Karl Rove, a pussy? Who woulda thunk? Me.

Word has it that Karl Rove's new book has a stunning admission: that he got his ass kicked by a girl as a kid! I know, hard to imagine considering he already looks like a muppet disguised as Heinrich Himmler (fuck you and the "law" you rode in on, Mr. Godwin), wrapped in an enigma, smothered in danish.

But look...OK, don't look, especially if you've eaten already, fuck me.

Is Karl Rove not the poster child for the squirming pathology that is most Republicans and the worst-of-the-worst in the corporate world? Yes, yes, rumor has it that Karl is gay, but does it really matter in the final analysis (and let's remember that "anal" is part of the word)? We all know that most of the last 30 years of Republican domination of the national dialog is hate-based, but it also has a weird revanchist quality underlying it (note that "lying" is a part of the word, made flesh). It's also not especially sexy and reeks of the socially-retarded dork.

Can this piece have more digressions? Yes. So, Rove gets his ass kicked-in decades ago by a little girl. Do you think he had it coming? First, let's recall that this was a little girl, they were both nine, and it fifty years ago. Could he be more of a pussy? Sure. Why would a little girl want to kick his ass in? Keep in mind that he horse-laughingly titled his Book of Lies (fuck you Crowley!) Courage and Consequence, which considering this "revelation," makes it more bizarre and funnier than Mein Kampf. "Revanchist"? Yes, he lost masculine territory to the liberal skirts, and so, he would "get even" with them and "liberal America" after that fated day in 1960 when she punched him in the nose, and rightly so. Yes, the die had been cast, the gauntlet thrown down, and life would never, and could ever, be the same. It was war. Never mind that he was dumb enough to support Nixon at nine, so we have to assume his parents did poor job rearing him...

New York Magazine writes:

At age 9--and already a political nerd--he became a spirited supporter of Richard Nixon in the 1960 presidential smackdown against John F. Kennedy. So intense was his devotion that he landed a coveted Nixon bumper sticker and displayed it proudly on his bicycle basket -- until a little girl in his neighborhood who favored JFK beat the stuffing out of him, bloodying his nose and ego. "I've never liked losing a political fight since," Rove writes. ("Karl Rove Was Once Beaten Up By a Girl," New York Magazine, Daily Intel, 03.06.2010)

You gotta be fucking kidding me. If you're that into politics at nine, you're not just a "geek," but violently retarded. OK, I love women, and I would never admit to this in a million years, seriously, that a little girl kicked my ass. Yet, Rove queerly thinks that this little anecdote of his is normal and jokingly wears it as some kind of badge of courage as though it were some epic moment in his life...uh, erm, point taken, but now we know when his and his supporters' emotional development stopped.

I keep telling my friends this over and over again and have written the same here many times: scoundrels are perverse and they'll tell you everything lame, pathetic, and damning about themselves if you give it time and just watch and listen with the right eyes and ears. This is why monsters like Rove hide from the public eye so much and only appear groundhog-stylee at "friendly" venues with hand-picked audiences brimming with their allies. Fine, but the shoehorn fits. All that said, why in the hell would anyone outside of the acquisitions department of a library buy this worthless piece-of-crap book that's very little more than self-serving lies? What the hell is the point or reading it when it's almost nothing but bullshit?

I would imagine, though, that this one part of the book is its truest part, Karl Rove's "rosebud," the crowning rosette of his pathetic political epitaph. What a clown. He's just given historians the final blow, and he's already roundly hated by them and the rest of the world. Being forgotten would be a far better fate.

Horselaughs for all: Karl Rove Was Once Beaten Up By a Girl -- Daily Intel http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2010/03/karl_rove_was_once_beat_up_by.html#ixzz0hRE2evPn

AP: "Jackson death was twittered, texted and Facebooked"

WWW/NYC--My, my, my...where to begin? I'm trying to understand why in this day and age it's necessary for everyone to tell each other what's going to come their way inevitably, especially by word-of-mouth. All your new-fashioned applications and flashing-lights are frightening to this American primitive, and lately, I've been seeing colored-dots without the usual chemical refreshments, causing anxieties over whether I'm epileptic or not.

In addition, we now seem to have three--count them, three--new verbs added to the English-lexicon, and nobody, I mean nobody, consulted Oxford University. The gall (Google it).

But it gets worse: Michael Jackson actually died many years ago and his brain was cryogenically-frozen and stored at a Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems complex so that future generations could listen to banal droning coming from a cybernetic being other than a Philip K. Dick Cheney or a Walt Disney. Hey, they needed something to blot-out the news coming out of the Middle East, and women with large, fake breasts weren't cutting it anymore...

Where were you when Kennedy died? Fuck that man--pfft!--Jacko died, and through the magic of technology we never asked for or needed, we could find out that it was so just moments after the LAPD's announcement--faster than microwaving a pizza, and just about as satisfying.

But wait, it's not all bells-and-whistles, and quit annoying me, asshole:

"Once you knew the news, there wasn't so much more to know - the rest is all comment," said media critic Jeff Jarvis. So, he said, maybe you'd go to your friends instead of the news: "You might care more what your friends say than some analyst."

Jarvis himself tweeted the moment he heard of the death: He noted that Iran's spiritual leader should be grateful to Jackson because the story wiped Iran off the day's news agenda.

"That was re-tweeted a lot," Jarvis said.

("Jackson death was twittered, texted and Facebooked," AP, 06.27.2009)

Thanks Mr. Jarvis! Wow! Empathy is great, don't get me wrong, but we're making a generation of twittering "Otakus" ( おたく/オタク) which is Japanese for dorks who are a storehouse of worthless data and information (people who never, ever, get laid, like me).

Are there any Otakus out there who are political junkies? That seems impossible considering the qualifiers. Now spit.

An open letter to dumb women who are going to vote for Sarah Palin because she's a dumb woman too

The Campaign Trail of Tears--Ladies, nobody wants to date a fascist--well, except you. Face the fact that you're all mental midgets and female reactionaries. Your great-great grandmothers voted for Warren G. Harding because he was vaguely rugged and handsome to them, he was a former football player, and he was as stupid as they were.You have become banal reincarnations of these women, and the dumbos who thought Dan Quayle was "cute" (they thought Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump was too though, which is telling).

The reality is, you just have a perverse streak with a dash of dumb, that weird little thing that you gals sometimes engage in when you're bored: "Something might happen--no wait, I'll make something happen. Besides, I'm hungry for a problem. Hmmmm. Why not help men ruin the world some more and vote for this woman because she's a woman for no logical reason?"

But why shouldn't there be women leading softer, gentler lynch mobs, endless wars, insane interventionism, and an inevitable economic collapse? Why, indeed, should men be the only ones to destroy brown people in other countries? Look, you even let a Black woman do it first in the State Department, killing thousands from a desk no less, and women were not even allowed to oversee sexual torture at Abu-Ghraib prison, it's not right, it's wrong. Glass ceiling that. And why can't a woman endanger the world as President John F. Kennedy did, bring us the Cuban Missile Crisis? Again, unfair.

Why shouldn't a Republican woman do the same for our contemporary relations with Russia when we came so close with North Korea under Bush/Cheney? Let's be honest that it's never been done before, therefore it should be done, if for no other reason at all. Nevermind that, we're just itching to end that goddamned anxiety that we created in our culture from dropping "the atomic bomb" on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. You see, since that time, we know that we've had it coming and that it was just an arbitrary action to keep the Soviets out of Japan...uh, OK, and for power, money, cheap skilled labor, and a lot of permanent military bases there.

And Mrs. Palin is pro-life alright: she decided to have sex and conceive after she was 42, raising her chances of giving-birth to a child with down's syndrome almost exponentially. No, that wasn't selfish at all, not in any way whatsoever when you already have three kids.

And she doesn't talk like a taxi driver from Minnesota, or a prostitute from Anchorage, not at all, those are just nasty rumors. Her voice is so eloquent the Bard would be jealous, the pansy, and I like so believe in dragons, unicorns, the Easter Bunny, and Santa Claus, I think. And clearly, sex education for dummies should be the Palin campaign primer. Stupid people can be national politicians, just look at the last eight years. And yeah.

yours-in-Christ, Matt Janovic

Obama's Veep Pick: Does it Really Matter?

The Campaign Trail of Tears--Nah. I'm saying it's either going to be the arch-conservative milquetoast Evan Bayh from my own state of Indiana, or the virtual unknown from Texas, Representative Chet Edwards. Soooo, he didn't even think once about--erm--tapping Hillary (who would? Not Bill.) as vice president. That was a smart move, because there would have been no logical reason to think she wouldn't have been stabbing a President Obama in the back his entire tenure in office. We'll see, and probably in less than a couple hours.

Poscript, 10:00 PM: An incredible wait, so I went out to see the new Kiefer Sutherland film "Mirrors," which is really great! Of course, we all know the wait is political theater at its best, but Obama's smarter than his ossified, washed-up jock rival. My money's on Bayh, why break a run of disappointments? Caroline Kennedy would be a great one, so it's unlikely. Sigh. Time to watch William Klein's "Mr. Freedom"! Notice how nobody cares who McCain picks as his running-mate, yet even the GOP is riveted over who Obama will choose? I have.

Obama invokes the late, great Wild Bill Hickok as an ancestor

Springfield, Missouri--Obama's claim of descent to James Butler "Wild Bill" Hickok (where he engaged in a duel, possibly during the Civil War) today is an interesting one.

The Democratic presidential candidate came to this town on the edge of the old West on Wednesday and laid down a challenge for his GOP rival.

"If Sen. McCain wants a debate on taxes in this campaign, I'm ready," Obama said, noting that Hickok is said to have fought a duel here. "I'm ready to duel John McCain on taxes right here, quick draw," Obama said before closing the loop with Hickok.

"The family legend is that he is a distant cousin of mine. I don't know if it's true but I'm going to research it." ("Political Play: Obama claims link to the Wild West," AP, 07.30.2008)

He doesn't need to, a noted genealogist named Chris Child has confirmed it. Never mind that-- 25% of everyone roaming the Wild West was Black (it's true). Obama went to the heart of the matter, to one of the legends, Wild Bill.

And he's correct: he is descended from Wild Bill, a distant cousin. But does he really want to make a comparison? Perhaps. But his challenge of a dueling debate over taxes in Springfield with John McCain doesn't bode well when you look at how Wild Bill ended his days, but people settle their differences in other ways nowadays. Nonetheless, there's an even more intriguing fact about the Hickok family that few will recognize:

Wild Bill Hickok James Butler Hickok in Troy Grove, Illinois on May 27, 1837 to was born William Alonzo Hickok and Polly Butler Hickok. Bill had four brothers and two sisters and his parents were God-fearing Baptists who expected Bill to keep up his chores on the farm and to attend church every Sunday. Bill's parents also operated a station along the Underground Railroad, where they smuggled slaves out of the South. It was during this time that the lean and wiry young man got his first taste of hostile gunfire when he and his father were chased by law officers who suspected them of carrying more than just hay in their wagon. ("Wild Bill Hickok and the dead man's hand," LegendsofAmerica.com)

And so, James Butler Hickok came from very upstanding Americans, from people who saw Black Americans as human beings when few bothered to care. On top of this, they risked their lives, and so did Bill. He was a real man. But then, we should remember that there's that other side of America, where Republicans and sell-out Democrats dwell. It's the domain of the Coward Jack McCall, the world of the back-stabbing scoundrel and the yellow-belly.

Not much is known about McCall except that he was stupid, cock-eyed, a braggart, and a drunk who had once run with some buffalo hunters, possibly in the Wyoming territory. Kind of sounds like the current president, doesn't it? McCall was from Kentucky while Hickok was from Illinois, but both men wrestled with the beast within. Hickok was a lawman with an itchy trigger-finger. We'll never know how many people Hickok killed, and it's positive we never will with McCall either.

But you know a man by his actions, and we only remember McCall because of one of his last ones when he shot Wild Bill Hickok in the back of the head for beating him at cards.

On August 1, 1876 Wild Bill was playing cards in Nuttall and Mann’s No. 10 Saloon when one of the players dropped out and bystander Jack McCall took his place. McCall kept losing and at the end of the evening was broke. Hickok gave him money with which to buy dinner. The next day, on August 2, Hickok returned to the No. 10 and joined in a game of cards. A few hours later Jack McCall entered the bar and stopped a few paces behind Hickok. He pointed his gun at Hickok’s head, pulled the trigger and shouted, “Damn you, take that!” The gunshot instantly killed Wild Bill. McCall ran out of the saloon and attempted to escape on a horse that was tethered nearby, but the saddle had been loosened, and he fell to the ground. McCall ran down the street and hid in a butcher’s shop where he was captured by a large crowd. ("Deadwood History-JackMcCall," AdamsMuseumandHouse.org)

How is this different from John McCain dropping bombs on innocent North Vietnamese civilians over forty-years-ago, then being captured? Can someone like Obama--coming from the Chicago political machine--embody the morality of what was good about James Butler Hickok and America, or will he unleash the spirit of Jack McCall, John Rockefeller Sr., the Vanderbilts, Andrew Carneige, and the Pinkertons on the world as Commander in Chief?

Will he be a backstabbing assassin like the man who murdered his distant cousin, or will he side with the robber barons, the mine owners, and railroad men of our times? The signs aren't good, but one can hope, since that's all we're left with voting within the two party system. Will Obama be the man from Illinois (Lincoln/Hickok) or the malcontent, booze-swilling long-knife from Kentucky (McCall)?

When a candidate evokes the memory of the Old West in America, it's an important event that carries the responsibility of getting the history right. Yes, it makes him look and sound "tough," but does it make him a hero (McCain isn't one either), a man who can enter his home justified? If Senator Obama decides to stand on the side of the law, he's going to have a lot of cleaning-up to do from the last president. This is mandatory. It should be a part and parcel of his own agenda, because no nation can survive lawlessness for very long.

Just 100-years-ago, Pat Garrett was murdered along a lonely road in New Mexico.

He'd been shot in the back of the head and in the chest. Long before we were arguing over which angle JFK was shot from in Dealy Plaza, parties were arguing the same over Pat's murder. They say a big time rancher named W.W. Cox wanted him dead, and that he wasn't alone. Rich "coyotes" smuggling Chinese immigrants across the Mexican-American border might have wanted to bring them through his Bear Canyon ranch. Had they murdered him for money and power? What side of history is Obama on? We already know about John McCain.

"Political Play: Obama claims link to the Wild West," AP, 07.30.2008: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gyXVIfZ2F2CTuuxH3_93vuTP-ywwD928D6QO0

"Wild Bill Hickok and the dead man's hand," LegendsofAmerica.com: http://www.legendsofamerica.com/WE-BillHickok.html

On the Coward Jack McCall:http://www.adamsmuseumandhouse.org/answers/jackmccall.html

"Surprising New Information on Pat Garrett's Death: Details from the Fornoff Report," by Chuck Hornung, WesternOutlaw.com: http://www.westernoutlaw.com/stories/files/NewInfoPatGarrett.pdf

The Dead Zone (1983) review

Greg Stillson: "The missiles are flying. Hallelujah, Hallelujah!"

1983 was still a pretty good year for horror and genre fans, and a bad one for ordinary people. Director David Cronenberg did this film back-to-back with his other political film, Videodrome, and they both compliment each other in their statements on the rightist and authoritarian threat to liberty in North America.

The Reagan revolution's effects were being felt by Latin Americans, the urban poor, small farmers, minorities, women, deinstitutionalized inmates of state asylums, the working-class, and the Cold War was heating-up again with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. As the GOP were in-power, the rich got much richer. However, the corruption of the Reagan years has been handily eclipsed by the administration of George W. Bush.

Reagan was never truly popular, but managed to sneak into office due to voter apathy. The rest is bunting and chest-beating by his backers, and he was elected by a slim majority of eligible voters. The arms race (reignited by Carter) was being accelerated by Reagan to a frightening degree, and we were funding death squads in El Salvador, Guatemala, Asia, Africa, and Nicaragua. Those who noticed the insanity were watching the skies again, just as they did during the Cuban Missile Crisis (which was the fault of the GOP and Kennedy, making Sheen a proper choice). Things were pretty grim, and there was a recession. In this context, The Dead Zone did well at the box-office, and is still remembered fondly as one of the best King movies.

Politician Greg Stillson (Martin Sheen) is a progressive, seemingly "Populist" politician, but in-appearance only. In reality, Stillson is a ruthless criminal who uses intimidation, blackmail, and any means he can use to achieve power. This is a very grim portrait of North American politics, and at a time when Reaganism was sweeping-through the culture; all of it still resonates strongly today. We may never know how close America has brushed-up with a "Stillson scenario," though Boam and Cronenberg seem to be suggesting that this is commonplace.

King's and Boam's allusions to Washington Irving and Edgar Allan Poe are powerful and fitting for such a fateful and psychological tale, which gives the film a wider sense of scope. It has something important to say about North American culture that defies any simple explanations--I could write an entire book on this film, and still be left with more to explain, it is that rich a tale. Above everything, however, it is a tale of loss and of what could have been. Americans know the tragedy of this all too well.

Jeffrey Boam and David Cronenberg took Stephen King's "Rip Van Winkle" retelling, and made it much-much more--a parable of 1983, but also of our common era. Like most good-literature, nothing-is-as-it-seems in the "Dead Zone", but entering into this is the character Johnny (played beautifully by Christopher Walken). Without any supernatural-explanations, Cronenberg gives us a character who is somehow able to penetrate the deceptions in life and what is hidden in the lives of the people he encounters (and touches). Basically, Johnny is an instrument of fate. His role is to stop a local murderer, as well as to stop Greg Stillson from attaining power, and here, all of the authors suggest that destiny and fate limit the structure of our lives. It has been remarked (apocryphally, by Steven Spielberg, a director who fears Cronenberg's depth) that the film's storyline supports the notion of assassination--it absolutely does, and unapolegetically. It also posits--like King's book--that not all people who appear insane or eccentric are wrong in their different take on reality.

For many Americans--and one can suppose, Canadians too--someone like Stillson reaching the pillars of power and authority is impossible, unthinkable. It shouldn't seem "impossible" after George W. Bush, a phony Populist if there ever was one. His resemblance to the character Greg Stillson is eerie, and he is not alone. Boam, King and Cronenberg insisted in 1983 that "this is possible", and that only an ordinary man, poised by providence, can affect the course of this path to destruction. Will the evil end entirely? Cronenberg and Boam don't answer this, but Stillson's and Johnny's journeys and destinies have. This is because they were intertwined. Evil and destruction never truly end, and neither does the resistance to it.

This movie was a "hire" job for David Cronenberg, and yet it so resembles the political and social-implications of all of his work from his early period, a strange fact. Often, the "adversaries" in his films are faceless, or murky, only showing themselves at the right moment to strike. His adversaries are often social forces, and trends, often disembodied and invisible. The 1980s were simply an ugly and vulgar era, with a lot of submerged politics--like Iran-Contra, where even drug-running was alleged in funding Reagan allies in Nicauragua. Reagan said, "We don't negotiate with terrorists," and did just-that! Today, it is safe-to-assume that much-worse is being done in our names, and only needs uncovering by the bravest amongst-us. Johnny shows that there is a price in this ability; he dies-a-piece with every revelation he is privy to, and he's almost like a missionary or a Civil Rights worker, or a saint.

Most of the philosophical arguments and implications are dealt-with in the dialog between Johnny and his rehabilitation counselor (Herbert Lom, in one of his greatest performances). What would you do if you knew who the next Hitler was, and could do something about it? Lom has the perfect answer: "I am a doctor...I love people...but, I would have to kill the son-of-a-bitch." The politics of the film are very clear, but so are the consequences of the sacrifice.This is why so few people ever "rise-to-the-occasion" to fight an encroaching evil. It is simply easier not to. Even nonviolence is basically a cop-out when you're facing an enemy who proves we're in a universe without morality. Johnny Smith is a messianic figure, and a revolutionary one who must eschew an ordinary life (this is where some of the "loss" figures-in).

The subtext of covert political activity is always there, waiting to be discovered, and fought, by ordinary people. And so, the horror of this film is a political horror, our political nightmare. It is the revelation that flies-in-the-face of homespun, North American values of fair-play and hard work--that many of those who wish to govern us do not wish us well, but quite-the-opposite: they wish us death, ultimately, the logical conclusion of the will to power.

This was a post-Watergate lesson we have conveniently forgotten, but are now reawakening to, and that is the horror we all face. Cronenberg made a classic that will continue to affect caring people profoundly, it speaks-to our hopes and our fears. The Dead Zone also speaks to our regrets in this vale-of-tears, an oddly "Puritan" message, but it fits the story's locale. The late Michael Kamen's score is both moving and warm, and the film would be very cold indeed without it. The TV series is worthless. It has nothing to say.