Week of 02/08/2010

The Repeated Meme and the Echo Chamber
– by David Matthews 2

In the satirical animated series “Family Guy”, shrill housewife Lois Griffin decides to run for mayor. During her first (and only) debate, she finds that the audience doesn’t respond to complicated explanations of how one would be a better steward of the public trust. Instead, they start cheering when she uses quick sound bites, including a lot of references to “9/11”. Eventually she just answers everything with “9/11”.

I can’t help but have that image come up when it came to the so-called “Tea Party Convention” this past weekend in Tennessee, especially given its keynote speaker, the former governor of Alaska.

I’m sorry, but I’m not one that buys into political hype on first blush. And the more someone says that a candidate or a speaker is the most wonderful person on the world without any concrete reason why, the more I will conclude that the acolyte is full of something that comes out of the OTHER end of the bull.

Even worse is when you ASK them to give a specific reason why they think this person is so great and they can’t! They just regurgitate talking points.

I’ve never been a fan of President Barack Obama, but at least I can understand why his supporters love him. He is intelligent, well-spoken, and he carries himself as a leader. I may not like his policies, I may not like how he governs, but at least I can SEE where the adulation of his supporters is warranted.

I CANNOT, however, see that in either Sarah Palin or the Tea Party crowd, and yet they were made for each other. The best way to describe them is to think of them as a repeated meme inside an echo chamber.

A meme, for those who do not know, is an idea. It’s a postulated unit of cultural ideas, symbols, or practices. The Internet is FULL of memes. Cute videos about keyboard cats and dancing babies, emoticons, acronyms, chain-mail messages, brain-twisters, and Photoshopped images. And about 99% of it is recycled and regurgitated from other people. Someone picks it up and passes it on to their friends, and then they do the same, and so on and so forth. It has no real value to it, and in fact the people who actually came up with most of these memes will never get the credit for their creations, never mind see a penny for their work.

A repeated meme, therefore, is nothing more than the repeating of someone else’s ideas. Take all the sound bites and conservative/neo-conservative chain mail messages, talking point memos, jargons, jingles, buzzwords, put them all together and you too can be either a FoxNews media personality, or the perfect running mate for a presidential candidate in desperate need of job security.

If you think about it… and I know that the word “think” is an obscenity to the conservatives and neo-conservatives… Sarah Palin would have guaranteed job security for John McCain, had he won, in the same way that Dan Quayle did for George H.W. Bush. Nobody was going to do anything to unseat the president knowing full well who would replace him. Quayle was a political meme, just like Palin is today.

But let’s get brutally honest here… one should not confuse a meme with actual leadership. All the Jiffy-Pop talking points and sound bites dressed up in red-white-and-blue and presented by a former beauty pageant contestant coming out of a late-night Cinemax movie doesn’t make the presenter a credible leader. It just means that the presenter a well-trained featherless parrot. Pleasing to the eye, certainly, but a parrot nonetheless.

Likewise, a mutual revulsion society using Obama as the symbol of everything that they hate neither addresses the problems we face today, or the reality that their own champions had more than just a passive hand in CREATING those problems. In fact all this over-hyped pseudo-independent echo chamber seemed to be was nothing more than a way to get support for the GOP in the same way that Scott Brown was elected to the US Senate in Massachusetts… by pretending to NOT be with the GOP.

In truth, the “Tea Party” people are nothing more than a group of fragmented special interests living in continual denial about the world around them. They don’t like what their “icons” and “champions” did in their name, but they don’t want to admit it happened. Even when the problem is staring at them square in the face, they don’t want to take ownership of their actions.

Sadly, this kind of sentiment is nothing new. In fact all you have to do is go back in history and see the “tea party” mentality as the group that served as the limited substitute for one dying political party before being replaced by another political party. The party they replaced were the Whigs… the party that replaced them, ironically enough, was the ORIGINAL Republican Party. The members of this limited substitute movement called themselves the “Know Nothings”.

But at least THEY were honest about themselves, unlike today’s bunch of “admit nothings”.

Week of 02/01/2010

Of Bayou-Gate and Gotchas
– by David Matthews 2

It was likened to a “prank”, according to the person caught trying to pull it.

He said he wanted to “catch” the person in question of doing something they denied.

Except that he was the one that got caught, along with his associates.

James O’Keefe III is supposedly compared to liberal filmmaker Michael Moore. He is best known for showing up at certain offices of the liberal community organization called ACORN dressed up as a pimp and asking how he could “legally” set up a brothel using government resources. It embarrassed ACORN officials, it embarrassed liberals, and it made O’Keefe a rising star in conservative and neo-conservative circles.

For his next trick, O’Keefe decided to bring down a member of the US Senate. Specifically Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, whose backroom dealing concerning her support of healthcare reform was already condemned and castigated by conservatives and neo-conservatives.

According to O’Keefe, he just wanted to catch the senator in a lie. Conservative critics claimed Landrieu’s office refused to hear the complaints of her constituents. Her office said that the phone lines were jammed.

But that didn’t explain why O’Keefe’s associates arrived at the Senator’s district office several weeks after-the-fact dressed as telephone repair people to “fix” the phone lines, with O’Keefe recording the whole incident on his cellphone camera. It certainly did little to help his own credibility when he along with the two phony technicians and a fourth member serving as a “getaway” driver were all caught and arrested when someone asked the “technicians” for ID.

What did they expect? Did they honestly expect to simply show up, mess with the phones to pretend to “fix” them, and somehow find “the proof” through a mess of wires that the lines really weren’t busy?

Even O’Keefe himself said after his arraignment that he could have used a “different approach”.

No kidding.

Perhaps Mr. O’Keefe just didn’t realize that people might be just a little bit suspicious and a little extra-cautious when it comes to security, seeing how his conservative and neo-conservatives supporters have spent years getting people all riled up about terrorism and keeping them afraid of their own shadows. Maybe he didn’t realize that he and his four-man crew, complete with a getaway driver, could be mistaken for one of those “bad guys”. Hey, did you know that there ARE Muslims that have blond hair and blue eyes? Not all of the radicals come from the Middle East.

Maybe O’Keefe just doesn’t know political history. Maybe he forgot how a team of men dressed as “plumbers” were caught breaking into a political supporter’s office almost forty years ago and how that scandal ended up with the resignation of a Republican president. Maybe the word “Watergate” didn’t register in his conservative mentality. It could happen. After all, it was long before he was even born. Forty years is almost ancient history to the young generation.

Or maybe he was so caught up in his next big “gotcha” that it didn’t even occur to him just how utterly pointless it really is in the ultimate scheme of things.

Okay, let’s suppose that these “repairmen” did somehow manage to find what they claimed they were looking for. Suppose they DID catch the senator’s staff in a lie about the phone lines. So what? How does this ultimately play out? Congressmen and Senators and even Presidents have been accused of not listening to their constituents for decades. Embarrassing, perhaps, but is it REALLY worth risking prison to prove?

There are a lot of things missing from this pathetic tale of political intrigue that probably will never come out. Even if there were no wiretapping devices on the “technicians”, that doesn’t mean that the visit wasn’t a prelude to that happening. For all of O’Keefe’s boyish “aw shucks we wuz just foolin’ around” explanations, I seriously doubt that he was just there for a one-time visit, nor that he there just to watch his “crew” play dress-up.

Let’s get brutally honest here… it is extremely polite and optimistic to say that James O’Keefe was involved in nothing more than a political prank gone wrong. Even without anything concrete, this whole story reeks of dirty political tricks.

Even more despicable and disgusting is the new claim being made that O’Keefe is a “victim” in all of this. A victim? His supporters and sponsors would have a better chance trying to convince people that John Edwards never fathered an illegitimate child than to paint O’Keefe as a “victim”.

The only thing that Mr. O’Keefe is a “victim” of is his own hype and the hype generated by his sponsors. He is painted as an avant-garde “new media” investigator, in the same way that certain talk show hosts consider themselves to be “broadcast journalists”. But in truth, he is just an old-school political hack; an agent provocateur caught in a plan before it could cause harm. To assess that he is anything more, based on his current contributions to the national arena, is not only an absurd over-exaggeration, but an indictment on just how depressingly low one would value the role and purpose of legitimate journalistic investigation.

O’Keefe does deserve his day in court, along with his political “plumbers”, to address and account for his actions in this matter. Perhaps doing so now will prevent him from becoming the next G Gordon Liddy, and perhaps prevent a future politician from disgracing themselves as they repeat history.

Week of 01/25/2010

The Last Big Ultimate Mega-Crisis
– by David Matthews 2

It was a cloudy day in world of Directly Marvelous Comics. Even though the skies were blue and the sun was shining, storm clouds had been building all day for this once-great publishing empire.

“Thank you all for coming,” said the Editor-In-Chief. “As you all know, things have not been easy for our big DM brand ever since we were purchased by the mighty MegaGlom Incorporated. They set some pretty high bars for us to meet and unfortunately we’ve fallen short.”

The assembled employees began to mutter and groan. He wasn’t telling them anything they hadn’t already figured out themselves, but when he actually says it, it’s usually a prelude to some serious changes.

He started by turning to a group seated at the small table in front of him. “I’m sorry folks,” he said directly to them, “but I’m afraid we’re going to have to cancel Ican Dragon-Kid again.”

The team was shocked. “Ican Dragon-Kid” was a fan-favorite series. It had a steady following since the 1970’s. It wasn’t as popular as some of the big-brand titles, but it held its own through five different rewrites.

“I’m putting you in charge of our new brand title: Man-Demon Journals.”

They collectively groaned.

“Excuse me,” said the head writer at the table, “but how many titles must Man-Demon have anyway? Isn’t this the tenth title?”

“Eleventh,” the EIC said. “And besides this one will be special because it will tie in with the new Man-Demon movie that was green-lighted by MegaGlom.”

Another collective groan.

The EIC was surprised by the reaction. “What? What’s the matter with you people? This is BIG. This is HUGE!”

“This is also the fourth time we attempted to do a Man-Demon movie,” said the inker for Man-Demon New Beginnings. “The first one may have been a success but the last three sucked.”

“Yeah,” said the assistant writer for Man-Demon Crusades. “We actually had people suing to get their money back after the last movie.”

“Yeah, but this time is different,” insisted the EIC. “This time George will be directing.”

“That’s what they said the last time,” replied the illustrator for Man-Demon Infinity, “and we still ended up with that flake who treated it like it was a live-action Saturday morning cartoon.”

“And don’t forget the rubber chins!” someone else blurted from the back.

“And the cross-promotion for the breakfast cereal,” someone else blurted out.

“Enough!” said the EIC. “Listen, MegaGlom wants the Man-Demon movie, so that’s what we’re backing. I want to see cross-title promotions and references as soon as we get the final script.”

“It’s gonna suck!” said a voice in the far back.

“That’s enough!” the EIC said, obviously annoyed. “This isn’t some little publishing company anymore. This is the big leagues. This is a business, and we’re going to treat this as a business.”

He gave a sigh of frustration and then continued. “Speaking of the movie, MegaGlom has already decided they want to see Will Burt back as Man-Demon in time for the movie.”

That time he knew there would be protests about it.

“NO WAY!” “WHAT?” “You’ve gotta be kidding!”

“Look, I was just as surprised as you were about this,” said the EIC. “I know you all spent the past year getting the audience used to the idea that Will Burt was dead… again.”

“It’s more than that,” said the editor of Justa Lotta Infinity Heroes. “This is the third time we killed him off and we PROMISED the readers that this time would be the last one. We spent all this time getting them used to having Grey Dirtson as the new Man-Demon, and they’ve just accepted it, and now you’re saying…”

“I’m not saying this,” the EIC corrected. “MegaGlom wants this.”

“Now MEGAGLOM,” he continued, “is telling us to just scrap everything that we’ve done for the past year, go back on our word, and strip Grey of the horns and give them back to Will!”

“Look,” explained the EIC, “the VP in charge of our division has HUGE plans for Man-Demon. We’re not just talking movies; we’re talking direct-to-video productions. We’re talking video games. Online role-playing services. We’re talking children’s cartoon shows…”

That again drew groans and protests from the crowd.

“We spent the past two years getting Man-Demon out of the whole Saturday Morning Cartoon mindset!” exclaimed the inker of Man-Demon Infinity. “We lost a lot of readers with that tie-in with the fast food chain, not to mention the last two Man-Demon video games sucked!”

The EIC was not comfortable with how this was going. “Listen, can we just get back to the matter at hand? MegaGlom says Will Burt has to come back from the dead and be Man-Demon again. Our job is to make it happen. Any ideas?”

“Resurrection?” someone suggested.

“We did that in issue 500,” answered the editor for Man-Demon Adventures. “How about cloning?”

“We did that in our issue 200,” answered the writer for Man-Demon Legends. “You know, a hundred various clones of Man-Demon all thinking they were the original.”

“And we did the renegade clone idea in our issue 75,” said the artist for Justa Lotta Heroes Task Force. “Renegade clone was killed at the end of the story and then people found out he wasn’t the real Man-Demon.”

“Time travel?” someone else suggested. “Bring him back from the past.”

“I like it!” exclaimed the EIC. “Okay, how about… he didn’t really die the last time, he was abducted in the distant future the nanosecond before he died to fight some… future warlord dictator… and then he can come back and…”

“Man-Demon Annual number five,” said someone in the back.

The EIC threw up his arms. “Well, okay, I guess we’re going to have to have another mega-crisis.”

This time everyone in the room protested.

“What?” he asked.

The editor for Busty Warrior stood up. “Sir, are you crazy? We just finished the LAST mega-crisis a month ago, and we’re halfway through the CURRENT mega-crisis, which was supposed to be THE big ultimate super-mega-big-crisis.”

The EIC was confused. “Wait… you mean we’re still doing the Big Ultimate?”

Everyone turned to the harried man sitting by the window with a five-day-old beard and drinking his twentieth cup of coffee.

“I’m… a little stuck on the story,” he said.

“But Big Ultimate was supposed to have been finished last month!” the EIC said. “What issue are you on?”

“Four.”

“FOUR?” he said. “We were supposed to have published the finale by now! What’s holding you up?”

“You had me do those splinter stories,” the artist said. “You said MegaGlom wanted cross-title splinter stories, and everyone kept on calling me up for those, and I haven’t been able to reconcile those with the Big Ultimate story. Plus you had me do that re-write after the original plot got leaked to the Internet.”

The EIC struggled to get some order back in this mess. “Okay, first, I want all priority to go on finishing Big Ultimate Mega-Crisis. We need that out of the way before we can start with the next mega-crisis. We have to have Will Burt back as Man-Demon in the next mega-crisis in time for the movie. So how do we do that?”

“Zombies!” one person suggested.

That was met with more groans.

“We did zombies last year,” said the EIC. “Besides, the competition has ten monthly titles featuring zombies.”

“Another universe,” another person suggested.

“That was the LAST mega-crisis story,” the EIC said, “and we blew all those up at the end.”

“How about time-travelling gender-bending zombie clone gorillas from another dimension?” came a voice from the far wall of the room.

The voice belonged to Jack Stan, the last of the original creators and founders of Directly Marvelous Comics. He was also the guy who helped create most of the iconic characters. He had remained quiet until that point, but he knew he had to speak up.

The EIC knew that Jack had something to say. “Mister Stan, care to share your thoughts?”

The frail man in his seventies stood up. His hands shook as he made his way to the head of the room.

“I just think that you’re spending way too much time trying to appease corporate marketing executives than in actually telling a story,” he said in his soft tone.

“Look, I understand that this is a business. Myself and all the other guys who made up Directly Marvelous fifty years ago always knew going into this that we had to make a profit in what we did, but we did it by actually telling a story, not in continual cross-titled mega-crisis events.”

“Yeah, but you helped to write the original mega-crisis,” pointed out the artist for Big Ultimate Mega-Crisis. “You started the trend twenty years ago.”

“I helped create the first one,” Jack pointed out, “but none of us want it to be a trend. We had to because we needed to clear up some of the confusion that we had created over the years with various telling and re-telling of origin stories. We wanted to bring the stories back to their core elements.”

“Take Supremely Iconic Man. By the time we wrote the original mega-crisis story, he had been married five times, divorced three times, had his memories wiped ten times, gone insane, gone evil, went to prison, and even though he was supposed to be the last of his kind, there was a whole star system of people just like him. He was neither ‘Supreme’ or ‘Iconic’ anymore. He was just a man with a whole bunch of powers and a lot of issues.”

“How many times was Busty Warrior married off? How many times was she enslaved by the Gorgons? How many times did we change her costume and change her powers? How many times did we destroy the Energy-Tool Squad and then rebuild them? You know, the Justa Lotta Heroes team was supposed to be where all the big crisis stories were told featuring all the major characters. Instead it became a warehouse for heroes that were forgotten.”

“We wrote that original mega-crisis story to clear up all of that confusion and bring the characters back to what made them great in the first place. But we didn’t want this to be a regular event. Now you’re intermingling mega-crisis events on a continual basis, tying them into whatever merchandising comes up. I mean, let’s get brutally honest here… you’re creating endless crisis situations that not even soap opera writers put their characters through.”

“But these are fictional characters with superpowers,” pointed out the editor of Man-Demon Legends. “Isn’t this just a reflection of what they do? And besides, big mega-crisis stories SELL!”

That was when the EIC started to stammer. “Actually… no, they haven’t. Not lately. That’s why MegaGlom wants the huge tie-ins with merchandising.”

“You know, we had merchandising in the early years too,” Jack said. “Lunchboxes and squirt guns and balsa-wood fliers. We had a cartoon series and those big eight-inch dolls with the cloth outfits and the plastic boots. But there was always a difference between the series and what was going on outside of it. Although there was that special issue we did for that computer system that nobody bought…anyway, the point is we didn’t need gimmicks or not-so-special events to win our readers in the first place. We just told stories.”

The old and legendary creator flexed his arthritic hands. “Maybe I’m a bit old-fashioned… I’m just an old artist who can’t draw anymore… but maybe it would be better if you just lay off the mega-crisis events for a year and just work on stories. You may not make huge bucks, but you’ll at least bring in steady readers.”

Having said his peace, Jack gave his trademarked casual salute and slowly left the room, leaving the rest of the assembled writers and artists with something to seriously consider.

“Okay…” said the Editor-In-Chief after a long and uneasy pause. “Any ideas on how to bring Will Burt back as Man-Demon in time for the next movie?”

Week of 01/18/2010

Harry’s Ugly Date
– by David Matthews 2

Once upon a time on the campus of America University… there was a college student name Harry.

Harry was the president of the Alpha Delta Ka-Ch’ing fraternity. It wasn’t exactly a position that he earned, though. Like most things in his life, Harry sort of “fell into” this position. It gave him something to do, and it wasn’t like his frat brothers were too eager to shoulder the burdens anyway.

One day, Harry told his fraternity brothers that the Homecoming Dance was coming up, and Harry didn’t have a date. Harry really wasn’t that good in this department anyway. These things are usually just… handed to him.

This caused some concern for his frat brothers, because Alpha Delta Ka-Ch’ing always prided itself in making sure that EVERY fraternity brother was there… and there with a date! And this year, more than any other, they REALLY wanted to rub that detail into the faces of their rival fraternity, Gamma Omega Krappa, especially after they were caught in some compromising positions… including a few involving farm animals.

But BMOC Max reassured Harry and the other frat brothers that he’s got them covered on this. He’ll find Harry THE BEST date for the Homecoming Dance. Harry was relieved, and so were the other frat brothers. But it was Max and his friends that were the ones that were now worried. They certainly didn’t want to set Harry up with a looker, and at the same time they knew that nobody in their circle of friends were willing to be seen with Harry. He wasn’t really the “entertaining” kind of guy. Harry was the kind of guy that only his family could love.

Time goes by, and Harry starts to get a little worried. The Homecoming Dance WAS getting closer and closer. And the Gamma Omega Krappa boys were taking great pride in taunting and jeering Harry for his social awkwardness. They even began to spread nasty rumors about Harry and his shortcomings. Anything to make it less and less likely that Harry would have a date for the dance.

And that WOULD be a shame for the Alpha Beta Ka-Ch’ing fraternity, wouldn’t it? After all, the GOKs may be rude, crude, obnoxious, irredeemable, dishonorable, disrespectful, and guilty of taking too many liberties with people, places… and a few farm animals… but at least THEY all had no problems getting dates to the Homecoming Dance!

Well after so much hassle and hand-wringing, Max and his buddies managed to pull through and present Harry with his date to the Homecoming Dance. And they were so happy about pulling off that little coup! They were busy giving themselves high-fives and patting themselves on the back. They couldn’t WAIT to introduce Harry to his date.

So that night, at the Homecoming Dance, all eyes were waiting for the Fraternity President of Alpha Beta Ka-Ch’ing to show up, and they didn’t have to wait very long.

In walks Harry along with his date, and there is an absolute glow about Harry as he’s there with his date, which makes the situation even more surreal when you consider the woman that was hooked on his arm.

She was clearly an older woman. Nobody could ever mistake her for being under-21. She was also clearly on the heavy side, a detail that was only magnified by her choice of attire, which was a black tube top with bare midriff and a black miniskirt that was just a little bit too short. She had a hard ruddy face, with heavy makeup, ratty hair, and an overabundance of perfume. When she spoke, she had a gravely voice like she smoked fifty cigarettes a day. And it was clear when she spoke that she had very little education.

And yet Harry acted as though this woman, who resembled more of a veteran street walker than any hint of a college student, was the most beautiful woman in the world. He couldn’t help but crow about the fact that Max and his fellow frat brothers REALLY came through like they said they would.

Max, of course, was laughing in the other side of the dance hall with his frat brothers. They knew that Harry would make the best of anything he was given, and they couldn’t help but see it proven by getting someone at the last minute off-the-street.

But then later that night, Harry did something that even Max didn’t expect. Harry got up on stage before the announcement of the Homecoming King and Queen election. It seems that Harry, in his anticipation of having a date to the Homecoming Dance, had nominated himself and his date - listed as “to be named later” - for Homecoming King and Queen. But they weren’t listed on the ballots. To Harry, that was inexcusable.

So Harry took to the stage and demanded that he and his lovely date, Hope Faith Charity, be listed on the ballots before any voting took place. He also used the opportunity to speak out against all of the snickering and back-talking that he had been hearing during the dance about his date. Hope is a BEAUTIFUL woman, he declared, and she supposedly didn’t deserve the kind of treatment that these “enlightened students” of America University have been giving her.

Unfortunately the more he protested, the more he was ridiculed amongst the students, and his “lovely” date Hope certainly didn’t appreciate the kind of added attention being foisted on her. The GOK’s certainly were milking this self-destruction up for all that it was worth. And BMOC Max and his fellow Alpha Delta Ka-Ch’ing frat brother were suddenly regretting their choice.

It was certainly not a good evening for Alpha Delta Ka-Ch’ing, or for anyone associated with the fraternity. And although he would never admit to it… it wasn’t a good evening for Harry either.

The story, of course, parallels certain current events in Washington, but the overall message is the same no matter how you tell the tale.

Harry may choose to treat his ugly date as a godsend, but let’s get brutally honest here… that doesn’t mean that the rest of us have to equally swallow our pride and act as though his ugly date is the most beautiful woman in the world. In fact the more that Harry and his friends doth protest, the more that we will being to suspect that the real joke… is on us.

Week of 12/07/2009

The 2009 Brutally Honest Awards
– by David Matthews 2

It’s hard to imagine that another year has already passed, and yet here it is December already.

Lot of stuff to go over, so let’s get to it…

The Daniel Shays Award for 2009: Glenn “Blood Shooting From My Teary Eyes” Beck - Glenn Beck is probably the biggest fraud you can imagine. Limbaugh, Hannity, Dobbs, Savage… they won’t put on an act like he does. He cries on cue (with a little help from Vick’s Vapor Rub under the eyes), he uses visual aids, he stretches reality in a way that would make Baron Munchausen look like a rank amateur… PT Barnum once said that there’s a sucker born every minute, and now you know where Beck gets his audience from. And now he thinks he can organize rebellions and calls them “political rallies”. Well since Beck fancies himself a student of history, maybe he should look up the person for whom this award was named after to see what happened to people who pull that sort of stunt.

The Whisky Rebellion Award for 2009: Dick Armey and his Teabaggers - Dick Armey is NOT a political outsider. His group is NOT “grass-roots”. Dick Armey is a former member of Congress. His group is a professional PAC. It’s like bringing in an NFL team to a Pop Warner football game and trying to pass them off as a bunch of “really big 10-year olds”. They only thing they want to change is which political party is in charge of things in Washington.

The “Just Shut Up And Go Away” Award for 2009: Carrie “Hysteria Barbie” Prejean - She couldn’t get past the fact that she blew her chances at winning Miss USA. She has no real concept of the First Amendment. She blew the second chance that Donald Trump gave her and then couldn’t figure out why she was dropped on her bony ass. She thinks that intentionally violating the terms of her contract makes her a religious martyr. She’s a victim in her own mind and she feels it’s her quest to make everyone admit that. Oh, and ignore the topless modeling pictures and the sextapes that aren’t really sextapes even though they reportedly feature her doing something that falls in the category of a solo sextape. Tell you what, Carrie… we’ll forget about that part as long as we can also forget about everything else that involves you.

The “Just Shut Up And go Away” Runner-Up for 2009: Former Vice-President Dick Cheney - Someone needs to remind DICK that former Vice-Presidents that he has absolutely ZERO credibility critiquing the current White House occupants over how to deal with Afghanistan. We wouldn’t have to DEAL with this problem if HE didn’t help transition it into the Iraq War. The only time I ever want to hear from him ever again is when (or if) he’s being arraigned in the Hague.

You know, the hypocrisy coming from the cons and neo-cons is absolutely surreal. What’s next… a lesson on how to comply with special prosecutors from Scooter Libby? A lesson on ethics from Karl Rove? A lesson in spelling from Glenn Beck? A lesson on how to eat a pretzel from Bush Junior?

The Political Usurper Award for 2009: Rush Limbaugh - Whether they want to admit to it or not, the GOP leadership HAS been co-opted by Rush Limbaugh and his ilk and their supporters. They have allowed the listeners of those trained parrots to bully their way into dictating the direction of the GOP, and whether they realize it or not, it WILL be a detriment for them.

The Bill Frist Quack Award for 2009: Senator Max Baucus - Baucus is the guy spearheading the healthcare reform. He also gets millions in campaign contributions from the insurance companies, Big Pharma, and hospitals. So when asked to reform the whole healthcare system, who do you think he paid more attention to: the people who can’t afford healthcare who need a public option, or the rich insurance companies who think that everyone should be FORCED to get insurance whether they can afford it or not? Yeah I can think of at least four MILLION reasons why he’d side with the rich companies over his own constituents.

The Top Buzzwords in 2009 That Should Never Be Invoked EVER AGAIN With Healthcare Reform - “Opt-In”, “Opt-Out”, “Trigger”, “Robust”, and “Hammer”.

The Bay Of Pigs Award for 2009: Former Defense Secretary Donald “Zen Master” Rumsfeld - It turns out that we COULD have had Osama Bin Laden either in custody or in a body bag back in December of 2001. We knew where he was, we could have gone in and either taken him in or taken him down. All “Rummy” Rumsfeld had to do was say “Yes” to a request for reinforcements. Instead, he said “no”.

Do you understand the implications of this? We could have had this DONE AND OVER WITH by the end of 2001! We could have then focused ALL of our attention on Iraq instead of splitting our attention between two fronts.

All of those the lap-dog apologists of the Imperium who think they can criticize Obama’s recent decision to make a modest troop increase need to explain why we REFUSED to do everything it takes to bring Bin Laden to justice when we had the opportunity to.

The All-Time Quitter Award for 2009: Sarah “Caribou Barbie” Palin - That probably should be “Governor” Palin, but she actually up-and-quit her job. She wasn’t forced out, she wasn’t given a better offer, there was no embarrassing scandal, she just up-and-QUIT! And it wouldn’t be the only thing she up-and-quit this year either.

The Delusional Loons Of 2009 Award: Palin’s Defenders - I shudder to use the word “cult” when describing the people who have pretty much put Palin on an unrealistic pedestal, but it’s as close of a description can one can get. Palin gets the nomination and everyone thinks what a “great” choice was being made before anyone even knows who she is. Then she quits as governor, for no apparent reason other than she wants to make money on the tour circuit and book sales, her acolytes start crowing about how she’s now “unrestrained” and can “let loose”. And when asked about why they support her so, they start crowing about how she “represents things like freedom”. WTF!?!

It’s almost as though the followers were just programmed to have a “fill-in-the-blank” mindset for whomever is chosen, and then run on automatic. “Gumby is so perfect! He’s, like, green and rubbery and can bend back from any kind of movement.” “Lassie is just so perfect! She, like, represents everything that is good and decent in this country.” “It’s good that the can of beans quit, because now it can just let loose and do what it wants.”

And people question why Bill Maher thinks that Americans are stupid!

The Worst Political Tactic of 2009: Neo-Conservative Projection - Projection of one’s faults on others is considered to be one of the signs of narcissism, paranoia, and psychopathy. If you’re fat, you start accusing other people of being fat. If you’re claustrophobic, you start accusing others of being claustrophobic. And in the case of the neo-cons, if you’re afraid of being called a fascist or a Nazi, you start accusing your opponents of being either fascists or Nazis… or you can even accuse them of being both. Sure the two terms aren’t interchangeable, but don’t worry about it making sense, because neo-cons never make sense. Making sense could lead to even more dangerous things like… thinking.

The Lamest Excuse for 2009: “Hiking the Appalachian Trail” - Yes that was the excuse made by the staff of South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford to explain why the governor seemingly vanished off the face of the planet. He didn’t really vanish, he just flew to the Southern Hemisphere to stick his wick in his “soulmate”. And then after that kind of talk he thinks he can make it up to his WIFE? In one felled swoop he destroys the very mirage of heterosexual marriage, not to mention the supposed “only purpose” of human reproduction, and then he thinks he can make it up?

The “I Proved David 2 Was Right” Award for 2009: Renegade Senator Joseph Lieberman - It was this time last year that I warned people to NOT TRUST LIEBERMAN. Remember that? Remember when I said that Harry Reid was making a mistake caving to Lieberman? Sure enough, the year wasn’t even over with and he turned on the party he promised allegiance with!

Go ahead, naysayers… admit that I was right!

I won’t hold my breath, though.

The Most Incompetent Member of Congress for 2009: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid - For once, Speaker Nancy Pelosi didn’t even come close! Reid isn’t a leader. He’s a manager. He’s a wheeler-dealer who thinks that he can broker his way through each session instead of doing what needs to be done. If healthcare reform is shelved, you can blame him for letting it happen.

The “My Ego Is Bigger Than My Career” Award for 2009: Lou Dobbs - Once upon a time that would be “CNN’s Lou Dobbs”, but he’s not on CNN anymore… and he can thank his own ego for that. Lou’s ego became a detriment for his career. It wasn’t about “the issues” anymore. It was about HIM discussing “the issues”. The “Birther” issue wasn’t over with until HE determined it would be. The matter of immigration wasn’t how it was being addressed, it was about the fact that HE talked about it. And quite frankly, the only reason why he doesn’t HAVE a show on CNN any more is because HIS EGO wouldn’t let the show just be about the news.

The Biggest Political Non-Sequitur for 2009: “Jobless Recovery” - The Clinton Regime had “New Democrat”, the Bush Imperium had “Compassionate Conservativism”… and right now the Obama people have this BS notion that you can somehow spur an economic recovery while still have ONE-IN-FIVE Americans out of work. This is worse than the mini-recession of 2001 when real wages for most Americans did not go up. At least then it was a shell game. Here the White House is shoving hundred of billions of dollars to institutions without conditions and not even expecting it to produce the results needed - JOBS - to get us out of the Great Recession!

And finally…

The Brutally Honest Award for the Biggest Disappointment in 2009: The Obama Administration - This is an award that I DID NOT want to give, but let’s get brutally honest here… this administration has pretty much squandered a lot of the good faith that it was given in January. They underestimated the scope of the recession. They failed to deal with the issue of unemployment other than to provide a pittance of support to those still looking for work. They failed to corral the abuses of the banks and Wall Street. They failed to bring the lawbreakers in the Bush Imperium to justice. They failed to oversee the handling of healthcare reform in Congress and instead backed a failed plan by the most dubious of Senate leaders.

2009 started off on a high note for the Democrats, but if they are not careful and if they fail to address their faults now, next year will make this one seem like a fantasy.