Who says every president needs a nice obituary?

Well, we just learned that one of the most incompentent presidents in American History, Gerald Ford, just kicked the bucket. That leaves one more left (Jimmy Carter).

While we will spend the next week hearing about his supposed triumphs (which shouldn't take very long) or his defense of those who engage in cover-up (he should have empathy with such people - he participated in the Warren Committion, didn't he?), or his attempt at national healing (ha!), we will never learn what this bozo, who let Jimmy Carter beat him, is truly responsible for.

Gerald Ford was one of the organizers of America First.

Many of you might say "that sounds like a good organization!" It certainly sounds like a good organization. But America First was a quasi-fascist organization that worked to keep America out of WWII. Here is how the story goes.

Right around the time that WWII began, a couple of Yale students decided that America needn't participate in WWII. At that time, Yale was completely run by WASPs. And WASPs hated Jews. They couldn't care less if they were exterminated. Actually, they may have cheered Ahminidizhad (or however you spell that fool's name). In any case, these two law students got America First going.

Now, while Gerald Ford was not a founder, he was certainly an organizer. This is not mentioned anywhere, and I didn't know about it until I read a book called "Lindbergh." Charles Lindbergh liked Hitler, but had his political priorities all mixed up (for example, he voted R throughout the Depression, but actually supported Adlai Stevensen! - then became an environmentalist whacko). Charles Lindbergh also did not want the US to enter WWII - so much so that he quit the Army Air Corps. And Lindbergh did lots of speaking tours for America First.

To claim this is the naive opinion of a 26 year-old misses the point. This person got into Yale
law. He should have known better. Unless Yale had an early version of Affirmitive Action (for truly stupid people, which might explain how he got there in the first place).

Yes, there are other things I can write about - the pardon (and so???), his inane positions out of office (would he have ever run on them in 1946?), the fact that his proudest accomplishment in office was to select a VP who would die during extra-maritial sexual intercourse (it's true! see http://www.ishipress.com/marshak.htm!), or the fact that he thought he could defeat inflation merely using lapel buttons (WIN - Whip Inflation Now). OK, I'll write something nice about him - at least he never had extra-maritial affairs while in office, like so many other presidents. While I have no evidence of this whatsoever, I'll use the same intellectual standard that an athiest uses to prove there is no god whatsoever and just say it's quite obvious that he never had extramaritial affairs in office (hey - at least his choice for VP in 1976 was quite appropriate, if you get my drift!). And it would be wrong to blame the absolutely godawful fashion that came out of the 1970's - the very very worst fashion ever to be worn by man (and the women's fashion was quite horrid as well).

Yes, Gerald Ford was a trivial president, who did more harm than good. But the harm he did may have happened well before he got elected to office. After all, due to his efforts with America First, how many Jews does he owe an apology to?

The Gospel According to St. Dan

With the DaVinci Code (by Dan Brown), people think that can now revise Biblical knowledge willy-nilly. Hell, some people are now buying into the concept that Jesus was some kind of pervert who gave birth to a bunch of kids who founded a dynasty in France. That had magical powers. I am not making this us – someone else did, like a right-wing 1950’s French fringe politician.
Since we have now revised what happened after the crucifixition, I figure that we can now discover what really happened at the birth of Christ. Some of the details are hazy, but I think this is a pretty close approximation.

The Gospel According to St. Dan
Twas the night before Christmas…Er. Joseph and Mary Christ were two homeless teenagers who lived around the Bethleham community. They were destitute – the selfish Roman citizens would not feed them because they were greedy selfish mean spirited rich people. And, Mary was nine months pregnant – because abortion was not legal in the days of Caesar Augustus. Being homeless, no Inn in Bethleham would take them in. However, Joseph and Mary liked paying their taxes, because they wanted to render unto Caeser what belonged to Caeser, which is a 90% marginal tax rate.Since Mary needed to give birth, they had a place where they could lie down. Especially since it was late December, when snow was falling on the ground. Like it did everywhere in the days before Global Warming. They found a spot in a manger, who would have been slaughtered by the selfish landowner who ate meat. Had he been a responsible vegan, they would have had more space to give birth.
So Mary gave birth. And she had a son. Who was the father? It probably wasn’t Joseph. Nor was it an “immaculate conception.” Instead, Mary was a sex worker and it was probably some client of hers. She decided to name him Jesus.
Three concerned male oppressors decided to visit the baby Jesus. They brought stuff like myrnth and Frankenstein. And they saw what horrible condition he was in.
Then, on the roof , they heard nine feet. And thru the chimney of the manger, came a jolly, grossly obese, senior man in a red suit.
“Hohoho!” He proclaimed. “Stop proclaiming my wife’s profession” declared Joseph Christ. “Who are you?”
“I am Santa Clause, but you can call me Santa. I’m not human, but an elf, and live at the north pole.”
Entering the manger were a white blob and a reindeer. “Here are my two sidekicks, Frosty the Snowman and Rudolf the Red Nose Reindeer!”
He looked at the so-called wisemen and saw they were giving Jesus a dreidle. “What makes you think he will like that?”
“Because he’s Jewish” they answered back.
“Well, that’s a pretty boring toy. Here, try a fire engine” he said, handing it to Joseph. “Unfortunately, I cannot give him an Xbox3, because it hasn’t even been invented yet! But, all this materialism will have him forget his key values. Which is wealth redistribution, environmental awareness, total pacifism, and especially, sexual freedom!”
Frosty the Snowman said something, and left. And Santa told the baby Jesus:”Now, remember the sacred feminine. And you will need to lead a revolution amongst the Jews. You will be king of the Jews. You will need to lead a change in the Jewish religion, so that all Jews will stop persecuting the Palestinians, and turn over Israel to them, as it is totally their homeland, and not yours. And if you have to wander the earth, so be it!”
And he said a “hohoho” and got out of the chimney, and said “Happy Holidays to all, and to all a good night.”
Well, Jesus became King of the Jews, but his followers decided to suppress all sexual intercourse and instead lead crusades against innocent peoples. And they suppressed writings like this one

There, that gospel is done. Hope you enjoy what has been “rediscovered!”

The Decline and Fall of the Columnist

Once Upon A Time, there were two sections of the front page of a newspaper. There was the front section with the hard news, and there was an Opinion section, with all those Op-Eds and Editorials. The Opinion section had several articles by several authors giving their opinion on something, because they were highly educated in public policy and had the luxury of going over the news all day, so they felt they were entitled to give their opinion on something.

The amazing thing is that people fawned over these opinion writers like what they said really mattered. You didn’t make up your mind on an issue until so-and-so opinion writer gave you a direction. And people would vote according to this way.
This is when the news was unified. It was a golden age for newspapermen. They could get on their typewriters and type something out, no matter how silly, and newspapers would publish it. And they would make pretty good incomes – at least six figures (in today’s money). People worshipped them. It was even better when they got word processing. Now they could correct their mistakes are go home earlier. Sure, there were “independent newspapers,” but those pests were usually run by people even loopier than they were.

Then, they didn’t live so happily ever after. For the evil internet came into being.
Actually, in the beginning, the internet was quite wonderful. They could get email from a long way away and get news more instantaneously. Only they had access to it, so no one else could really take away their monopoly.

However, people who could not suck up to publishers, or who were not in the mainstream of opinion (in the middle of leftwing opinion), quickly discovered that they could get their own opinions out thru email. It was especially easier with a listproc, or a bcc. Soon, people with almost no capital could send out ezines to several hundred, or thousand, of people they never met. I had one, called “The Revolutionary.” This is in fact how “The Drudge Report” started. Yet, while some astute newspapermen may have realized the potential threat (I had a few columnists subscribe to my ezine), it did not look all that serious, and they could live fat and happy.

That was before 1996. That is when people realized the potential of the World Wide Web.

At first, there was a so-called “digital divide” that separated out those who could afford internet access, and those that could not. Of course, today any smelly bum with a P.O. Box can get a library card (mostly to access dirty sites), so such a divide no longer materially exists – only those who do not want to get web access get it. The internet was the province or kooks, perverts, and computer geeks. Often, these three attributes would fit the same group of people. You got lots of sites with info about black helicopters – often linked to some porno site.
Yet the internet caught on very quickly. Everyone got on it. It was not only a way one could get their jollys, but you could shop, pay bills, and get legitimate opinion. And other things, too.

So every business got on the internet. Including newspapermen. I have already gone into this. But others did too, with sites like Townhall.com, Huffingtonpost.com, and whatever opinion suits your fancy. These sites are much more interesting to read that something from Marianne Means. I think this is when Helen Thomas became really mad and showed her ugly side – which all this time we thought that we were looking at her ugly side.

And I haven’t even touched on blogs yet.

Not that the opinion writers have anything special to say anymore. There is a glut of history majors, philosophy majors, political science majors, sociology majors, anthropology majors, etc., who would like cushy jobs as opinion writers, but ain’t getting any such jobs. In this category I only include the people who were serious about their majors – about 10%, not the other 90% who were smoking pot or drinking beer and chose an easy major just to graduate. And since they did not have the discipline of the newsroom, they do not churn out boring, colorless pieces that are required for opinion pages. Instead, whatever they write, no matter the political persuasion, is much more interesting than something that George Will churns out. In any case, the Walter Lippmans, Eleanor Roosevelts, H.L. Menken’s, Alsops, Edward Murrows, and others, cannot get away with what they once did.

And, they have lots of time to research, and the means to do so, too. Since many people cannot make a career of their major, they have to do something with it, so it becomes a hobby. They are just about as informed as a newspaperperson whose job consists of researching something, thinking about it, and putting it in writing. Often, there is much more content, since they can spell it out in several pages, not 250 words. Many jobs today consist of writing, writing, and writing, so they get plenty of training in this aspect as well.

This does not include the engineers and scientists who, on their own, developed a deep understanding of the issues, by spending their working hours on the internet, and writing. Any idiot can set up a website, and any idiot often spews his opinions. Yet, there are many, many, high quality websites out there with well thought-out opinion. The opinion page is not needed any more.

So, what could they get away with? Rather than describe it to you, I will bring back one of the most prominent columnists ever, Walter Lippman, and wake him from his grave. I will tell him to write an Op-Ed piece about what it was like “back in the day.”

Yesterday and Today
By Walter Lippman
After being gone for 40 years, I’m back. Sure this isn’t my writing style, but you remember how to write after being dead for over 30 years! Anywho, my writing seems to be that of a buttmunch, because I was one. So it’s really not worth reading.
In my day, I was the most important columnist in the whole wide world. People worshipped me. But that didn’t mean that beautiful women would drop on their knees, pull my pants down, and give me a blowjob. No one did that back then. Not even prostitutes.
The other day I went to the clothier to buy a new suit. I was ignored. I asked “do you know who I am?” That worked for me all the time in my day – people would scurry around like they would be fired if they did not accede to me wishes. Because they would be, because I am Walt Lippman. Instead, they looked at me like I’ve been dead for at least 30 years! Just because I have been doesn’t mean that the clothier can throw me out of the store. In my day, people would give me serious respect, because I was an important columnist.
There are way too many people publishing opinion pieces on computers these days. Only those who are highly educated should be able to publish opinions. Because that is how you have freedom of the press. You can’t have a bunch of yokels from little state university writing opinion pieces, on a computer no less, because they will misinform everyone. Only people like me really should write, because only we can understand the issues.
You see, I was way more important that you. In my day, I got to hang out with “da man.” Because everyone so worshipped me, it made him look important. Of course, being “da man” doesn’t mean that eventually one of your nutty great-grandsons will run for the Senate in Connecticut, but then again, in my day, the Republican party only admitted wealthy, educated people – no ordinary people were admitted then, like today.
The truth is, I am better than anyone reading this. You are a bunch of sheep who think that big business can be bad. That is how I started my career. By demanding that all private property be nationalized. I then became a so-called “conservative.” Then I decided I liked FDR, and became a liberal again. Because the conservatives mode of thought is way too immature.
For my parting thoughts, remember this – only newspapermen can publish opinions. You should not read anyone else. Because they are your social superiors.

Walter "Walt" Lippman
2006
I want to thank Mr. Lippman for contributing this piece to my blog. Unfortunately, he was unhappy it wouldn’t be committed to paper.