Take It As Red

I can't believe it.

Negroponte is to be the National Intelligence Director. If I were American I'd be packing my bags and running now, the man's a death squadding nun-raping torturing psychopath.

Via Atrios, now apparently famous after a mention on the Daily Show regarding l'affaire Gannon. This seems somewhat unfair to those who actually did and are still doing the digging on AmericaBlog and Kos, but there you go, fame is fickle and fleeting and it's the exposure of the truth that's important, so feh. At least it momentarily gets that bloody awful, spoilt, fratgirl Wonkette off the airwaves, the silly little madam. I must say if she is a fair example of just what kind of education many young people are getting in the US then we should be worried. Many seem beyond redemption from developing a capacity for independent thought at a scarily early age, as is evidenced by the number of complaints made to a wingnut front website.

Students for Academic Freedom was set up to gather ammunition for the Republicans to allege liberal bias in colleges and schools. So far, so unexceptional for the genre. There's lots of these things, laid out like lures by Republican party operatives and their characteristics are quite similar. But when you start to read the complaints here en masse it takes on a much more sinister aspect.

Like a lot of people I've been absolutely riveted by the whole Gannon/Guckert -shock-horror- male -whore/pretend journo -in -the -White House thing. It's been a bit of light relief after a horrendous weekend; in which not only did I narrowly escape agonising death once again, hurrah! I also was told that my insurance wouldn't cover it. I'm still too angry to really blog about that whole it experience; suffice it to say that it was very very scary and painful and for the moment it's nice change to focus away from the purely personal.

It's hard to know quite how to describe the whole Guckert saga. Entertaining isn't quite the word. There's the prurient angle, obviously : high jinks in high places are always interesting and even we're lucky they're titillating too, and this is certainly that, with Guckert plastered all over the internet, erect and coy and well, just so manly, and military and ooooh so perfectly designed to give a nice rightwing mama's-boy-blogger what he so desperately needs and has yearned for. I mean, what was the whole Iraq shebang but the sublimated desires of Bush and his coterie of closet queens for someone, somewhere, to get a good, hard and most of all military ass-fucking? From the large scale right down to the small, the administration is obsessed with anal sex. And baldness.

His mother must so be proud.

The irony of it all is that most people couldn't give a shit whether they're gay or not. The carapace that the Republican elite built for themselves to hide their true natures, this whole rightwing noise machine; it's their own self-made prison.

We the general public just don't care who's gay or whatever, just don't do it in the street and scare the horses, as it were. The fact that somebody is gay generally merits an "Oh? Is he? Well, I never knew that." And that's it. Nobody cares that much. Big deal. Next?

Scandal and gossip drive politics. It's the common change of every day discourse, another form of quid pro quo in a favours based system, which we, however high-minded we are about the constitution, know that that's how the system really works. Because the system is corrupt and we all know but won't admit it, there is this strange culture of impunity going on. It's like some sort of massive in-joke between mainstream media and the executive. Given the ubiquity of modern independent media and information channels (gossip, basically) the Bush administration must surely know that the blatancy of the corruption of US government is a generally known thing worldwide. But knowing that seems to give them license to take bigger and bigger risks, as if to say, "See! I dare you to report this. Look, see what I can do and there's nothing you can do about it, nyernyernyer, yah-booh-sucks. We win! USA! GOP!"

The alternative would be for the mainstream US media to admit to itself that the ship of state is full of obvious holes, that they know and have known it, that the executive arm is corrupt, morally, sexually, financially and utterly, and that the mainstream media knew that too and are complicit in the corruption. Who, if anyone, in the WH press corps challenged Gannon's credentials? More to the point, how many in the Washington press corps used Gannon's services? Who took him to that correspondent's dinner? What about Diplomats? Foreign diplomats, maybe? Maybe Iraqis, or Saudis or Afghans? Oh yeah, and drugs? What bout performance enhancers and cocaine and viagra and all those useful little things that middle-aged office jockeys need to keep their peckers up when they've finally scored a real ass-reaming by the bronzed buff marine of their sweaty adolescent dreams? What about HIV? How many good little dewy-eyed republican security moms should now go get tested? And how many more little chums has the administration got stashed away in convenient positions? This could go on and on.

It's been suggested that Gannon/Guckert will turn up 'suicided' in short order. I dunno. If nothing else has distinguished this administration, aside from the corruption, it's incompetence. They may well fuck that up too. Think of all the many many scandals so far, we found those out, easy-peasy. We find out everything eventually. The internet is heaven for the would-be investigative reporter, and some natural reporters have really shown their mettle in this thing, particularly on AmericaBlog and Kos. However I hope those intrepid reporters remember that in a quid pro quo system the question always to ask is cui bono? Who benefits? Follow the money and the favours. The rest is just entertaining fluff about bumboys, and while it's fun to read, Little Britain is much more entertaining on the subject. American rightwing closet gays have to be so bloody butch and military macho all the time, where's the 'Will & Grace in the West Wing' we all truly want?

Sigh. At least the Democrat sex scandals were entertaining, this everyday blatant corruption is just banal. But then, as Hannah Arendt said, evil is. In the meantime while all this goes on, the Bush administration is fighting American pilots who were tortured by Saddam during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, trying to prevent them from collecting nearly $1 billion from Iraq that a federal judge awarded them as compensation . Never mind, I'm sure they can become military escorts- I hear there's great opportunities in Washington DC. I'm even willing to bet there's an amputee sub-division. All your VA benefits problems, solved, the neocon way!