Lance Mannion

Dana Milbank's Mouthpiece Theater is all my fault

Maybe you've been spared the sight and sound and sheer hilarious horror of it.  If you have, if Mouthpiece Theater has been totally off your radar, stop reading.

If you know about it, and you've seen the latest installment in which the Washington Post's Dana Milbank suggests that if she'd been at the "beer summit" Hillary Clinton would have ordered a Mad Bitch, then I have an apology for you.

You may think that Milbank got the idea from Dan Ackroyd's old Leonard Pinth Garnell sketches on Saturday Night Live.

Nope.

He got it from me.

I'm convinced he read a post of mine from 2005, Notes from the Drones Club and, perhaps unconsciously, remembered this bit and mistook my attempt at satire for a flattering portrait:

Milbank has been one of the few bright lights not just at the Post---New slogan: We're not really a Republican mouthpiece, we only pretend to be one above the fold---but among the Inside the Beltway club members.  It doesn't take much to be a renegade inside the Beltway, of course.  It's just a matter of while the other club members sit contentedly in their big armchairs by the fire, smoking their Havanas and sipping 20 year old Scotch and tut tutting over what boobs and rubes the Democrats are and marveling over Karl Rove's genius, Milbank occasionally strolls into the club bar and asks the hired help what they think of Bush's economic plan, then wanders back to his place by the fire to tell his fellow club members, to their astonishment, that good old Isaac behind the bar thinks we ought to take a look at this thing he calls "the Deficit" and another thing he calls "The War in Iraq."

His reports are always met with some polite coughing and a quick change of the subject back to what a cad and a scoundrel that Bill Clinton was, and Milbank shrugs and picks up his cigar and Scotch and resumes his quiet place by the fire.

I didn't mention any smoking jackets but I think they're implied.

"Hello? Hello?"

Woman in the doctor's office this morning, blonde, fortyish, in short denim skirt, flip flops, attractive but with very tired eyes and drawn cheeks, talking on her blue tooth:

"Yeah, he and his wife split.  And he's with.  With.  With his new girlfriend.  And she's very nice.  Excuse me.  I've got another call coming in.  Hello?  Hello?  HELL-O?"

"No rain, no rainbow"

Son of gun!  Conan's right.  She is a poet!

Love Shatner as beatnik too.

Bongo drum salute to Jack Cluth.

Matt Taibbi reports from Wonderland, his favorite beat

I get a kick out of Taibbi's writing, but for the most part he's full of shit.

Make no mistake, this has nothing to do with Max Baucus, Bill Nelson, or anyone else. If the Obama administration wanted to pass a real health care bill, they would do what George Bush and Tom DeLay did in the first six-odd years of this decade whenever they wanted to pass some nightmare piece of legislation (ie the Prescription Drug Bill or CAFTA): they would take the recalcitrant legislators blocking their path into a back room at the Capitol, and beat them with rubber hoses until they changed their minds...

Sounds like a plan, right?  If only Obama and Harry Reid would follow Bush and DeLay's example?  Easy enough to do.  So if they're not doing it, must be because they don't want to do it, right?

Except those recalcitrant GOP legislators?  The so-called moderates.  DeLay's rubber hose?  Primary challenges from the Right and money.

The Blue Dogs aren't afraid of primary challenges from the Left.  I wish they could be made to be, but they're not.  And they don't have to worry about money because their rich corporate donors, like the banks and the insurance companies, are taking care of them.

Add to this the fact that when the GOP was in control of the Senate they didn't have to worry about filibusters because they could count on the Blue Dogs to vote for Cloture.

Oh, and Tom DeLay was the House Majority Leader, not Majority Leader of the Senate, and last I checked Nancy Pelosi and her crew were doing an ok job of moving things along in the House.  Maybe she's got hold of a good brand of rubber hose.

Or maybe she's got an actual majority to work with.

The fucking Senate is the fucking problem and it's because of the fucking Blue Dogs like fucking Max Baucus!

Taibbi's an insult artist before he's a reporter, and he doesn't let his reporting, which is minimal, get in the way of a good insult.  Read his book?  It's fun.  Lots of great stories.  But they're just stories.  Stories about Matt Tiabbi's adventures in whatever Wonderland he's wandered into.  He's got one source.  Himself.  All his work has one source.  Matt Taibbi.  Doesn't mean he's not right, sometimes.  Means, though, he's writing off the top of his head.  A lot.

So, frankly, I'm not impressed by anything Matt Taibbi thinks is going on in Washington or anywhere, even when I agree with him.

Taibbi blends opinion-mongering with insult comedy.  That's his schtik.  It works for him.  I can do it too.  I think a lot of people on the Left side of the Bandwidth want a good reason to hate Barack Obama as much as they hated George Bush.

Why?

Because they're psychologically more comfortable being on the outside and in the opposition.  Makes them feel like saints and martyrs.

Well, that wasn't all that funny, was it?  What I think though, and I'm just telling you what I think.  Which is all Taibbi does, says what he thinks.  Good for him.

If he can tell me what he thinks the President could do in the back room to put the fear of God into Max Baucus and what he can use for a rubber hose to beat him with, I'd appreciate it.

Probably so would the President.

Sometimes the headline tells the whole story

Driver blames car crash on snakes in pants pocket

Don't Worry, Baby

This is playing at Barnes and Noble right now.  How old am I in my head at the moment that this song is making perfect sense to me?  Nineteen?

Maureen Dowd writes a column about Sarah and Hillary that is really about...wait for it...Bill. I know, you're surprised.

Maureen Dowd is hard at work on her novel about the Clintons.  After eight years of George Bush, six months into the Presidency of Barack Obama, Dowd is still plugging away, absolutely convinced we're all as obsessed with Bill  and Monica as she is.

In her latest chapter, our plucky and intrepid narrator has discovered that Hillary Clinton isn't as awful a human being as she thought she was, at least not in comparison with the truly awful Sarah Palin. 

So, Dowd does the comparing, and in the comparisons works hard to do what doesn't come naturally to her, compliment our Secretary of State.

Of course, as is natural to Dowd, all her compliments are backhanded.

Hillary, who so often in the past came across as aggrieved, paranoid and press-loathing, was confident and comfortable in her role as top diplomat, discussing the world with mastery and shrugging off suggestions that she has been disappeared by her former rival, the president.

Those of us who have followed both Hillary Clinton's career and the novel excerpts Dowd calls an op-ed column A.) aren't surprised that Clinton is comfortable in her role and able to discuss her work with mastery and B.) would like to remind Dowd that "aggrieved, paranoid, and press-loathing" isn't a description of Hillary Clinton as much as it's the Cliff Notes summarization of the character Dowd created for her novel.

In short, Dowd seems to be engaging in some very fancy meta-criticism of her own writing, rejecting the author's premises as if she herself isn't the author.  Faced with the real-life self-caricature that is Sarah Palin, Dowd has been forced to reconsider her own caricature of Hillary Clinton and, possibly, admit it was in fact a caricature.

Except, of course, she can't quite do that, because then she'd have to give it up.  And if she gave up her caricature of Hillary, she'd have to give up her caricature of Bill.  And that she definitely can't do.

Obama advisers say privately that the president truly respects the woman he ran against, and that they have a good relationship, so good it has even surprised Hillary. Certainly, she doesn’t have to worry that this president’s gaze is going to drift over her shoulder to some pretty thing behind her. In this White House, Barack Obama is the pretty thing who is taken with Hillary’s serious, smartest-girl-at-Wellesley aura. In a funny way, he’s the man of her dreams.

Can't even give her points for trying.  Maybe Hillary has grown with her new job, but Dowd can't grow with her.  Dowd is still compelled to reduce the most important issues of the day to her own personal and juvenile preoccupations and jealousies.  In Dowd's novel  everybody's still an adolescent.  The President of the United States is a supporting player in the romantic misadventures of Hillary Felicity Porter Clinton, the dweeby good guy our heroine has been ignoring for the BMOC, and the Secretary of State has nothing more pressing on her mind than wondering what pretty girl has caught her wayward boyfriend's eye and maybe how pleased she is with herself for acing that term paper for English lit.

From the Adventures of Lance Mannion: Lance Mannion, First Responder

Mannion gave the sledge a final swing and the wall gave way. He pulled aside the remaining bricks and pushed his way through the hole. "Don't worry, kids! Help is here!" he shouted.

The old woman double-pumped the shotgun.

"Whoops," he had just enough time to think, "Wrong wall."

All the mad men and all the mad women are going to be their own icons and avatars

I've joined the staff at Sterling Cooper.

You can join too.  Madmen Yourself. Email me your Madman self and I'll post them during the week leading up to the season premiere, Sunday, August 16.

Rincewind on suffering for the common good

Rincewind spun around and waved a finger under Three Yoked Oxen's nose, which was as high as he could reach.

"I'll bloody well thump you if you trot out something like that one more time!" he shouted, and then grimaced at the realization that he had just threatened a man three times heavier than he was.

"Listen to me, will you?" he said, settling down a little.  "I know all about people who talk about suffering for the common good.  It's never bloody them!  When you hear a man shouting, 'Forward, brave comrades!' you'll see he's the one behind the bloody big rock and wearing the only really arrow proof helmet."

     ---Interesting Times by Terry Pratchett.

Where we no longer are

The haze
  has us
     in a slow, pink
       and gray

confusion; everything
  we know---
     the horizon,
       for example,

and the distant
  ridge of land---
     has vanished,
       the boat

glides without a sound
  over a sea of curled
     and luminous glass,
       there are clouds

in the sky wherever
  that is, and clouds
    in the water,
      and maybe

we have entered heaven
  already, the happy boat
     sliding
        like a bee

down the throat of a huge
  damp flower.
     Some birds,
        like streamers of white silk,

approach us crying.
  Ah, yes,
     how easy,
        how familiar

it seems now,
  that long,
     lovely thrusting up and down
        of wings.

              ---At Sea by Mary Oliver

Shark Day

More than 100 boats compete in shark tourney

OAK BLUFFS — The spectators came by ferry, bike and car. They tied as many as five boats together on a single mooring and loaded eight people on a small dinghy. Children sat impatiently on their parents' shoulders.

All gathered to see who would come in with the biggest catch in the 23rd annual Monster Shark Tournament.

The winning fish, it turned out, was a 361-pound porbeagle shark hauled in on the Marshfield-based fishing boat Karen Jean II. The shark measured more than 7 feet long.

But that was just one of more than a dozen sharks that came in yesterday. The tournament, billed as a two-day contest, was in effect a one-day event because of turbulent seas Friday that kept most boats in port. Only one boat brought in a shark Friday, and that mako did not even meet the minimum weight requirement of 200 pounds.

About 130 boats went shark fishing yesterday. That number was down from years past because the recession has made the nearly $1,500 entry fee tough to swallow, said Steve James, who directs the tournament.

Those boats that landed sharks came into the harbor beginning at 3:30 p.m. The fearsome fish were hoisted up and weighed as the fishermen stood around taking pictures with their catch. The sharks were then measured and finally cut up, first by marine biologists conducting shark research and then by event staff, who preserved the heads and tails and edible portions.

The winner's prize will depend on many factors, James said, but they will go home with at least several thousand dollars in fishing gear and possibly a larger amount in cash prizes and a boat.

Read all of Paul Needham's story in the Cape Cod Times.

From the Adventures of Lance Mannion: Lance Mannion, the Big Kahuna

Lance Mannion grinned at the cold, angry sea.  He strode confidently into the surf.  Then he saw it.  The biggest, meanest, hugest wave ever.  Still grinning, he turned on his heel and strode confidently back up the beach.

       ----A True Story written by Oliver Mannion.

Be sure to try the she-crab stew

Our favorite lobster shack.  You'll have to find it yourself.  We don't want it to go all trendy.  Scallops were delicious.  Last night, as in our last night of vacation.  Heading home tomorrow.

Watching over his Cape Cod girls

One morning, bunch of years ago, in 2002, 2003, can't remember for sure, the blonde and I rode our bikes out to Morris Island, the large hump of sand at the southern end of town where the Monomoy Wildlife Reserve begins with a jump over the channel to North Monomoy Island.  We leaned our bikes up against a then brand new bath house and wandered over to a cleared space in the sea grass that seemed marked out for a garden.  And there in the dirt was a stone decorated with sea shells and inscribed to the memory of someone named Peter.  Besides giving the man's name, the stone said, "A place for him to watch over his Cape Cod girls."

We puzzled over this, wondering who he was and how old he was when he'd died and when he'd died and who those Cape Cod girls were and in what way were they his.  We speculated about the significance of the spot which seemed to offer no overlook of anything much.  The ocean is practically out of sight behind a hedgerow, Monomoy Island, North and South, are hidden from view by woods.  Of course we understood that it was his spirit that was meant to be doing the watching, presumably from a higher vantage point.  But it still seemed to us that the spot itself must have meant something and that spot didn't seem all that special.  If those Cape Cod girls of his were friends or family, it seemed unlikely that this bleak patch of sandy ground, which, besides not being very scenic, was rather exposed to the wind and weather, was a spot where they would have come to play or picnic.  The phrase "his Cape Cod girls" threw us a bit too.  Did he have other girls in other vacation spots?  Or were these girls his Cape Cod girls because it was on the Cape that they were all happiest together?

Yesterday, when I was out there again, back for the first time since, I discovered that the stone is no longer his only monument.  There's a double-backed bench now with his name carved into it.  The bench is angled so that it faces a bird feeder where some chickadees were perching and having a snack.

The spot marked for a garden is a garden now and daisies bend and wave over the stone almost hiding it.

And it occurred to me that his "girls" might have been flowers or they might have been birds or they might have been both and that he might have used to come out here to watch over them where they lived.

Then I noticed that the bench was also carved with the dates of his birth and his death.

He'd died young at thirty-six.

On September 11, 2001.

I looked him up on the web when I got home.

His girls were his two daughters and his wife, and this, the Cape itself if not this particular spot, must have been what we'd thought, the place where they were all happiest together.

Rush Limbaugh tries to horn in on my vacation

The volunteer manning the desk at the Visitor Center at Monomoy Wildlife Refuge yesterday was a short, wiry, bright-eyed, and still square-jawed old man I'd guess was in his late sixties, early seventies---New Englanders are tricky about age.  He could have been eighty.---in a powder blue sweatshirt with the National Park Service logo.  His full head of hair was white and silver and cut close above his ears.  He was quick and cheerful and friendly with a roguish grin that established him as the type who's built a personal religion around the word spry.

The Visitor Center can be lonely place on a nice day.  On a cold, blustery day, the air full of a mist working up the courage to become rain, it's probably the center of even fewer visits and the old man was keeping himself company by listening to talk radio.

I wasn't a few steps in the door before I recognized the voice.

"Is that Rush?"

The old man grinned his roguish grin.  "You've got good ears.  I close it up in the drawer when I see someone coming in."

My ears were good enough to pick up Rush saying the word "race."

"I'm sorry," I said, "I can't deal with that blowhard ruining my vacation.  I'll come back later."

The old man laughed, good-naturedly.

Blue as the home state of Ted Kennedy and Barney Frank is, there are still Republicans about.  They become thicker on the ground the farther outside of Boston you go, and some of them are as rabidly Right Wing and loony as any yahoo you'd meet in the front row at a Sarah Palin rally in the Real American parts of Virginia.

But who knows what the old man's politics were?  He could have been a ditto-head.  Could have been a flinty New England Liberal proud that he cast his first vote for President for John Kennedy, listening to Rush for the fun of it. Some people take Limbaugh at his word that he's just an "entertainer."   Pop Mannion used to get a kick out of him before he realized the fat clown wasn't kidding.  And there are some people who listen because they believe it's good to know what tune the devil is playing.

And there are some people, self-skeptical, self-ironical, self-questioning, who not only think it's important to have their most cherished beliefs challenged but who enjoy it, who cheer it on, who even join in.  It's a relief for them.  A release.  As it would be for a parson to step up to the pulpit one Sunday, look hard at his congregation, and with a roguish grin announce, "It's all a load of hooey!"

Sometimes the highest-minded ideals and the most ennobling of faiths can feel like chains around the heart.

"I'll turn it off," the old man said, and he did.

After that the conversation was all about sea turtles, beach erosion, and when the tide would turn and the path along the beach and out into the woods would dry out.

Race baiting the President

Apparently Village Media Types think there was some sort of deal between them and Barack Obama that he could be President as long as he never reminded them that he's black.

The band warms up

Ready for their big number, Eidelweiss.  Tonight.  Five of eight.

Before the band concert

Every Friday night during the summer there's a band concert on the Village Green.  Took this about two hours ago.  The concert's well underway now.  We can hear it from here.  They're doing the Bunny Hop right now. 

The Village at sunset

Thought the sky was pretty in this one.  Tonight.  Hour and a half ago or so.  Friday, July 24, 2009.