The Smoking Gun got their hands on Dick Cheney’s tour rider. (via HuffPo)

It looks like our favorite hunter is too delicate to pick up a damn remote and change the channel himself. This rule is probably for the best though. With Cheney’s health problems and advanced age, it takes him a lot longer to trash a Presidential Suite than it used to.

I’m guessing Tom is too busy with his tour preparations to plug a certain book that’s coming out today….

Looking at the book’s page on Amazon, I noticed this slightly disturbing association :



I don’t know who would be interested in a book by a torture-loving goober like Horowitz and a book of hilarious political cartoons, but apparently there’s at least one of you out there. Since you already know how great This Modern World is, I’ll forgo the sales pitch and offer this bit of advice :

Don’t buy The Professors by David Horowitz

Seriously, it’s the same “radical professors” crap that conservatives have been whining about for years. We’ve seen this argument a million times before and it’s still as simple-minded as it was forty years ago. To conservatives like Horowitz, liberalism on college campuses is the result of political bias and intolerance for alternative views. While cherry-picked examples of political correctness run amok can certainly be strung together to support that thesis, there’s a more obvious answer that’s being overlooked by the egomaniacs on the right. When educated people disagree with you, it has nothing to do with political bias. They disagree with you because you’re wrong. If Horowitz and his peers had the slightest bit of humility, they’d take the unpopularity of their views among intellectuals as a sign that they might need to reevaluate their views. But that would require flip-flopping and we all know how wingnuts feel about that.

So now that you know which book you shouldn’t buy, lemme highlight part of what Giant Magazine had to say about Hell in a Handbasket :

It also showcases how infuriated he is with the current administration. We probably don’t need to tell you that Tomorrow’s opinions lean to the left–the book’s cover, which features President Bush, Dick Cheney and Karl Rove sporting devil horns, speaks volumes. Yet he never falls into blind partisanship. Even as Tomorrow rips into the president’s buffoonery, his political advisors’ twisting of the truth and fox news’s insulting and divisive rhetoric, he comes off not as a vengeful sour-grapes Democrat but as an articulate and thoughtful man who is genuinely concerned about the future.

Daniel Perkins has been making cartoons for over 20 years, and his work has never been sharper. This Modern World stands out as a voice of reason, pointing out the trouble we’re in and providing comfort to those who already recognize it. Who knows–maybe someday we’ll be able to look back on all of this and laugh.

So pick up Hell in a Handbasket and catch Tom next week on tour.

For those of you who watched American Idol tonight and saw somebody in the audience cheering and holding a sign with a pickle on it, that wasn’t a photo of contestant Kellie Pickler, it was Associated Press hack Nedra Pickler :

Look familiar American Idol fans? Since it’s the most popular show in the world or something, lemme point out that the graphic was originally made to highlight the fact that the press routinely gives Republicans a free pass while holding Democrats to a higher standard. Atrios in particular was all over this a couple years ago and described Pickler’s style as such :

Nit Picklering being the writing of news stories admonishing Democratic candidates for daring to not explain their own inconsistencies, as demonstrated by Nedra Pickler by the inclusion of some utterly irrelevant detail.

Matt Yglesias later expanded the Nit Picklering phenomenon into an article for the American Prospect :

Pickler, a 28-year-old Washington-based reporter who covered the auto industry before moving to the campaign beat last January, took Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) to task for telling the story of a New Hampshire couple whose water supply was rendered unsafe for drinking or showering due to the presence of a gasoline additive, MTBE, without noting that they now, in fact, had potable water from an alternate source. Was Kerry remiss? Certainly no more so than Pickler, who failed to mention that the senator’s remarks came up as he was discussing the Bush administration’s efforts to shield manufacturers of the toxic substance from lawsuits. (MTBE has a propensity for poisoning groundwater). A revised version of Pickler’s story was released on the wires the next morning, now leading with the Kerry-bashing in the first paragraph, insinuating that the senator had inflicted emotional distress on the victims of his “dishonesty.” Actual harms caused by the chemical didn’t make the cut, however.
. . .
Pickler’s tic is a source of amusement, but it also has quite serious ramifications. While most discussion of media bias focuses on elite outlets like The New York Times and The Washington Post, stories put out by The Associated Press form the backbone of national political coverage in the small- and medium-sized newspapers whose combined circulations far exceed the majors. These early campaign reports, moreover, set the larger story line that constrains later coverage of events. Once Al Gore got the “liar” label on the 2000 campaign trail, he was unable to shake it no matter how unfair the charges were or how much worse Bush’s behavior was. This is a movie we’ve all seen before, and it doesn’t have a happy ending.

And now her photoshoped mug has become a prop on the most popular show on TV. It’s fitting that the audience, producers, network, hosts, and contestants seem to be unaware that the sign that drew so much attention was a case of mistaken identity, since American Idol’s Pickler is dumber than a bag of hammers, but the original pickle sign was a humorous way to protest the media’s continual double-standard towards liberals. It would be nice for this to be used to shine a light on the talking points-recycling Pickler and her Republican-boosting colleagues. but since Idol is on Fox, don’t hold your breath waiting for Ryan Seacrest to point out the mix-up.

UPDATE : In case you thought I was mistaken, here’s a screengrab from the American Idol segment that features the Pickler :

I argee with Atrios. This isn’t as weird as Evil Bert, but WTF?!

Anybody have a good connection there? I’d like to attend, but I need some Official Sponsoring Type Group to host a signing or a talk … and apparently the large, BuyBlue-approved bookselling chain with which my new publisher works (at the Festival, I mean) isn’t interested … lord, this stuff makes me tired…

… the good thing about my situation is that the book is only a by-product of the work — whether it does well or completely tanks, I still have the weekly cartoon, the work itself … I can’t imagine what it would be like to work on a novel for several years and then go through this crap, trying desperately to attract a little notice in the short window of opportunity that you’ve got immediately after publication, before everyone loses interest entirely …

My longtime email buddy Vance Lehmkuhl won Arianna’s Contagious Festival contest. And got to hang out with John Cusack.

I almost met the latter, at a bar in Boston during the last Democratic convention, which I went to with a group that included my pal Ward Sutton and one of the Farelly Brothers (and maybe Chris and Marianne Cooper, I can’t remember if they’d bailed by that point or not). A number of people gave me very strange looks as I walked in, because, as it turned out, John Cusack was right on my heels. I’d had a few too many scotches that night and didn’t actually notice my brush with greatness. Cusack quickly disappeared into the VIP nook (does every bar have one?) which, even though I was there with my very good close personal friend One of the Farelly Brothers, was off limits to me.

… Robert Smigel got kicked out of the bar shortly thereafter because the bartender had no patience for the film crew and the whole dog puppet thing. It was a strange night…

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Patrick K. Tillman stood outside his law office here, staring intently at a yellow house across the street, just over 70 yards away. That, he recalled, is how far away his eldest son, Pat, who gave up a successful N.F.L. career to become an Army Ranger, was standing from his fellow Rangers when they shot him dead in Afghanistan almost two years ago.

“I could hit that house with a rock,” Mr. Tillman said. “You can see every last detail on that place, everything, and you’re telling me they couldn’t see Pat?”

Mr. Tillman, 51, is a grieving father who has refused to give up on his son. While fiercely shunning the public spotlight that has followed Cpl. Pat Tillman’s death, Mr. Tillman has spent untold hours considering the Army’s measurements, like the 70 yards.

He has drafted long, sometimes raw, letters to military leaders, demanding answers about the shooting. And he has studied — and challenged — Army PowerPoint presentations meant to explain how his son, who had called out his own name and waved his arms, wound up dead anyway, shot three times in the head by his own unit, which said it had mistaken him for the enemy.

“All I asked for is what happened to my son, and it has been lie after lie after lie,” said Mr. Tillman, explaining that he believed the matter should remain “between me and the military” but that he had grown too troubled to keep silent.

As the second anniversary of the death of Corporal Tillman, once a popular safety for the Arizona Cardinals, approaches, Mr. Tillman, his former wife, Mary, and other family members remain frustrated by the Army’s handling of the killing but for the first time may be close to getting some of the answers they so desperately seek.

More.

So the Daily Show turned us down.

I mean, I understand that I am pretty obscure, but honestly, they have authors on all the time who are way more obscure than me.

Oh well. I guess it makes sense. What possible interest would the audience of the Daily Show have in a long-running, nationally-syndicated, prestigious-award-winning political satirist?

There’s a rumor that Jeopardy champion and occasional guest blogger Bob Harris might make a surprise appearance at my signings in either New York or Los Angeles–or possibly both, oddly enough. Can’t be confirmed, though.

Incidentally, I’ve been reading the manuscript to Bob’s new book. I don’t think I’m supposed to say much about it, but I will say this: I think Bob is about to really hit the big time.

The book should hit stores on Thursday, and the week after that I’ll be on tour, so blogging will probably be light. In the meantime, thank you to everyone who pre-ordered so far. I’ve mentioned this several times before, but I don’t assume that everyone who visits this site memorizes every word I write, so forgive me for repeating myself: this one is important to me. This is sink-or-swim time.

After more than a decade with St. Martin’s, it was painfully clear that while they would publish the books, they were simply not ever going to put much effort into promoting them. I’m not the only person who’s ever had this experience with SMP; I saw one relatively well-known author refer to them bitterly once as “St. Tombstones”. My own editor there was perfectly willing to sign me on again, but even he agreed it would be a lot better for my career if I could find a new home somewhere else.

So I asked my agents to shop around a proposal to other houses. I guess they gave it some amount of effort, but they came back empty handed, which left me feeling pretty discouraged. However, at around the same time, I had agreed to let John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton use a panel out of context from a cartoon on the cover of their book, Weapons of Mass Distraction, as long as they published the full cartoon inside — but when I got my copy of the book, the full cartoon wasn’t there. I called up their editor with every intention of reading him the riot act, but somehow by the end of the conversation, I had a new publisher instead.

So now I’ve got people actually making a push, though I’m still a little on edge — the publicist I was working with for the past several months left the job rather abruptly, and I’m afraid something important may fall through the cracks. (When an author loses an editor, this is called being “orphaned” — I assume the same term applies here.) At any rate, the material in this book is strong. It’s good work, and I’m proud of it, and I want this book to do well — which means putting myself out there a lot more than I usually like to do. (Believe it or not, I’m generally pretty interview-shy, at least when I don’t have anything specific I’m trying to promote). As some of you will remember, the Colbert Report was initially interested in having me on, but unfortunately that fell through, for reasons unknown. (Speaking of which, I’m officially abandoning my little “fake feud” riff — I got too much email from people who thought I seriously had Colbert confused with O’Reilly.) (I shudder to imagine the email Colbert himself must receive.) The Daily Show, meanwhile, hasn’t given us a final “no” yet — you can send them a note of encouragement here, if you’re so inclined (use the drop-down menu). Who knows, maybe it’ll help. And if by any small chance I have any readers out there in a position to help me get the word out about this book to audiences that might not otherwise hear about it — i.e. reporters at daily newspapers or mainstream magazines, producers at radio or tv programs, organizers of book festivals, whatever — please, shoot me an email.

Might have a few minutes of downtime this morning. Bear with us.