ABOVE: Don Surber (left) and his editor.
Shorter Don “Jim Bob” Surber, The Charlstun Newzpapur:
Corn Dogs at School?
‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™
ABOVE: Msgr. Ross Xavier Pius Douthat, S.J., O.P., O.F.M., S.S.J., Th.D+
Like the rest of you I’ve been eagerly anticipating for Ross Douthat — our favorite Chunky Reese Witherspoon Lothario manqué — to enlighten us on Weinergate— not just because I’m interested to hear what Jesus and the Pope think about twexting, but also because Douthat can’t write about genitalia without getting all flustered. What better way, then, to start off the work week, huh?
In every time and place, people have associated new technologies with moral decline. “Men think that it is essential that the Nation have commerce,” Henry David Thoreau griped in 1854, “and export ice, and talk through a telegraph, and ride thirty miles an hour.
Oh dear. Ross is about to tell us that at least you couldn’t send pictures of your dick by telegraph.
Sometimes, though, the pessimists are right to worry. Technology really does affect character. … In the sad case of Representative Anthony Weiner’s virtual adultery, the Internet era’s defining vice has been thrown into sharp relief. It isn’t lust or smut or infidelity, though online life encourages all three. It’s a desperate, adolescent narcissism.
There is, of course, no desperate, adolescent narcissism involved in Ross’s thinking that the readers of the New York Times are in the least interested in what a flabby and pious moralist like Ross thinks about teh Internetz and cock shots.
The rituals of social media, it seems, make status-seekers and exhibitionists of us all.
Presumably Ross is exempting himself from the dreadful spiritual predations of Twitter and Facebook because we can be sure that not only hasn’t Ross turned his iPhone onto his own private parts but also that he has refused to even look down there for almost thirty years. (Well, think about it, would you want to look “down there” if you were Ross?)
At 46, Weiner isn’t technically a member of Generation Facebook, but he’s clearly a well-habituated creature of the online social world. The fact that he used the Internet’s freedoms to violate his marriage vows isn’t particularly noteworthy.
For those who may not be keeping up on the latest goings on in Ross’s church, the Pope has recently revised the marriage vows to read:
I, ____, take you, ____, to be my (husband/wife). I promise to be true to you in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, and without sending pictures of my genitalia to anyone else or mentioning my state of sexual arousal over Twitter or Facebook except unto you.
Ross continues:
In all the tweets and transcripts that have leaked to date, there’s no sign that Weiner was particularly interested in the women he communicated with — not as human beings, certainly, but not really even as lust objects either. His “partners” existed less to titillate him than to hold up mirrors to his own vanity: whether the congressman was tweeting photos of his upper body or bragging about what lurked below, his focus was always squarely on himself.
This is rich. Ross, who once popped a soft-on when told a potential conquest was on the pill, is lecturing Weiner about how to treat women. Let’s take a trip down memory lane into one of the, er, damper and squishier corners of Ross’s autobiographical musings:
One successful foray ended on the guest bed of a high school friend’s parents, with a girl who resembled a chunkier Reese Witherspoon drunkenly masticating my neck and cheeks. It had taken some time to reach this point–“Do most Harvard guys take so long to get what they want?” she had asked, pushing her tongue into my mouth. I wasn’t sure what to say, but then I wasn’t sure this was what I wanted. My throat was dry from too much vodka, and her breasts, spilling out of pink pajamas, threatened my ability to. I was supposed to be excited, but I was bored and somewhat disgusted with myself, with her, with the whole business… and then whatever residual enthusiasm I felt for the venture dissipated, with shocking speed, as she nibbled at my ear and whispered–“You know, I’m on the pill…”
Finally, if you were wondering what got Ross all spun up to devote so much time to Weiner’s tweets (other than, of course, Weiner’s membership in the Democratic party), you’re about to find out.
It’s the pecs.
In this sense, his tweeted chest shots are more telling than the explicitly pornographic photos that followed. There was a time when fame and influence were supposed to liberate men from such adolescent insecurity. When Henry Kissinger boasted about power being the ultimate aphrodisiac, the whole point was that he didn’t have to worry about his pecs and glutes while, say, wooing the former Bond girl Jill St. John.
In a perfect world, you see, neck-bearded albinos with flabby tits and squishy hard-ons are the ones who really deserve to get the girls, not because of their manly, gym-toned physical appearance but because they write for the New York Times. At least as long as the girls aren’t on the pill.
It’s a full-on celebration this weekend of false equivalence over at The Gateway Dumbshit. First, Hoft slathered himself up in Crisco and outrage over how unfair it was that Anthony Weiner wasn’t being treated exactly like Mark Foley because the two situations were exactly the same (much in the same way that Hoft’s weiner is exactly the same thing as a cold hot dog, except, of course, smaller, limper and colder).
Now Hoft has started flinging boogers from his nose because Tracy Morgan apologized for his gay rant but not for saying that Sarah Palin was “good masturbation material.” Again saying that you would stab your son if he were gay and saying that you think Sarah Palin is hot enough to wank to are completely and absolutely the same thing.
Now I’m beginning to wonder, seriously, how Hoft hasn’t killed himself yet by confusing household bleach and orange juice. I guess so far he’s just been lucky and wonders why all his underwear has turned a dull, orangish shade of yellow.
Here’s a quick test to see if you are, indeed, smarter than a first grader.
Can you tell the difference between these two men?
ABOVE: Anthony Weiner (left), Mark Foley (right)
Can the man pictured below tell the difference between the two men pictured above
ABOVE: Jim Hoft, The Gateway Dumbshit
Here, Jimbo, how ’bout a hint?
Nope, not a bit of difference there. Absolutely the same thing.
Now we know why even Right Network thought Jim was an embarrassment and told him to get lost.
ABOVE: John Steele Gordon
Shorter John Steele Gordon, The White Street Journal:
A Short History of Political Suicide
‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™
ABOVE: Walter Williams, John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics, George Mason University
Shorter Walter Williams, Clown Hall:
Irksome Things
‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™
Shorter Msgr. Ross Xavier Pius Douthat, S.J., O.P., O.F.M., S.S.J., Th.D+, The New York Fucking Times Pope-Ed Page
Dr. Kervorkian’s Victims
‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™
Above: Renumuhrka’s Dan Poop
Shorter Dan Poop, Renumuhrka
The Sword
‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™
Another week and we have another column from our favorite wingnut and giraffe impersonator Jeannie Deangelis, fixating yet again on the Negress in the White House who spends her time eating fancypants stuff like guacamole and tamales while passing laws forcing everyone else in America to eat boiled tofu, celery leaves and alfalfa sprouts. Three times a day, seven days a week. Without salt.
This time Jeannie zeros in on the new nutrition chart. You know, the one that the federal government is forcing you to paste on your refrigerator and which will lock the refrigerator door shut forever if you depart in the teensiest bit from those nanny-state rules dictating what everybody must eat.
Everybody but, of course, Michelle.
You may not know this — in fact, few do — but the new chart was entirely the creation of Michelle Obama, who is rumored to have taken off time from noshing on free-range chicken in beluga and lobster sauce just long enough to fire up Adobe Illustrator and create the new chart. Although Jeannie has no direct evidence of this nefarious deed by the First Witch, she has damning circumstantial evidence:
Michelle Obama seems fixated on pie: Pizza pie eaten both in the White House and outside the White House, apple pie, Thanksgiving pie, the Crust Master’s’ “dangerously good” pie, other people’s pie, and now the pie-obsessed first lady may be responsible for dismantling the food pyramid and changing it into….? You guessed it, a pie chart.
Except, it looks like a plate, not a pie, to me, but that’s just because I’m liberal and gay.
Of course, Michelle didn’t draw just any pie. No siree! It’s a socialist pie.
What a coincidence. Remember when Michelle said: “The truth is, in order to get things like universal health care and a revamped education system, then someone is going to have to give up a piece of their pie so that someone else can have more?”
Could it be that Mrs. “share your pie” Obama is behind purposely associating food and health with a logo that coincidentally symbolizes what Michelle suggested all Americans volunteer to do for the greater good?
So not only does the new chart force you to stir ground flaxseed into your Jello but also it forces you to give your flat screen TV to hobos.
Now Jeannie ties it all up for the Renoomuhrka readers who might have so far missed her point:
[S]hould Michelle Obama, a “tasting tour” fan who flies pizza chefs from St. Louis to the White House and whom Obama says “can afford to have as many tamales as she wants,” be the one dictating food choices and portion control with a symbol used to promote the “piece of the pie”-sharing cause of Obama-style socialism?
In case you’re wondering what Jeannie’s food chart would look like, here it is:
UPDATE: Jeannie posted this column on her blog, so go here to comment, if you’d like.
And now I shall demonstrate a “pas de poisson” for you.
Shorter America’s Dumbest Homosexual™, The Gay Quislings:
Republicans Fight Back Against Medicare Misrepresentations
‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™