way I avoid the Homeless guy practcing his karate moves on parking meters and newspaper machines. I know that there's no point, he's not going to have anything to add to a discussion of ideas. I would guess that around your campus, the phrase, "Oh God, here comes that crazy Mary Grabar" is a pretty common utterance.

One of those figures is Alexis de Tocqueville, the French aristocrat who toured the United States in the 1830s and provided an invaluable analysis of the American character and government in his multivolume work, “Democracy in America.”

But to mention his name without the preface of “fascist” or “elitist” is to invite suspicions of one’s academic credentials — and employability.

Um, Mary, I've only known you since this morning, but I'm already questioning your academic credentials.

What the talk show hosts do is present foundational ideas to concerned and intellectually curious citizens. Their wild success exposes a hunger for ideas rarely met in other forums — like our schools. That is why they want to shut down talk radio as it is today.

Listen, you paranoid idiot. No one, not even the sinister "They" , is trying to shut down talk radio, just like no one is asking you to apologize for being white, or to call de Tocqueville a fascist.

I just don't have the strength to go into all the banal idiocies of Mary Grabar. If you're interested, you can read the whole column here. Let me just jump to the conclusion:

Tocqueville is talking about the middle class that keeps this country going. And today they are millions of voters and they’re educating themselves by listening to talk radio and buying books.

Gawd, I shudder to think that the American middle class is educating itself by listening to Talk Radio. Although that's probably better than attending a class taught by Ms Grabar.