Peg o' My Heartburn, Dept.

Pundits Whitewash Torture

Peggy Noonan, Vestal Virgin at the shrine of Ronaldus Reaganorum, had some fascinatingly fascinating things to say last week about the release of Dubya-era memos detailing--and endorsing--waterboarding and other techniques used on swarthy men who face East to pray five times a day. Peg seems to think that there's just no point in revisiting those days and those issues and revealing some of the truths surrounding and underpinning them. She said, "Some things in life need to be mysterious. Sometimes you need to just keep walking."

I know that one doesn't want to know how sausage is made or, generally, witness much of what transpires in a commercial kitchen of meager means and undemanding clientele. But one would expect a political insider and author to exhibit a tad more interest in the secret workings of government. And, really, her current lack of curiosity regarding the whole Bushies-heart-torture issue is quite remarkable, given her own history.

For, if Sister Immaculata Primrose had manifested this discreet squeamishness concerning the darker corners of American politics during the Clinton administration, I would have said that she's simply a woman of circumspection, perhaps due to tender sensibilities and a mild constitution. But, no. She dug into the Lewinsky-Clinton scandale with the gusto of a competitive eater into blueberry pie no. 1. So, it appears that her...delicacy regarding matters of national import flares up only when confronting the bemerded peccadilloes of the conservative set.

For those who haven't had the pleasure, in her public appearances, Pegalong Casuistry combines the pantomime daintiness of a spinster who wouldn't say shit if she had a mouthful, with the sanctimonious condescension of a parochial school teacher towards the retards, Lord love them!, in her charge. Speaking of "civility" in our national discourse v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y in what she must believe is a Gipperesque tone, Peg nonetheless regularly manages to dig the shiv between her target's ribs (hi, Hillary!) with the gusto of a nun with a new ruler and a classroom full of knuckles. This "do as I say, not as I do"-ism seems to be manifesting itself in the temperance of her previous zeal for full disclosure by an unquestioning respect for the inviolable nature of mysteries. Like the Assumption. Or how According to Jim has lasted eight seasons.

Oh, Peggy Noonan, Peggy Noonan! Pitiably blind to the red-headed hypocrisy born at the intersection of her current pleas for discretion and her previous cries for disclosure. The little girl in the plaid jumper who always reminded Sister that she'd forgotten to assign homework, now a wobbly pundit with a repellent public manner and a conveniently short memory. Lord love you, Peg! Ten Our Fathers and twenty-five thousand Hail Marys and your sins will be forgiven. Vade et amplius iam noli peccare.

Navel-grazing, Dept.

Navel-Grazing, Dept.

There's something ineluctably sad about an ill-kept blog. It's not unlike chez sobsister, actually. Paint chipping on the façade, one brick loose from the front steps, mailbox could use replacing...

I haven't been posting here much. Lack of time + lack of inspiration = radio silence. The fact of the matter is--and, here, I'm taking a huge leap of faith that this sort of self-indulgent meta-post is even vaguely interesting to anyone outside my head--that after a point, LOLXtians and LOLNeocons isn't all that interesting to write. There are so many stories out there on which I could be ladling snark that simply recapitulate an unvarying theme.

Last month, for example, B-b-b-Benny and the Peds announced that condoms weren't really the answer in fighting AIDS in Africa. Sure, I could've called him a benighted dogmatist nancy-boy flouncing about in Mommy's caftan while condemning tens, no, hundreds of thousands to death, to unwanted pregnancy and an unbreakable cycle of poverty, simply to bolster his completely made-up belief that, somehow, taking responsibility for, and control of, one's reproductive process is a raspberry in the face of the Invisible Bearded Man in the Sky. But I didn't. I mean, I've come to realize with the passage of time that the Catholic Church regularly says astonishingly ill-advised things that fly like a piazza of spooked pigeons smack in the face of, oh, I don't know, common sense, science, logic. To point out the crass stupidity of the Vatican's pronouncement at each occasion would be like riffling through publicity shots of the Olsen twins and noting again and again and again that they sure could use a fucking sandwich.

Same with the conservatives and, to be precise, the right-wing media in this country. Late last month, twat con Laura Ingraham (isn't that always held on the first Sunday in July? Twat Con '09! with appearances by Monica Goodling, Michelle Malkin and Dana Perino! plus GOP cosplay!) dissed almost-First Daughter Meghan McCain (for criticizing Troll Quean Ann Coulter) by calling her fat. Sure, I could've noted that it's amazing that Laura Ingraham can host a radio show, given that she talks entirely through her ass, or that a neocon lawyer converting to Catholicism has just hit the bullshit rationalization trifecta. But I didn't. The fact of the matter is that the 24-hour news cycle, declining educational achievement and dwindling intellectual engagement nationwide, and booming fast food and pharmaceutical intake has created a roiling subclass of triple-chinned cretin zombies who pay to be told what to think by a gold-clad phalanx of screaming hucksters who grab the addled gomers by the nose to pour know-nothing elixir down their gullets. To point out the witless, intellectually dishonest copromathy that is this circus is like identifying sociopathic nuns in the parochial school system. After a while, your arm gets tired.

So, your sobsister continues to look for veins to mine. One possibility: people whose surnames sound like naughty body parts. Watch for it!

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]