Boy Emperor's Days Numbered

Finally, a CNN poll that hasn't been freeped! (But don't expect Wolf Blitzer to actually announce the results of this one.)

 

Of course, it's entirely possible that the respondents, be they Bush supporters or not, took the question literally; after all, you can't re-elect someone who was never elected in the first place.

 

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Generalissimo Francisco Franco is Still Dead!

But Ronald Reagan is not, despite rumors to the contrary:

 

The week before last, a rumor swept Washington that Ronald Reagan had died. The story first wound its way through Republican circles, then moved on to the State Department, and finally reached House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert's office.

 

The source of the report was ABC News. But the staff of ABC News never actually thought Mr. Reagan was dead. Rather, it seems, the word spread as the staff took part in one of the division's now common breaking-news drills, which news executives concocted to make sure the division never again gets caught off guard by breaking news, as it was during the space shuttle Columbia disaster and the start of Gulf War II.

 

The division's initial slowness to aggressively cover those events infuriated the prickly yet powerful affiliates. The division has promised it will never happen again. ...

 

A Test Story Morphs Into a Heady Rumor

New York Times

June 30, 2003

 

Promised what will never happen again? Never mind. Just wait for this story to resurface when the ol' B-movie actor really does go to that big studio commissary in the sky.

 

And pay no attention to that nagging little voice in your head that keeps paraphrasing the Bard: Methinks ABC doth protest too much. Never you mind that other stubborn rumor that Ronnie has been dead for months (maybe longer), and will be wheeled out on ice just in time for the Republican Convention, in an effort to drum up as much sentimentality as possible (just in case blatant exploitation of the 9-11 attacks doesn't have the desired impact).

 

And just forget about those premature obituaries discovered on the CNN site.

 

Ronnie's alive as he can be, under the circumstances.

 

Now, as for Dick Cheney's "undisclosed location"...!

 

P.S. Best line in the NYT story comes from ABC News senior vice president Paul Slavin, regarding ABC's goof: "This is our livelihood and we cannot afford another mistake. I think it would be a very grave issue."  (Italics mine.)

 

P.P.S. In case you don't get the "Franco" allusion in the title of this post:

 

The death of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco during Saturday Night Live's first season in 1975 served as the source of one of the first catchphrases from SNL to enter the general populace.

 

Franco lingered near death for weeks before dying. On slow news days, United States network television news casters sometimes noted that Franco was still alive, or not yet dead. The imminent death of Franco was the headline story on the NBC news for a number of weeks previous.

 

After Franco's death, Chevy Chase, reader of the news on Saturday Night Live's comedic news segment, announced the fascist dictator's death and read a quote from Richard Nixon praising Franco as a good friend of the United States; as an ironic counterpoint to this, a picture was displayed behind Chase, showing Franco standing alongside Adolf Hitler.

 

From that point on, Chase made it clear that SNL would get the last laugh at Franco's expense. "This breaking news just in", Chase would announce-- "Generalísimo Francisco Franco is still dead!" The top story of the news segment for several weeks running was that Generalísimo Francisco Franco was still dead. Chase would repeat the story at the end of the news segment, aided by Garrett Morris, "head of the New York School for the Hard of Hearing", whose "aid" in repeating the story involved cupping his hands around his mouth and shouting the headline.

 

Wikipedia

 

Posted 3:01:51 PM   Send comment

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Dennis Miller is a Big, Fat, Whining, Two-Faced Has-Been

Okay, I retract that:

 

Dennis Miller is not fat.

 

Without knowing the man personally (a blessing for which I am truly grateful), I can only guess at the reason the unkempt "Saturday Night Live" alumnus has metamorphosed from barely-tolerable comedian (be it stand-up schtick or "Weekend Update," his self-aware arrogance and smugness was never funny) to bootlicking audience-warmer-upper for George W. Bush.

 

Miller is like the 50-year-old son who refuses to leave home: He had a good job once (really, he did), although no one was quite sure how such a loser lucked into such an easy gig for so much money. When that ended (didn't his daddy teach him never to quit a job before lining up a new one?), he bounced from the entertainment industry's equivalent of running the deep fryer at McDonald's to sweeping up elephant dung at the end of the circus parade.

 

Finally, he lucked into another sweet job, but he wasn't very good at it. Characteristically, he blamed his quick dismissal from "Monday Night Football" on the vastly inferior mentality of "Joe P. American," who was apparently just too stupid to comprehend his lofty profundities (a recurring theme in Miller's hackneyed repertoire, especially when Miller is wetting his diaper over yet another imagined injustice against his elitist, superior self).

 

Truth is, of course, that the good, all-American tradition of football just didn't need an obnoxious adolescent uncontrollably consumed by self-congratulatory Beavis-and-Butthead snickering calling the plays. (On the other hand, it looks like Beavis and Butthead themselves needed just such an irritant, judging from the news that Miller will be joining "Hannity and Colmes." Sorry for calling you "Butthead," Alan, but how can a "liberal" sleep at night after taking home Faux News blood money?)

 

So now Miller's a Bush groupie, attempting to nudge the stuffed shirts into gales of laughter (and nudge checkbooks out of breast pockets) with such witticisms as comparing the nine Democratic presidential hopefuls to the starting lineup of the '62 Mets, calling them "scrum," and accusing Gov. Howard Dean of having a "heart tattoo with Neville Chamberlain's name on his right forearm."

 

If Miller wasn't so thoroughly dislikable in the first place, I might feel sorry for him, as his self-conscious laughter is always the loudest in the room. At the Bush fund-raiser in Los Angeles last week, even the Republicans booed his low blow at Democratic Senator Robert Byrd (who has publicly renounced his one-time membership in the KKK): "I think he must be burning the cross at both ends."

 

Now, if you're about to start muttering something about the pot calling the kettle black, you can say what you like about me or any other liberal notorious for bashing the Right at every opportunity. However, there's a big difference between yours truly and the likes of Mr. Miller: You can't call me a hypocritical opportunist. I've always been a liberal. I don't jump back and forth across the aisle because my avocation as a political pundit is in the crapper.

 

You see, I might dismiss Dennis Miller as just another Limbaugh wanna-be (which would be a stretch, as Revolting Rush is far funnier and has much better timing), save for Miller's history as a Republican-basher.

 

Following is a 1996 rant of Miller's that illustrates not merely his un-funniness, but his astonishing talent for jumping the aisle (his only remarkable talent indeed).

 

Were I the mischievous sort, I might think about making photocopies of this and passing it out amongst the crowd just before Miller takes the podium at the next Bush love fest. Better yet, copies could be tucked into the program for Strom Thurmond's upcoming funeral; I'm sure the mourners would love to hear what Miller had to say about ol' Strom's "annual carbon-14 test."

 

At the very least, I'd like somebody to read it aloud to Dubya -- especially the part about how anybody who runs for president is automatically an asshole (and a narcissistic asshole, at that.)

 

Maybe the best we can hope for is that Pat Buchanan is one of my lurkers; I sure would like to see him pick this up in his nationally-syndicated column. Even if Pat doesn't take offense, his readers probably wouldn't cotton much to Miller summing up Americans as "250 million self-centered assholes":

 

It's another presidential election year and as we careen towards our quadrennial Tuesday after the first Monday in November goat fuck, we once again get to watch a sweaty gaggle of Republican nozzleheads engage in exactly the same kind of foul, shameless, vulgar sack race that the Democratic nozzleheads engaged in four years ago. All these politicians are interchangeable. That's why the American voter feels as frustrated as a choking victim at a Christian-Scientist award dinner. ...

 

And money is just the coal that feeds the besimer converter inferno that is the mass media. Television is a continuously expanding black hole of filthy lucre and misinformation. Most current candidates choose negative advertising campaign. Negative advertising is mean-spirited, intellectually dishonest, and most importantly, brutally effective. Just ask Barry Goldwater about the mushroom cloud that ate his career. He's installing fucking cable in Scotsdale right now. ...

 

Let's cut to the chase. Clueless politicians compete for baseless votes cast by uninformed citizens for frightenly irrational reasons. Our moral standards are so low and our intellectual field so barren, that if John Wayne Gacy arose from the dead tomorrow, he could put on his clown suit, hire Roger Arows, and get enough name recognition votes in New Hampshire to knock Dick Lugar out of the race. And then Dick Lugar could drop his alias, re-enter the real world, and go back to his given name, Cock Barreta! ...

 

You know, folks, the truth is that the truly great men never run for president. That's because the mere act of running makes you less than great. Anybody who is willing to endure the indignity of putting his life as well as his family's privacy in the line of fire, on the off-chance that 40 million freaks will see fit to elect him, well, that automatically makes him an asshole, okay? Only an asshole would sit through a five hour state dinner with the president of Estonia. Only an asshole would expect his wife to stare blankly in Stepfersmow while he outlines some bogus plan to use private funding for Strom Thurmond's annual carbon-14 test. And only a narcissistic asshole would think he could bring this crazy quilt of 250 million self-centered assholes together by being all things to all assholes!

 

As long as a candidate can't be pinned down, he'll win the office. He must feign competency without actually acting in anyway where success of failure could be proven. It must look like he is constantly doing something while accomplishing nothing. It's like Vanna White in a power tie! This is the signature of a successful modern day politician. This is how politicians get elected. ...

 

Hey, if you look hard enough, you're gonna find reason enough not to elect anyone. Bob Dornan is so insane, he actually undersells Crazy Eddy. Pat Buchanan? Okay, forget the fact that his chief aid keeps Hitler's missing testicle in his inside coat pocket. On his own, Buchanan is further to the right than a bicyclist on the Autobahn. (Pat Buchanan is a registered trademark of the National Rifle Association and cannot be used without direct express written consent.) ... Lamar Alexander is about a month and a half away from playing Norm to Jimmy Carter's Bob Villa. At least Alexander is insightful enough to realize that the current American electors [are] such a chronic droolers that they would vote for a fucking shirt! Bob Dole? I don't know if I wanna president who is congratulated on his birthday by Willard Scott. And finally, how can I vote for Dick Lugar when he doesn't have the courage to use his real name, Schlong Uzi?! ...

 

Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.

 

Dennis Miller

Transcript

February 16, 1996

 

See? Dennis Miller is a big (but not fat), whining, two-faced has-been.

 

He's also decidedly un-funny.

 

 

Related articles:

 

The Miller's Crossing

Rick Chandler

 

The Last Refuge of Goofy: Dennis Miller's Zionist Career Move

Ross Vachon, CounterPunch, May 19, 2003

 

This Just In

Barry Crimmins, Boston Phoenix, February 27, 2003

 

Dennis Miller and the Mentality of America Now

          Manipeg

 

Dennis Miller's Sharp Turn to the Right

Being Dennis Miller

 

An Open Letter to Dennis Miller

          Left Wing Warrior

 

Dennis Miller on the Jay Leno Show

          Shredding Paper

 

Bart Straightens Out Dennis Miller

          Bartcop

 

Obituary for a Former Hero

          Cult of Nobody

 

Geekweek (Read the "Legal Notice" at the beginning of the column.)

Jamie Berger, SportsGeek Magazine

 

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