Quote of the Day

"If some people on this committee want to call this tragedy the worst since 9/11, it misunderstands the nature of 4,000-plus Americans lost in the War in Iraq under false pretenses."

-- Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut moments after Rand Paul told Hillary Clinton, during her Capitol Hill testimony on Benghazi, that were he president he would've fired her for her "culpability" in the "worst tragedy since 9/11"

There are a lot of great quotes coming out of Clinton's testimony today, most coming from Clinton herself being that she's not the type to suffer fools lightly and Lord knows most of those trying to milk this bullshit for political gain are fools of the highest order. But Murphy's is the most pointed for cutting right to the core of what this nonsense is really all about.

Benghazi isn't the worst tragedy since 9/11. It's barely even the worst tragedy since the last eleven deadly attacks on one of our embassies in the Middle East, West Asia and North Africa in the past decade. Not to dismiss the deaths of four people, including a U.S. ambassador, but there's something that needs to be said over and over again as the Republicans continue this ridiculous farce in search of a legitimate scandal: While absolutely tragic, what happened in Benghazi is a relatively by-the-numbers incident. The United States has made the choice to attempt to undertake diplomacy in some very, very dangerous places, and violence against the dedicated men and women stationed in those areas is, as callous as this sounds, the cost of doing business.

Every single question that can be asked about Benghazi should be asked in an effort to determine what happened and to help ensure that it doesn't happen again. But to forcefully suggest that the Benghazi attack and its aftermath were the result of institutional incompetence or that there's some kind of cover-up afoot at the highest levels of government is nothing more than the nihilistic politics of a desperate opposition party.

If a Republican had been in the White House when Benghazi happened -- and this attack and the immediate administration response to it would've been largely the same regardless -- none of this would be going on right now. Fox News would be shouting down anyone who dared to ask questions and calling that person a traitor guilty of giving aid and comfort to the enemy during a time of war.

Guys like Rand Paul didn't deserve to be taken the least bit seriously going into this dumb-ass dog and pony show on the Hill today, and they're only making themselves look more ridiculous as the day goes by.

Adding: A bonus Quote of the Day from Joan Walsh over at Salon:

"The stature gap between Clinton and those possible 2016 rivals – OK, nobody’s announced they’re running, but I couldn’t help thinking about it – was enormous. When Rand Paul huffed 'had I been President at the time and I found that you did not read the cables (from Benghazi) I would have relieved you of your duties,' it wasn’t intimidating but funny. President Rand Paul? Try to say that without laughing."

WWHD?

During last week's podcast, I referenced a piece in Salon that advanced a hypothetical that at least a few shell-shocked Obama supporters have been turning over in their minds lately: What would Hillary have done? Despite catching a certain amount of crap for even venturing out onto that very thin ice, I stand by the argument that it's only natural to wonder what the road not taken might have been like when the road taken wound up leading to that ice in the first place -- hell, my entire life has been like that -- and I've never edited my public statements before so I see no reason to keep completely quiet simply out of fear of appearing to be piling on or bandwagoning. I get the impression that I'm like a lot of people who've wondered if all the things they didn't much like about Clinton during the 2008 campaign -- qualities traditionally associated with Hillary, such as her willingness to fight really dirty and her understanding that politics is indeed occasionally a contact sport -- would've been assets used to put the dangerously intransigent Congressional Republicans in their place over the past few weeks.

Barack Obama is fantastic at the long-game and at thwarting his opponents in ways they might not first grasp, and that's served him -- and the country -- well on more than one occasion. He's a chess player, and a pretty good one; it's one of the reasons I tend to trust his judgment more often than not. But I still couldn't help feeling like we didn't need a chess player this last time around; we needed an MMA fighter willing to step into the octagon and pummel the living shit out of somebody. And so, yeah, I wondered if Hillary would've been as willing to put up with the nonsense dispensed by the GOP and its tea-bagging overlords, the senile dipshits who openly applaud the destruction of the U.S. economy because I guess it somehow meets their twisted ends. I've maintained for some time that indiscriminately attacking Obama from the center or left, in the current political climate, simply does the work of Republican strategists for them -- that smart accountability, the kind that acknowledges political reality, is the only way to go in this situation. But I got a little pissed and maybe let it show, and once again I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with that.

It took the debate with Cesca to kind of ground me a tad and bring me back to planet Earth, despite the fact that I was never suggesting that discussing the positives and negatives of a hypothetical Clinton primary run in 2012 amounted to outright buyer's remorse anyway.

I bring all this up because Joan Walsh of Salon apparently feels the same way I do, which is to say that she did a little pondering of the road not taken recently and was handed a healthy dose of reality by the always-great Ari Melber of the Nation. Her piece today in Salon spells out in no uncertain terms who's really to blame for the political and economic nightmare we're all suffering through right now. And here's a hint -- it isn't Barack Obama.

Salon: Mistakes of the 2008 Primary/8.10.11

The Women Who Weren't There

I really didn't mean for it to turn into Chez-vs.-God day around here, but it's admittedly been a while since we've done a theme day, so maybe we're due.

Chances are by now you've either seen the above photograph or heard about it. I'm of course not talking about the instantly iconic original image of the scene in the White House Situation Room as a Navy SEAL raid was ending the life of Osama bin Laden; I'm talking about the picture as it appeared in the Brooklyn Hasidic newspaper Der Tzitung, the one with the noticeably photoshopped space where Hillary Clinton should be. The paper admits to removing both Clinton and former counter-terrorism director Audrey Tomason -- who was at the back of the room -- from the picture because it says it has a policy of not displaying a female image of any kind because it might be interpreted as "sexually suggestive."

Setting aside the idea that anyone can be so sexually repressed that he's afraid the sight of Hillary Clinton in harsh light and a pant-suit will get him hard, I need a question answered: Why am I supposed to respect a belief system this ridiculously backward? Keep in mind that while Hasidic Judaism is extreme by its very nature, it's still a legitimate part of the Jewish faith, and that faith is something that overall we're expected to at the very least show deference to even if we don't necessarily subscribe to it. This isn't the much-maligned Heaven's Gate cult or a bunch of Raelians worshiping an alien god -- it's a supposedly "acceptable" religion, whose tenets are adhered to by millions, and yet you can see the irony. We're now in the second decade of the 21st century and there are people for whom the need to appease a lunatic superstition -- an incomprehensible vestigial remnant of a time when man didn't know anything about anything -- demands that they excise all images of women from photographs. What's more, the rest of us are expected to show respect to this nonsense simply because enough people happen to subscribe to it; it somehow stopped being crazy through sheer force of democracy and we're supposed to now pretend that it's off-limits to the kind of ridicule it's always deserved.

The editors at Der Tzitung shouldn't be able to hide behind the impenetrable shield of their "religious beliefs" because the rest of us shouldn't accept that kind of horseshit excuse as impenetrable. This case acts as a perfect snapshot, literally, of how faith-based religion adjusts notions like reality and the truth in order to create the kind of conditions in which it can survive. Just because these idiots don't want to believe that Hillary Clinton was in the Situation Room, standing toe-to-toe with men, when Osama bin Laden was killed doesn't mean she wasn't there. Just like the absurdly archaic belief that their god exists and cares one way or the other about them doesn't mean he does.

Picture of the Week (Honorable Mention)

This remained on the New York Times web site until late this afternoon when someone realized the error.

As Andy Borowitz said on Twitter, if the Times continued making mistakes like this, it might actually be worth paying for.

Quote of the Day

"Viewership of Al Jazeera is going up in the United States because it's real news. You may not agree with it, but you feel like you're getting real news around the clock instead of a million commercials and, you know, arguments between talking heads and the kind of stuff that we do on our news which, you know, is not particularly informative to us, let alone foreigners."

-- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

In addition to the actual people forcing much-needed change down the throats of their repressive governments, the winners in the recent Middle Eastern upheaval have been Facebook, Twitter and, yes, Al Jazeera. Despite the pants-wetting terror and outrage it's produced from the usual suspects on the right, the Qatar-based network has consistently proven its journalism to be not only outstanding but, more importantly, beholden to no state or authority. Al Jazeera pisses off everyone at various times -- without seeming to care that it does -- and that's what makes its journalists so good and so special these days. If you wanted to know what was really going on on the ground during the coverage of the Egyptian uprising in particular, Al Jazeera English -- which operates out of a non-descript office building in Washington, DC -- was the only network you should've been glued to. The contrast between its people being right in the middle of the story from day one and remaining there 24/7 and, say, Fox News or MSNBC's almost non-stop parade of self-described "experts" debating it from the comfort of a New York City studio was almost comical. Yes, both CNN and MS have done some excellent work overseas, and are continuing to. But there's just no contest -- Al Jazeera is blowing them away on what could be the most important and potentially game-changing series of socio-political events this planet has seen in the last fifty years.

Don't Believe the Hype, It's a Sequel

F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said that the true test of a first rate intellect is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still function.

For example: "Hillary Clinton would make an excellent secretary of state," and "Hillary Clinton would make a terrible addition to the Obama cabinet."

Or: "The current drama surrounding Hillary Clinton's potential appointment to secretary of state is almost entirely the creation of the conflict-addicted media," and "Hillary Clinton would almost surely bring unnecessary drama with her to any new post within the Obama administration."

Or, now that I think about it, maybe this: "I really liked Bill Clinton and thought he was a great president," and "Bill Clinton is a narcissistic sociopath who drags trouble behind him wherever he goes like tin cans tied to a wedding limo."

With all of these disparate notions fighting for supremacy, the question then centers around whether the good to be had by appointing Hillary Clinton to a high position in the incoming government outweighs the bad. Is she really worth all the political and emotional baggage?

Honestly?

No, she isn't.

I won't be one of those people who spent months vociferously supporting Barack Obama only to then criticize him the moment he wins; I in no way feel "betrayed" by any of the decisions he's made in the couple of weeks since securing a landslide victory and the mandate that comes with it. On the contrary, I'm encouraged by his desire to bring former adversaries into the fold; I think it's good for the country, by and large, and fulfills the promise Obama made during the campaign to shun the mistakes of his illustrious predecessor, a man who never met a spineless crony he didn't like.

But bringing Hillary Clinton on board is an entirely different animal.

I despised the kind of cynical and unscrupulous campaign Clinton ran during the primaries, but I'm willing to chalk that up to the nature of modern politics -- particularly because it has no bearing on her capacity to represent the United States as its top diplomat. What does present a problem, however -- and will continue to -- is that with Hillary Clinton, you never get just Hillary Clinton; it's always a package deal that includes Bill.

And if you think Bill Clinton won't find a way to inject his special brand of self-obsessed melodrama -- the proudly sly, Melrose Place-meets-the-White House shtick that we endured for most of the 90s -- into the otherwise focused, serious and drama-free environment created by Team Obama, I've got a story about not having sexual relations with an intern I'm sure I can convince you of.

Bill Clinton doesn't know how to lay low and relinquish the spotlight; he'd be an albatross around the neck of his wife and therefore a 300-pound millstone around the neck of the Obama White House.

And as Obama's own campaign said in reference to its opponent in the general election, that's not change -- that's more of the same.

Hill to Pay

I'll take "Things You Could've Seen Coming a Mile Away" for a thousand, Alex.

The Huffington Post: Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State?/11.13.08

Blonde Joke

Ya gotta love Fox News.*

In an effort to stir up a little dissension in the ranks, Barbie Doll anchor Megyn Kelly -- the dumbest of the network's cadre of dumb blondes -- intimated earlier today that Bill and Hillary Clinton may not be voting for Barack Obama.

As they arrived at the polling place, Kelly enthused like a schoolgirl on prom night:

""Who do you think they're voting for? Seriously. It may not be Barack Obama if you believe a lot of theories. IT MAY BE JOHN MCCAIN! Their last hope that Hillary can come back four years from now and take over in the Oval Office."

It's bad enough that Fox is still citing the jokes tossed back and forth within its own newsroom as some sort of conventional wisdom, but for God's sake, Meggy -- do yourself a favor and stop trying to think.

You'll only hurt yourself and the rest of us.

*No you don't.

Laugh So You Don't Cry

Making a Mockery of Politics

A quick look back at some of the more memorable -- or at the very least, juvenile -- posts dealing with this year's presidential campaign.

(Here's Johnny!/6.21.08)

(Terry On/6.3.08)

(Mitt-out You/2.7.08)

(Is Barack Obama Gonna Have to Choke a Bitch?/1.7.08)

(The Sectarian Candidate/12.6.07)

Ladies' Worst

I may as well get this out there before the blogosphere lights up like Dresden: MSNBC pundit emeritus and apparent recent stroke victim Chris Matthews just called Hillary Clinton hold-outs "wackos" on national television.

He was referring to those few Clinton supporters who claim to be willing to engage in the political equivalent of cutting off their collective nose to spite their face by voting for John McCain; they call themselves PUMAs, an amusing little double entendre which supposedly stands for "Party Unity My Ass." Matthews was tossing to an interview when he indelicately dismissed such hardline nonsense. What's worth noting though is that, like a dog that's been hit with a rolled up newspaper enough times, MSNBC has apparently learned its lesson about the blogger backlash that generally follows whenever one of the network's white-guy talking heads makes a comment that could be considered misogynist: Matthews cracked his best "just joshin'" smile and backed down from the insult about two minutes after making it, no doubt instructed to in his ear by a producer whose face was turning six different shades of red.

The thing is, whether Matthews should've been the one to do it or not, somebody needed to publicly shame these batty Clintonista militants and call them on their folly.

Good going, girls. Way to disprove the dubious notion that women are always hamstrung by emotion and can't use their heads when they need to.

(Update, 8.26.08: As expected, today's edition of Salon.com has a detailed profile of the "PUMAs" which references Matthews's ire toward them. Salon.com: Angry PUMAs on the Prowl in Denver/8.26.08)

Surrender, Hillary

I wanted to write something about Hillary Clinton's destructive, delusional narcissism in respect to her unwillingness to graciously step aside in the wake of the big Obama win the other night. (Like a child demanding attention, she was perfectly content to pace back and forth stomping her feet, and would've remained that way had her own Congressional supporters not forced her hand in the strongest possible terms.)

But Bob Cesca, one of the Huffington Post's best and most prolific contributors, put it all out there a hell of a lot better than I or anyone else probably could've.

(The Huffington Post: "Even in Defeat, It's All About Her" by Bob Cesca/6.4.08)

Terry On

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Hillary Clinton is expected to concede Tuesday night that Barack Obama has the delegates needed to secure the Democratic nomination, campaign officials told the Associated Press, but Clinton's campaign manager denied the report.

The former first lady will stop short of formally suspending or ending her race in her speech in New York City, said the officials who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity, because they were not authorized to divulge her plans.

However Terry McAuliffe, Clinton's campaign chairman, told CNN that AP is "100% reporting incorrectly."

"I don't know who the officials are, but anyone can be an official in this world. I can unequivocally say as chairman of this campaign that until someone has the numbers this nomination fight continues on," he said. "The race goes on."

McAuliffe went on to say that "reports that President John F. Kennedy is dead have been greatly exaggerated," "as of right now, there appears to be minimal damage to the World Trade Center," and "there is no presence of American infidels in the city of Baghdad. There are no troops there. Never. They're not at all."

(For the record, McAuliffe's absolutely right -- anyone can be an official in this world. He proves it.)

Raising Hill

Hopefully, you got the chance to see HBO's damn good movie Recount, about the underhanded machinations and near-psychotic fight for votes that ensued in Florida immediately following the 2000 presidential election. In addition to being a snapshot likely to trigger depressing alternate reality fantasies that wipe away the nightmare of the last several years, it paints a picture of the sickeningly Machiavellian lenghts that Republicans went to in an effort to stop the vote recount -- in particular, the staged protests (read: near-riots) designed to terrorize adversaries to the breaking point.

An exercise in irony that's beyond description, however, is to watch Recount, then pay close attention to the behavior of Hillary Clinton's supporters yesterday at the Democratic Rules and Bylaws Committee hearing. Clinton's frighteningly rabid apostles -- who've been conditioned by their leader not to take no for an answer, no matter what -- bear a resemblance to the bullying GOP warriors of 2000 in ways that would be hilarious if they weren't so damn sad. (Protests are one thing; shouting, booing, making pseudo-extremist threats and otherwise being disruptive inside the meeting room itself is something else entirely.)

Hillary's journey to the dark side has been complete for quite a while -- but there's no need for her zombies to rub it the hell in.

(CTV: Hillary Supporters Furious with Hearing Decision/6.1.08)

From the Depths of Hill

"Your Christian God has failed you, Clinton! It is time to pray to the dark lord Cthulhu and give summons to the deep ones who rest beneath the eldritch waters! Bring them forth! Your ethics mean nothing to them! They will make you Queen of the Americas after they subjugate the weak souls of humanity! Come! Put Chelsea's soul on the altar of madness! For it is the only way to please their infinite hunger!"

-- Michael Drucker @ 23/6

Donald Grump

This is brilliant not simply because of how deliciously venomous it is in its indignation, but because if Hillary Clinton doesn't listen, the author can have his son, Jack Bauer, torture her until she drops out of the race.

(The Huffington Post: "Hillary's Popular Vote Notion Only "Popular" with the Punditocracy" by Donald Sutherland)

The World I Knew

Like a lot of Americans, I've never considered Al Gore to be a particularly dynamic speaker. Even taking into account the recent and somewhat involuntary injection of pathos he's received via some very favorable conventional wisdom, he's still a bit of a dud. Honestly, when you think of the most inspirational, stirring addresses you've heard in your lifetime -- the kinds of thunderous calls-to-arms that leave audiences weak-kneed and fully prepared to mobilize for that potentially suicidal offensive into the depths of hell -- the guy who used to joke that his version of the Macarena involved standing completely still and who once called Joe Lieberman "passionate" just doesn't immediately come to mind.

That said, I do remember a series of speeches, delivered by then Vice Presidential Candidate Gore and culminating at the 1992 Democratic National Convention, which seemed to hit all the right notes and make for a bold and powerful statement against what at that time were the beginnings of a political dynasty -- one that had clearly lost touch not only with the American people but, quite possibly, with reality. Gore's familiar refrain during the '92 campaign -- those who were ready and willing to usher in a new revolution in U.S. politics will remember it as a sort of battle cry -- was only seven words long, yet spoke volumes: "It is time for them to go."

Ironically, 16 years ago, Al Gore's dismissive declaration -- the reckoning for which he was calling -- was aimed at a Bush administation. And ironically, 16 years ago, the logical cure for such a political and cultural cancer, at least in the opinion of Gore, was a Clinton presidency.

I was only 22 at the time, just starting out in the world, and yet my memories of the Clinton campaign -- the way it made me feel not just about the potentially bright future for my country but about my own importance in the electoral process -- are as vivid as if they were only a few days old. Put simply, Bill Clinton made me believe that I mattered; that the course the nation would take depended on me and those my age; that I indeed had a voice and a responsibility to use it; that there was -- dare I say it now -- hope.

It was time for my generation to stand up, be counted and help take charge. It was time for them to go.

And a Clinton would lead the way.

It's almost incomprehensible to me, 16 years later, that the name which was once so closely associated with faith in the future of this country and in the power of those who haven't yet been thoroughly contaminated by the astringency of the process has now become synonymous with the worst kind of Machiavellian, win-at-all-costs cynicism. To put a finer point on it, I may have wisened over the years and accepted the reality that the Clintons, like most politicians, are opportunists above all else -- but I never thought I'd see the day that Hillary Clinton so absolutely obliterated every last vestige of waning decency attributed to the Clinton name and legacy by invoking an event as horrific as the assassination of Bobby Kennedy in an effort to win an election. Over the past several months, it's true that we've occasionally seen the worst the Clintons have to offer the political landscape. We've witnessed innuendo atop gossip atop baseless accusation atop outright lie atop sickening bedfellow atop jaw-dropping proclamation atop unadulterated bullshit. We've watched Hillary Clinton straddle the sometimes razor-thin line separating admirable tenacity from self-obsessed, destructive folly. By this time, we thought we'd seen it all -- that at the very least her expanding army of skeptics would be deprived of any sort of final Hollywood-esque surprise twist.

Then, through either blatant underhandedness or negligent stupidity, she actually insinuated that her opponent for the Democratic nomination, Barack Obama, just might be felled by an assassin's bullet in the coming month. "Hey, you know, anything can happen -- just sayin'," she seemed to be offering up, during last week's interview with a newspaper in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. She's since gone on to "apologize" for the galactically ill-advised comment -- something I feel the need to clarify because Clinton didn't, in fact, say she was sorry for even bringing the word "assassination" into the current political discourse as much as she argued semantics, attempting to justify the meaning behind her statement while tossing out an anemically half-assed mea culpa to anyone who may have misconstrued her point. In other words, Hillary Clinton doesn't seem to understand that raising, even for a moment, the specter of that most grisly and epochal of possibilities has zero place within a political campaign, any campaign -- no matter the rationale.

Which is why Hillary Clinton should not be president.

Which is why it is time for her to go.

I've never believed that Clinton should heed the calls of those attempting to hector her into dropping out of the race. True, I haven't been an outspoken fan of Clinton during this campaign, but at no point have I thought that she should simply step aside and let Barack Obama and his supporters roll over her and the historic feat she hopes to accomplish. At no point have I honestly succumbed to the notion that Hillary Clinton would make a bad president.

Until now.

I now believe that Hillary Clinton should withdraw from the race for the White House not because she stands defiantly, some say futilely, in the way of the Obama phenomenon which so many think represents the most noble way forward for the Democratic party. I believe that she should withdraw because no one who even offhandedly implies that the last, best hope for his or her candidacy might involve the ultimate snuffing-out not only of an opponent but of the dream that he represents has no place being the leader of the free world. Not now, especially. Not after all this country has been through over the past eight years. Anyone dumb enough to not understand how invoking the assassination of Bobby Kennedy would be interpreted during this particular campaign -- or barbaric enough to, in fact, understand exactly how it would be interpreted -- is not fit to become the President of the United States.

And so, once again -- it is time for her to go.

The sad irony that in my eyes -- the eyes of someone for whom the Clintons once represented a stand against politics-as-usual -- Hillary Clinton has become the very thing she purported to stand against so many years ago certainly isn't lost on me. The fact that the Clintons' notorious narcissism and sense of entitlement has reached such a level of insurmountability that Mrs. Clinton can assail not simply her opponent but the Kennedy-esque legacy of hope she believes he represents is repugnant in ways I'm not sure I can properly express. I knew Hillary Clinton could be a political monster when she deemed it necessary; I had no idea she could allow herself to become Grendel -- forfeiting her principles so handily that those of us who once believed in her and her husband's future for the country are now left to wonder whether there were ever principles there at all.

It is time for her to go.

Last Tuesday night, during the final showdown on American Idol, David Cook -- a 25-year-old bartender from just outside Kansas City -- sang a stunning version of a song that was released in 1995, coincidentally when I was 25: Collective Soul's The World I Know. As I watched, I was reminded of that time when I had faith in the Clintons and their vision for America. I listened to Cook sing, "Has our conscience shown? Has the sweet breeze blown? Has all kindness gone? Hope still lingers on," and I just shook my head, feeling more than a painful twinge of nostalgia -- remembering the world I used to know, and would very much like to know again.

I honestly can't say whether Barack Obama is the best hope for this country, even though he inspires the new generation the way the Clintons once inspired me. Regardless, I know this: Hillary Clinton absolutely is not. She doesn't even believe in hope anymore.

It is time for her to go.

God Bless the U.S.A.

How much do you love the American political system?

It's the only place where an obscenely wealthy quasi-oligarch like Hillary Clinton can call a black man an elitist and actually be taken seriously.

Folks, what Maureen Dowd said almost two years ago has come to fruition: Nothing short of a stake through the heart will stop Hillary from taking what's rightfully hers dammit!

(Clinton Says "Full Speed On to the White House" Despite Very Bad Night)

Why So Serious?

It might be time to once again make an important point crystal clear: I'm neither conservative nor liberal. My attitude is that if each side of the aisle finds good reason to dislike the things I say, my opinions, my overall tone, etc., then I'm doing something right.

That said, I have a question for those who count themselves among America's "staunchly liberal" contingent; it involves something I've noticed as I scan the content on the Huffington Post -- the reaction to my pieces as well as the contributions of others.

Why the hell do liberals tend to take everything so goddamned seriously?

I bring this up because there's a tidal wave of righteous indignation gaining momentum across the blogosphere at the moment in response to an ill-advised but relatively harmless comment made by, of all people, Keith Olbermann. While discussing the future of Hillary Clinton's campaign with Newsweek columnist and sycophantic turd Howard Fineman, Olbermann responded to the notion that someone might have to step in to settle the Democratic primary by saying, "Right -- somebody who can take her into a room and only he comes out." This was admittedly a really stupid thing to say and, whether forced to or not, Olbermann quickly apologized to those who might have felt that he recommended physically beating the hell out of Clinton. "It is a metaphor. The generic 'he' gender could imply something untoward. It should've been 'only the other comes out -- from a political point of view,'" he said in an official statement.

Only an idiot would fail to notice an undercurrent of sexism among MSNBC's male anchors: Chris Matthews, David Shuster and former MS host Don Imus have all made comments about women that they then had to retract. But likewise, does anyone with a brain really believe that Keith Olbermann was, in fact, suggesting that a man physically harm Hillary Clinton?

Like Shuster's infamous "pimping-out Chelsea" line before it, Olbermann's remark is nothing more than an offhand shot taken by a guy who's essentially talking to hear himself talk. And while it may reveal something about Olbermann's true attitude toward women, once again, I doubt very seriously that he was taking out a hit on Hillary.

And yet, judging by the response from some on the left, you'd think that was exactly what he'd done.

Keep in mind, this is Keith Olbermann we're talking about -- someone who's been a hero to liberal America by giving it the kind of public voice it hasn't had in years. As silly as I thought it was to pitch a fit over John Gibson's comments about Heath Ledger's death, or what O'Reilly and that buffoon Limbaugh have to say about anything at all, at least the outrage was aimed in the, pardon the pun, right direction. These people are the left's sworn enemies; it makes sense to try to play "gotcha" with them, no matter how ineffectual such outrage may be. But Olbermann is ostensibly one of their own; turning on him not only shoots your own cause in the foot, it actually goes a long way in proving why the Democrats can't seem to win an election to save their lives: Republicans are organized -- they get behind a set of people and a set of talking points, no matter how ridiculous, and they stay there. To the left, this kind of unwavering True Belief is stubborn and robotic and proves that your average red-stater can't think for himself. But guess what? It wins elections.

In the past couple of weeks alone, I've been castigated by commenters on HuffPost for titling a column about Gloria Allred "Burn the Witch" ("What's wrong with you? How can you say something like that?"); I've been accused of insulting children ("Kids should rule the world. Imagine a world where children could vote: 'Do you think your mommmy and daddy should be sent to Iraq? Yes or No?'"); and, my personal favorite, I've been raked over the coals for my insensitivity toward lunatic cults ("Saying that someone 'drank the Kool-aid' is cruel to those who died at Jonestown."). And I'm not out there by myself when it comes to facing the wrath of the supposedly free-thinking perpetually aggrieved: Earlier this month, Rolling Stone columnist Matt Taibbi got into a blogging row with aging sex writer and pompous liberal cliché Erica Jong after he wrote a piece which referred to Hillary Clinton as "flabby." Jong didn't just go after Taibbi -- because that would be positively Philistine for someone as erudite and evolved as she is; No, Jong analyzed Taibbi's crack to death before finally coming to the conclusion that -- and I swear, she was serious about this -- insulting Hillary's appearance was a form of Freudian displacement designed to help Taibbi come to terms with the fact that he wants to have sex with his mother. In his own defense, Taibbi responded by just cutting to the chase and calling Jong a worthless hack -- which not only had the benefit of being true, it was infinitely more amusing to read.

Once again, Matt Taibbi is about as liberal as they come -- and yet those who consider themselves, I suppose, the humorless liberal "elite" (and I don't use that term the way the right often does) see no harm in eating their own. I truly believe that, as with Jong, it stems from the constant need to overcomplicate and overanalyze issues as a means of showing off one's superior intellect, and the inability to just go from point-A to point-B in a straight fucking line.

It would actually be funny if it weren't so sad -- and so antithetical to what the left hopes to accomplish, particularly in an election year. I hate the far right wingnuts like poison, but for the most part they can take a fucking joke and don't convene a press conference when somebody offends them, which is one of the reasons they've had such a powerful voice in this country for the last several years.

Jesus people, lighten up -- or you'll die trying (and by that, I don't mean that I'm advocating violence against you).

Everything Is Under Control

There's a terrific movie from the late 90s that's been on my mind quite a bit over the past couple of days.

David Fincher's wonderfully creepy gem The Game had the misfortune of falling between the director's masterworks -- it was released after Se7en and before Fight Club -- and as such is now largely overlooked. For those who haven't seen it, the film stars Michael Douglas as an icy corporate baron whose perfectly self-structured life begins to unravel after his brother, played by Sean Penn, enrolls him in a mysterious "game," supposedly for the purpose of helping him relax. Douglas's character is initially told that he'll never know exactly when the game -- which has been specifically tailored to his personality -- begins. But what starts as a series of seemingly harmless pranks eventually turns sadistic and terrifying, with the main character running for his life, unable to tell what's real, what isn't, or how to make any of it stop.

The movie never fails to breathe with an uncomfortable sense of dread, despite the fact that its entire storyline -- every frightening twist and turn -- can be negated by the viewer with one single thought:

None of this is real. It's all part of the game.

Last night in Washington DC, Hillary Clinton prostrated herself before a gathering of black newspaper publishers, unleashing a torrent of apologies for recent comments made by Geraldine Ferraro -- the perpetually irritable former presidential candidate who until yesterday was an honorary member of the Clinton campaign. Over the past few weeks, Ferraro has regaled anyone willing to listen with her theory that Barack Obama owes his current political fortunes to the color of his skin, saying that if he were white, or a woman, voters wouldn't be paying attention to him. Although Ferraro has resigned her position with Camp Clinton, telling Hillary that she doesn't want to see the campaign damaged by unnecessary controversy, she's anything but contrite. Last night on NBC, not long before Keith Olbermann's brutal on-air denunciation of her comments, Ferraro arrogantly insisted that she was the victim of a witch hunt and that it was the Obama camp who owed her an apology. She's gone on to say that she's under attack for being white and that Obama supporters are attempting to violate her first amendment rights -- rights she plans to continue exercising now that she's gone Ronin from the Clinton campaign proper.

While I admire Ferraro's tenacity and refusal to offer up the traditional insincere apology, a firm spine doesn't necessarily prove the existence of a functional brain: What Ferraro said was astonishingly stupid.

But here's the thing -- it was also completely predictable.

Despite her well-deserved status as a trailblazer in politics, Geraldine Ferraro is one of the Beltway's most infamous loose cannons. She's a reliable fountain of bitter rhetoric and a stubbornly pious crusader for her own brand of logic. She's the political Terminator: She won't listen to reason and she can't be bargained with once she's acquired her target, whatever or whomever that may be. What's important though is that she's been this way for decades. Geraldine Ferraro isn't some untested neophyte with stars in her eyes and a blank slate for a reputation, and Hillary Clinton knew as much when she brought her on-board the campaign. Clinton was well aware of what kind of product she was buying from the very beginning -- and make no mistake, she got exactly what she wanted. Taking a page from her legal background, she implicitly allowed for a pejorative statement to be made in court that would sway the jury, but from which she could officially distance herself. Clinton now has the best of both worlds: An "evil twin" doing the dirty work -- raising the vilest of bullshit controversies to anxious voters -- and not simply clean hands but the added benefit of being able to play both ends against the middle by publicly repudiating the actions of the other half.

We've seen this before from the Clintons -- many times. It smacks of the kind of political opportunism and self-satisfied aren't-we-clever machinations for which they've become legendary.

There's the chance that I'm wrong about all of this, of course -- that Hillary Clinton gave no more thought to hiring Geraldine Ferraro than she would have to any other heavyweight ally, and that she was as repulsed by Ferraro's ridiculous comments as the rest of us.

But how can anyone tell anymore?

At this point, is it really so foolish to assume that everything we see is just part of the game?