The Hickory-Smoked Huckster
Fred Thompson is starting to remind me of an LL Cool J song, because he’s something like a phenomenon:
Having watched the second Republican debate the other night, it’s clear to me the subject today is Fred Thompson, the man who wasn’t there. While the other candidates bang away earnestly in a frozen format, Thompson continues to sneak up from the creek and steal their underwear — boxers, briefs and temple garments.
Setting aside Noonan’s bewildering metaphor (sneaking up from the creek to steal underwear???), she’s actually onto something, in her inimitable, nightgown-and-highball syntax. Without spending a dime, Thompson has built up a base of support and established his brand as the sort of feller who keeps a pack of cigarettes and a Kenny Rogers cassette in his glove box. He’s managed to carve out a place in the conservative imagination similar to the one Mariano Rivera has occupied for the last decade in Yankees fans’: “No matter what happens in the first eight innings, we’ve got a chance as long as he’s waiting in the bullpen,” they assure themselves.
I’ve read nearly all of his columns published over the last month, trying to determine whether Thompson’s anything more than a guy with a deep voice who talks on the teevee, but that misses the point. The man’s an actor — which is actually a huge plus to an audience which claims to despise Hollywood and its values, but with the ache of the obsessed: “Why don’t you love me back?”
To his eager-to-be-pleased audience, the grizzled character actor’s playing the role of Dad — except you guys totally get along now and you didn’t even have to work through all the guilt and disappointment and untaken fishing trips that drove you apart in the first place. He just pulls up in his Toronado (without his new wife this time), eases into a chair on the front porch, swirls his Scotch-and-soda around a couple times, and unspools a yarn about current events, interrupted only occasionally by a polite but phlegmy cough or a wry, raised-eyebrow glance to underline some point about the rank foolishness of liberals and foreigners:
Now, I have no expectation that [Michael] Moore is going to tell the truth about Cuba or health care. I defend his right to do what he does, but Moore’s talent for clever falsehoods has been too well documented. Simply calling his movies documentaries rather than works of fiction, I think, may be the biggest fiction of all.
But it’s not all Old Spice and Pall Malls; Fred Thompson knows something that the other authoritarian candidates — your Rudy Giulianis and your John McCains — don’t.
Unlike those two chapped asses, Thompson understands what really motivates the reactionary, religion-inspired Republican base. Sure, they demand fealty to their beliefs, but a candidate who hands it over easily arouses pity, not action. To get this voting bloc away from the TV and into the voting booth you need to make them feel resentment and its matching accessory, indignation (italics in the original):
The following speech was delivered to the meeting of the Council for National Policy on Saturday, May 12, 2007
Our nation is based upon the proposition that our statutes, common law and the Constitution will not only be applied fairly between litigants, but will also be observed by the government. People will be able to rely upon the rules, usually long established, and their consistent application. This engenders respect for the law. It is a sad irony that a nation that is so dedicated to the rule of law is doing so much to undermine the respect for it.
How can you respect a government that doesn’t respect you (i.e., why should you)?
We have always held our federal judiciary in high esteem, even at a time when most of our institutions are under assault. However, if judges continue to act like politicians they will get the respect currently given to politicians. It is already rapidly headed in that direction.
Hell, it wasn’t all that long ago when a member of the Senate judiciary committee justified violence against judges who make “raw political or ideological decisions.” I’d say that was fairly disrespectful. Meanwhile, I think some liberals are getting away with mischief:
There was nothing wrong with firing eight U.S. attorneys … In 1993 Attorney General Janet Reno rode into town and fired every U.S. attorney in the country but one — all Republican appointees.
Amidst all this foolishness there is a serious question here. Considering the times we live in, do we really want to continue to try to chip away at the traditional powers of the president? Regardless of who wins the White House, don’t we need a strong president?
That’s quite an important question to ask an exclusively Republican audience:
[L]et’s be realistic about the world we live in. Mexican leaders apparently have an economic policy based on exporting their own citizens, while complaining about US immigration policies that are far less exclusionary than their own. The French jail perfectly nice people for politically incorrect comments, but scold us for holding terrorists at Guantanamo.
Also, I think they are laughing at us. As are the United Nations:
An organization that treats democracies and dictators equally cannot be expected to be a pure force for good. When Fidel Castro and Kim Jong Il have as much say in U.N. matters as the entire populations of Poland and New Zealand, you’re going to have problems.
Anyway, there’s plenty more where this comes from — or you could indulge one of your talk-radio-listening co-workers and hear the same material. After all, the Hickory-Smoked Huckster’s reading from a script, and he’ll continue hawking his horseshit, Wilford Brimley-style, until he announces his candidacy next month on Jay Leno.
I know we’re here for the same reasons: Love of our country and concern for our future.
A lot of Americans have these concerns tonight. They are concerned about the way things are going in our country right now. Some fear we may be in the first stages of decline. We’ve heard this malaise talk before.
Indeed we have and, if certain nonscientific polls can be trusted, a lot of conservative voters want to hear it again. As you may recall, a B-movie actor defeated Jimmy Carter once before, and nothing is more conservative than reliving the past.
Above: Fred Thompson is an actor and former Senator. His radio commentary
airs on the ABC Radio Network and he blogs on The Fred Thompson Report.
IOZ called it best: Foghorn Leghorn
Fred Thompson said something disparaging about commies taking a piss in that submarine movie with that Hollywood-commie, Alec Baldwin where he played a queer non-military type. I think I also saw him smoke a cigarette all cool-like on the tv or in another movin’ picture where he was talkin’ some toughness about criminals and/or Islamohippies.
That’s all I need to know. Go, Fred, Go!!!!1on3
will he replace abu gonzalez with jack mccoy?
He’s got the whole world in his hands?
mikey
The GOP is in sad fucking shape.
Ahhhh he speaks the mystical symbolic languague of high republican. Beware. Beware.
Won’t he be dead from cancer before the election? Okay, maybe not dead, but maybe we should avoid putting someone who’s already ill into the highest stress job in the world…
Not that I would vote for the asshat anyway.
So then Thompson is indistinguishable from your average AM talk show host, apart from the lack of screaming? Commies and Muslims and Mexis, oh my!
Since the White House thinks they can ex post facto dictate what Americans have been thinking (see Carter, Jimmy), I’ll go ahead and say that Thompson makes himself increasingly irrelevant with these comments. But I fear he doesn’t.
Seriously, in any other modern democracy, I’d be laughing up a storm at the hapless, hopeless reactionary boneheads that are all vying for the GOP nod. But here in America, they’re just hapless, reactionary boneheads. Any of them have a very real shot at winning/installation.
either every poll and every indicator is right, in which case it really doesn’t matter who the republicans nominate (one day you read they are losing women, then the south, then white men, then evangelicals etc.) or it’s all a crock of shit, and when they get into the booth voters are going to pull that level for a comfortable pair of shoes–shoes made of old leathery bullshit. if the latter, a fred thompson could win.
While the other candidates bang away earnestly in a frozen format, Thompson continues to sneak up from the creek and steal their underwear — boxers, briefs and temple garments.
So Thompson is your standard bully, and Peggy’s okay with that? Well, being a hypocritical religious bigot, I suppose she would be. I’m not even going to *touch* the part about the GOP candidates frozenly banging away.
Fred Thompson is starting to remind me of an LL Cool J song, because he’s something like a phenomenon
Or cocaine.
will he replace abu gonzalez with jack mccoy?
Naw, Jack McCoy is Liberal. I think he would pick Harmon (Harm) Rabb Jr. from JAG, or that weezly guy from 24 who wanted to make Islamofacist Internment Camps.
Adama would be Secretary of Defence
Or Cavern, for that matter, J—.
…when they get into the booth voters are going to pull that level for a comfortable pair of shoes–shoes made of old leathery bullshit.
But see, it’s not just the same old racism/corporatism that has been the red meat diet for the Republican party for decades. It’s getting noticably meaner, angrier and more violent. It’s all about military solutions to any and all foreign policy problems. It’s all about killing people and incarcerating people and blowing stuff up. And this is the message that seems to resonate with the base these days. Not taxes. Not spending. Not even jesus and teh fags. Nope, now, the applause lines are about torture, about eliminating rights, locking scary people up forever, about bombing other countries just to show them we mean business.
This is what is at stake. This is the risk of losing the white house in ’08. Well, this and the likelihood that the next president will appoint no less than three supreme court justices. And if that doesn’t scare you, you’re not paying attention…
mikey
Shorter Noonan: “May the dorsal fins of magic Jesus dolphins propel Mitchell!* to the Oval Office!”
P.S. I’ll drink up all the Jill Hennessy ya got on your shelf.
* I think Shorter Peggy thinks Thompson played Mitchell!, when it was in fact Joe Don Baker.
The French jail perfectly nice people for politically incorrect comments
It’s an outrage!!!
Thompson continues to sneak up from the creek and steal their underwear
It’s scary, but all too characteristic. Peggy Noonan sees a candidates’ debate and imagines a pack of middle-aged Republican men skinny-dippin’, ruffhousin’, and prankin’ each other at the ol’ swimmin’ hole.
Thanks, Travis. I never knew where Flash got that groove. And now I do!
Perhaps the metaphor, like Noonan’s brain, is from Deliverance.
Thompson, like Reagan, couldn’t act his way out of a paper bag. That stint on Law & Order was, at best, a cameo. Easy, peasy. And besides, the writing on L&O has been sucking for some time lately, for as long as he’s been on the show anyway.
Whoops
I really don’t get the “stealing their underwear” bit either. Is Peggy implying that the other candidates are Greek dandies washing their loin cloths in the River, where Thompson is a Minotaur skulking up the same river to humiliate the knicker-less Rudy, McCain, et al?
“It is a sad irony that a nation that is so dedicated to the rule of law is doing so much to undermine the respect for it.”
I’ll say! Like with that fershlugginer Supreme Court decision, STOPPING the vote counting in favor of HANDING THE PRESIDENCY TO G–
Huh? That’s not what he means?
(And since when did Peggy go blonde?)
ace’s saga of sexual frustration posts continues
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/227410.php
just thought you’d like to know
Thompson continues to sneak up from the creek and steal their underwear — boxers, briefs and temple garments.
Why? To scrub away all their skid marks?
Ick!
But it turns out that old Fred is just another sleazy politician lining his son’s pocket.
ABC’s Brian Ross is up with a story how when Thompson left the Senate in 2002, he converted $370,000 of campaign funds into a PAC like most retiring pols. Guess what? Since then his PAC has disbursed all of $66,000 in donations while his son has charged $178,000 to ‘manage’ the PAC:
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/05/fred_thompson_e.html
What do you think? A good Law & Order episode premise? Would Arthur Branch indict? Where would the snarky comment come in? How much would Sam Waterston agonize before he cut a plea deal?
Ah Fred. You are just a B actor after all.
Thanks a lot, cokane. The post is eww on so many levels I can’t even begin to sort them out. However, I especially like the fact that this
JackStraw sends this good news. Maybe some of these women only interested in dating ugly, sexually incompetent men, too. The double-plus.
isn’t offered up mid-thread by some neanderthal commenter. No, no. It’s actually the first paragraph of the post itself. That ace: so erudite.
Thompson continues to sneak up from the creek and steal their underwear — boxers, briefs and temple garments.
Maybe she’s got him confused with The Underpants Gnome.
Step 1: Fred Thompson.
Step 2: ???
Step 3: Supreme Court Appointments!
“Maybe she’s got him confused with The Underpants Gnome.”
Sharon, you may have hit it. Wasn’t the Gnome the…well, “guy” probably isn’t right, but I’m too lazy to figure it out…with all the great financial ideas? Thompson can fix the national debt, maybe?
If they can win the presidency with a third-rate character actor with a face that looks like a sharpei’s ass, more power to ’em. Perhaps Abe Vigoda can be his running mate.
re bewildering metaphor:
There’s an old political cartoon from around 1900 that portrays the Democratic party swimming in a river. And Teddry Roosevelt, dressed as a boy scout, is sneaking out of the bushes and grabbing the clothes left swimmer on the riverbank. The clothes are marked with some major Democratic issue and the point is that Roosevelt is stealing issues that the Democrats were planning to run on in the upcoming election.
I only just ran across it on wikipedia recently. Can’t remember where or I’d post a link.
She’s gotta be referring to that. Very erudite.
There’s something about Peggy imagining “the other candidates bang[ing] away earnestly” while Fred steals their underwear that’s, um, ew.
And incidentally, I came across it while looking into the bimetallism debate of the late 19th century, prompted by Ron Paul’s thing with the Gold Standard.
I wonder if Noonan had been doing the same and came across it by the same route.
I’m pretty sure when Peggy thinks of Fred Thompson, she’s thinking this song…
Some see Foghorn Leghorn. I see Deputy Dawg.
other candidates bang away earnestly in a frozen format
This must be one of those ice sculpture competitions that I read about.
hmm… not LL, but maybe someone else:
Waitin for some people to leave
I got another trick up my sleeve
Step with pep to the back of the house
Look in… all the lights are out
Grabbed the door and it’s locked, so
easily made my way to the window
Lift it up slow, cause it takes time and
Looked around, then I climbed in
Once inside, I start takin…
Fred Thompson for Pressident!?
No, Sam Waterson as President, Fred Thompson as best friend.*
* I don’t know who this is attributed to, but the original quote ends, “Jimmy Stewart as President, Ronald Reagan as best friend.”
Many would like to have a beer with Foghorn Leghorn. But Deputy Dawg polls as tough on crime. We’ll have to focus group it.
Fred Thompson is the poor man’s Joe Don Baker. And that’s pretty goddamn poor.
As for the underwear thing, I might have the proper cultural background to shed some light on this particularly strangeled metaphor. See, back in the day, your rural young person, upon seeing an inticing swimming hole, would more often than not shuck all his/her clothes and jump right in, usually with his/her boon companions. Never, ever mixed sex, though. I mean, not even the tomboy girl who lives down the road and is otherwise right in there with the boys on all other excursions. Just didn’t happen.
There were reasons for skinny dipping, see, and none of them had to do with budding young romance/fucking in the creek bed. You went skinny dipping because, one, you couldn’t afford actual swim trunks and, two, if your daddy known you’d gone swimming when you weren’t supposed (which was anytime skinny dipping seemed like a nice way to spend the afternoon, for some reason). Me, I quit skinny dipping when one of my uncles told me a turtle would snatch ahold of my goober and wouldn’t let go until it thundered, and that’s all I needed to hear.
Still, one wouldn’t “sneak up from the creek” to steal skinny dippers’ underwear. That’s just friggin’ stupid, the fuck’s she talking about. One sneaks “down to the creek”, because, frankly, one rarely finds skinny-dipping worthy creeks anyplace that could charitably called “up”. That’s just how Nature works, I got no control over that.
Now. I said all that to say all this. There were certain types of people who would steal your underwear* and there was a trick to it, as most folks who’re buck nekkid right out in front of God and everybody tend to keep their britches in plain sight. So, someone who regularly and successfully steals the underwear of people, you know, having a good time on God’s good Earth is clever, patient, sneaky, and, most important of all, a real shit ass.
So, hell…in her roundabout, up-her-ass way, Nooners might have a point. I could see Fred Thompson being the type of son of a bitch who’d steal your drawers whilest your were trying to perfect your preacher’s seat.**
* And the rest of your clothes, because let’s face it, you could get through the rest of the day if someone just stole your BVD’s. Again, that’s just friggin’ stupid.
** I’d tell y’all what a “preacher’s seat” is, but this has gone on long enough and I doubt you care. Shortly, it’s the sort of dive you do after saying something along the lines of “Hey, y’all, watch this!”. I’m sure you get the idea.
Laugh if you want, but the media is ready to go with a recycled narrative. He’s just folks, don’t you know. Read Sommersby today. Read the Washington Post fluff piece on Thompson. It’s appalling hagiography. The press is just waiting for him to jump into the race, so they can ratfuck everyone else like they did to Gore in 2000. Just you fucking watch.
As for the underwear thing, I might have the proper cultural background to shed some light on this particularly strangeled metaphor.
Ah. So if I were to strip down naked, in order to lock myself in a meat freezer and engage in some frozen-format banging, this is not necessarily presidential-candidate behaviour.
Wish someone had told me that a few hours ago.
Ah. So if I were to strip down naked, in order to lock myself in a meat freezer and engage in some frozen-format banging, this is not necessarily presidential-candidate behaviour.
Dammit. There go my hopes of the White House. Still, I’m fairly confident Jimmy will get me in as AG.
“Laugh if you want, but the media is ready to go with a recycled narrative. He’s just folks, don’t you know. Read Sommersby today. Read the Washington Post fluff piece on Thompson. It’s appalling hagiography. The press is just waiting for him to jump into the race, so they can ratfuck everyone else like they did to Gore in 2000. Just you fucking watch.”
Gus is right. I have a feeling this is what will happen. Thompson will swoop in after the other GOP candidates have hung themselves and will win the primary without having to answer any questions about his past or his policies. Then in the general the media will skewer the Dem candidate and Thompson will get a pass at every juncture. He will be presented as the second coming of St. Ronnie and the independents will eat it up just enough for him to either win outright or to make it close enough to ensure the Supremes can step in a fix things. It is really starting to give me sleepless nights. My main hope at this point is for a Perot spoiler rather than a Nadar spoiler.
“We’ll have to focus group it.”
I think we should Rastafy him by ten percent or so.
Matt T., that is just the finest insight into rural youth in America that I’ve seen in all my days. Thanks ever so.
“Something like a phenomenon.” Wasn’t that from White Lines by Grandmaster Flash? Or did they steal it from LL? My knowledge of 80’s rap is shockingly incomplete.
Or did they steal it from LL?
Good lord, who’d steal that? And who’d steal “in this ever-changing world in which we live in”? Or “only time will tell if we stand the test of time”?