I'm So Privileged

Greg Nickels [our mayor] has me so royally peeved, I'm tempted to just write "Greg Nickels is an arrogant, narcissistic, fool" 75 times and turn that in. I've been told by the editor I could get away with that sort of thing. He's said no one would notice any difference in the quality of my writing, so "what the hell."

I won't though, because I wouldn't want to abuse my free speech privilege. Sarah Palin, who aspires to be Vice President of the United States, a job that requires upholding our Constitution, has reminded us lately that freedom of speech is a privilege that the press should not abuse. Indeed, I clearly recall how in 8th grade history we learned the first ten amendments to the Constitution (they formed what was called the Bill of Privileges), and that the first privilege listed after the Privilege of Religion was the Privilege of Freedom of Speech.

Another privilege we learned about was the Privilege of the People to Peaceably Assemble. I'm sure that if Sarah Palin ever gets to be president she'll keep us on the straight and narrow there, too.

[Right: Some women peaceably assembled to ask politely to be granted privilege to vote. "Please, sirs, with sugar on top!"]

Our activist Supreme Court, abusing its privilege to interpret the Constitution, declared decades ago that people retain privileges of association, asserting they could not otherwise exercise their speech and assembly privileges. Palin has clearly understood how wrong this is.

When Palin accused Barack Obama of associating "with terrorists who targeted our own country" she referred to the fact that Bill Ayers, who helped found the Weather Underground when Obama was 8, and Barack Obama have both worked on the same two non-profit boards. Palin would regard that as an abuse of the privilege of association.

She's absolutely right. Suppose I'm helping put out a fire, at, say, a kindergarten, and I know that the guy passing me buckets of water is none other than Bill Ayers, who blew up a critical Pentagon file-cabinet once. I should walk away from that fire because associating with known terrorists is always wrong, wrong, wrong. The kindergarteners would understand, when they got older, if they weren't burned to a crisp. If they were burned to a crisp, they'd have to ask themselves in the afterlife what the heck were they doing going to a kindergarten in the same neighborhood with a known terrorist?

[Above: President Lyndon B. Johnson shakes hands with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. during the signing of the landmark Civil Privileges Act of 1964.]

As if just to show you don't have to be republican to have the same kind of grasp of law on privilege as Sarah Palin, this past weekend the administration of our Democratic Mayor Greg Nickels put out a Notice of Land Use Violation threatening to fine a long list of individuals and associations for their support of Nickelsville, at least one of whom was listed for the sole crime of having emailed his support to another of them.

The Notice of Violation notably lists SHARE/WHEEL, the homeless grassroots organization that was NOT responsible for Nickelsville, as a supporter, and includes mention of its Vancouver, Washington, office. But the Vancouver WA office is that of an entirely different organization that just happens to have the name Share.

Therefore Nickels carries Sarah Palin's thinking a step further. Not only should people not do good things if the wrong people join in, they should also pay for having the wrong name. Again, this is as it should be. Share House, Vancouver, started in 1977. SHARE/WHEEL started in 1990. Share House has had 18 of its 31 years in existence to change its name. They have totally abused their privilege of name-having.

But Nickels went too far listing John and Jane Doe as "Persons Responsible For The Violations".

We know what he's doing. He's getting ready to fine everybody who so much as wrote a letter to the editor in support of Nickelsville, $150 a day, every day it exists.

Now we need everyone who cares about Nickelsville and the RIGHT of homeless people to survive to declare themselves to be John or Jane Doe -- I am John Doe.

[Below: I already posted this on my other blog Run Off, but it's worth posting again.]

Spartacus [I now think the subtitles are in Turkish.]

Lackawanna Wonderfulness

Here at Adventures in Irony, we aim to put everything that matters into perspective and distort beyond recognition everything that doesn't matter. Let's talk about the US presidential election!

We now know who's running. On the Democratic side, Barack Obama is running as the I Spy Bill Cosby (not to be confused with the stand-up or Jello-Pudding Cosbys), so has picked Robert Culp as his running mate. I discovered this watching Obama and Biden being interviewed together on 60 Minutes. The objective is for Obama to be the first African-American president without ever actually mentioning African-American-ness. Instead the focus will be on Wonderfulness and Joe Biden's ability to write his own speeches and direct himself. Obama's election will pave the way, in less than 40 years, for a Democratic Ticket that looks like Eddie Murphy and Owen Wilson.

McCain's choice of Sarah Palin for Vice Presidential nominee gives us no choice but to speak of a Get Smart Ticket -- Sarah Palin being basically Barbara Feldon, Agent 99, with glasses, a bigger gun, and higher cheekbones. This means John McCain is Maxwell Smart. If anyone is bothered by this I'm sorry, but I don't make these things up. The McCain/Palin sequel, if it's allowed to happen, will be played by Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway.

Counting Greens, Libertarians, Socialists, and the others, there are at least an additional 11 tickets to choose from that I know of (not all offers valid at all election outlets). When one of those 11 tickets starts resembling a 60s TV spy show team I will let you all know within the week. Ralph Nader had a shot at being The Man From U.N.C.L.E but he blew it when he decided to run with Matt Gonzales. Matt Gonzales may have Illya Kuryakin's hair, his eyes, and maybe even his fashion sense, but he is no Illya Kuryakin.

A lot has been made of Barack Hussein Obama's name, especially the Hussein part. It's often suggested that Barack's parents went way out of their way to dream up the weirdest, scariest, name they could. The notion credits them with far more imagination than they actually showed: Barack's father's name was Barack Hussein Obama. They went with something already tried!

John McCain has been revealed as the least homeless man in America. Many in the homeless advocacy business are investigating what impact McCain's possession of all the vacant housing has already had on US homelessness. What we know for certain is that he's the candidate most capable of ending homelessness in a term at the White House, by inviting all the homeless people into his other digs.

Sarah Palin might not know how to end homelessness, but she could help homeless people get relief from their day-to-day struggles by teaching them to shoot and live off wild game. She knows how to make hats out of pigeons and gloves out of stray cats. I'm sure she'll have no problem with homeless people shooting stray cats. Realize it's not about the cats, it's about self-reliance. It's not about the elk, it's about oil. And so forth.

Joe Biden has been a senator from Delaware for 35 freaking years. He's not known for that, of course, since most Americans have never heard of Delaware ("lowest highest elevation of all fifty states") or knew that it was permitted votes in the Senate. Instead, he is best known for having lived as the son of a working-class car salesman in Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania, absorbing the honest straight-shooting ethics of all good salt-of-the-earth car salesmen. I didn't really mean to say that, I just wanted to say "Lackawanna."

For Extra Credit

Figure out how John McCain can be said to have had far more foreign policy experience than Barack Obama, but he still can't tell when a war is wrong and an insane waste of people and resources. Should we value experience in and of itself, or should we look at what’s been learned from it?

Presidential Game

I have a new game. I watch the presidential campaign news with half my brain shut down. I don't need illegal drugs, I have a natural gift! Besides, my doctors prescribe brain-shutting-down medicine, because it makes me so darn happy. They've seen me not happy, and it wasn't pretty.

[Right: Me not happy, from the Wes Archives.]

So let's put those filters up and examine the 2008 presidential race not with our right brains or our left brains, but with our leftover brains!

I was especially excited last week when McCain camp said Obama isn't fit to be president because the leaders of Hamas have said he's the Cat's Meow. The exact quote used was a statement by Ahmed Yousef who said in an interview: “We don’t mind — actually we like Mr. Obama. We hope he will [win] the election and I do believe he is like John Kennedy, he is like Kennedy, the Cat's Meow. Of course Kennedy loved Israel and would have despised us and crushed us militarily, but hey, he was American, you take what you can get."

Subsequently McCain deflected similar charges against him by sort of renouncing his endorsement from John Hagee, the man who said "Everybody gets me wrong when I say the Catholic Church is the Great Whore. I didn't mean ALL of the Catholic Church, just most of it. Gee, lighten up people." McCain says he still likes Hagee 'cause he has that old-timey religion, but he now acknowledges that Hagee is political rat-bait. His exact words (this part I'm not making up!), in response to being asked whether it was a mistake to accept Hagee's endorsement were, "oh, probably, sure." He then went on to say that, still, he was "glad to have his endorsement."

In other election news, Hillary Clinton has charged Obama as being "out of touch" for saying working class Americans are bitter. She went on to explain, "Where was he when they came out with Prozac? I've been using it since I married Bill! Bitter? Who, me?"

Speaking of questionable endorsements, Hillary Clinton has been endorsed by none other than the ring-leader of the vast right-wing conspiracy, conservative billionaire publisher Richard Mellon Scaife, who sank millions of dollars into the effort to keep Whitewater alive. Tomorrow Barrack Obama will charge that Clinton is unfit to be president because, "That is just so whacked."

In the latest news, upon hearing Obama say that McCain would be a better president than Bush, Clinton responded with, "We need a nominee who will take on John McCain, not cheer on John McCain." McCain responded with, "We need a nominee who is John McCain; and let me tell you, I am not bitter either." Hamas responded with, "John McCain is better than Bush, but he is no John Kennedy. We never knew John Kennedy, but, look at McCain, he is surely no John Kennedy." Hagee responded with, "John Kennedy is just what we don't need. We need a candidate that won't suck at the tits of the Great Whore. I did NOT just say John Kennedy would have sucked at the tits of the Great Whore. We need John McCain." Richard Mellon Scaife responded to that with, "Twinkle twinkle little bat."

Questions for Further Abuse

1. Turn to your neighbor on your right and explain to him or her how the identity of endorsers became more important than all other issues such as the economy, the war(s), health care, homelessness, the environment, education, racism, energy, or food prices. If you have no neighbor on your right, talk to the wall until the bell rings.

2. Compare and contrast the odiousness of endorsements from Hamas, Hagee, and Scaife. Remember, comparisons themselves are odious, so wash your hands after.

3. Obtain drug treatment if necessary. Then, when you are clean and sober, listen to Dylan's Subterranean Homesick Blues on a continuous loop for five hours. Now you're clean and sober, and nevertheless half your brain is out to lunch. See? I told you it was possible.

Don't Not Preach On!

I couldn't remember just now what I was going to write about. Then I spotted the story about Chuck Norris saying McCain's "too old to handle the pressures of being president." Chuck Norris is a spry 67 while McCain is a decrepit whole four years older, at 71.

[Left: Chuck Norris in '76, or John Edwards in '94?]

Which reminded me, I was going to talk about reasons not to not vote for presidential candidates. I don't want to tell readers how to vote, because that would be presumptuous of me. But some of the reasons I've seen given for NOT voting for certain candidates are sheer bovine doody.

That John McCain will, if elected, be a year and a half older than Reagan upon his first election, means nothing. After all, we went and re-elected Reagan when he was two and a half years older than what McCain will be. So we just have to all agree, scouts honor, to only elect McCain once.

Also his full name is John Sidney McCain The Third. Do NOT NOT vote for someone because one of his names is "The".

Let's examine a few of the other candidates now, in no particular order.

Some say Hillary Clinton shouldn't be president because she 1) screwed up that national health care initiative of hers back in '94, and because 2) she's married to Bill. Actually, 1) Congress fails to pass lots of good laws and 2) Mrs. Lincoln was Mary Todd.

Lincoln is an excellent source of counterexamples. Too tall -- Lincoln. Too inexperienced -- Lincoln. Dude slept with a man -- Lincoln.

Mitt Romney is a Mormon. While most decent Americans his age were learning how to make bongs out of tin cans and aluminum foil, Mitt Romney was speaking to Frenchmen, telling them the good news that Jesus had vacationed in America. Who cares? The important thing is, he didn't inhale.

Barack Obama has people saying he isn't black enough. Evidently, none of these people have noticed that ALL of his Democratic Party rivals are less black than he is. It makes me worry that we put too much emphasis in K-12 on the three Rs, and not enough emphasis on encouraging consciousness.

[Left: Photoshopped white enough?]

Then governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee declared 1997 a year of racial reconciliation in that state, rather than propose any significant civil rights legislation. On the other hand, as a minister, he took proactive steps to integrate his church. He is a graduate of Ouachita Baptist University. Ouachita is most likely pronounced "ouch-itta". One must look deeper to excuse oneself from voting for him.

Dennis Kucinich, a leprechaun, was the keynote speaker of a North American Street Newspaper Association conference attended by yours truly. I can vouch that he is shorter than my Grandmother, who was a genuine pixy woman. He once saw a flying thing, while at Shirley MacLaine's house, and admitted he couldn't identify it. He is more than twice the age of his hot babe wife. While mayor of Cleveland in the 70s he so offended the Mafia, they sent a hit man after him. Hey, no one's perfect.

[Above Right: Kucinich in '78, or Eric Burdon of The Animals in '64?]

Fred Thompson played D.A. Arthur Branch on Law and Order, a TV show. If he were a liberal Democrat that would be grounds for calling him just another wacko Hollywood liberal. But he's not a liberal so you can't hold that against him.

John Edwards looks like your rosy-cheeked paperboy, but people say they wouldn't vote for him because he's sued the American Red Cross three times for distributing AIDS contaminated blood. It goes to show what an "ambulance chaser" he's been. But it was his JOB to sue the American Red Cross for distributing AIDS contaminated blood. Haven't you ever done things you didn't want to do while working for The Man?

Short and quick: I haven't mentioned Guiliani, Ron Paul, Gravel, or any of more than a dozen declared third party candidates. That's NOT a reason to not vote for any of them. This column has 666 words.

[Below: The author depicted as the Beast Of Another, Unlisted, Number.]