Category: Uncategorized

Bob Fertik has a very good question for Peter Osnos, publisher of the book by Scott McClellan set to come out next year.

The online version of the cartoon is here. (I know, it’s a bit hard to read, not sure why they posted it at that size.)

UPDATE: Watch Keith Olbermann read the strip, here.

My editor at the Voice asked me to do a piece on O’Reilly awhile back, but it proved to be more challenging than I expected. The man’s been satirized to death — there’s a nightly tv show devoted to mocking him, for chrissakes. But after reading an advance copy of his new book for kids, I realized that all I had to do was channel the awkward old-guy-relating-to-the-young-people tone he, or more likely his “co-author,” employed, and everything clicked into place.

(In case any O’Reilly fans are befuddled by the recurrent references to loofahs and falafels, I feel compelled to post a link to Andrea Mackris’ sexual harassment lawsuit.)

(Also, h/t to these guys, who have written the definitive book on O’Reilly, and who have a timely new book on Republican sex scandals.)

Sometimes I feel like the entire Ron Paul grassroots movement was specifically designed to make me laugh my ass off. I know his supporters are sincere in their love of Ron Paul (even if I think they’re fools for supporting the loon), but some of the publicity stunts these guys come up with are almost like a Paddy Chayefsky-esque satire of ineffective activist naivete.

A blimp? A blimp!

Imagine.. the mainstream media is mesmerized as the image of the Ron Paul blimp is shown to tens of millions of Americans throughout the day (and throughout the month). Wolf Blizter, stunned and as if in a trance, repeats the words “Amazing, Amazing”.

As GPS co-ordinates stream to the website a map shows the Ron Paul blimp’s location in real time. The local Television stations broadcast its every move. The curious flock together and make a trip to see history in the making. Emails with pictures are sent, then forwarded, then forwarded again. Youtube videos go viral and reach tens of millions of views. Ron Paul becomes the first presidential candidate in history to have his very own blimp. The PR stunt generates millions upon millions of dollars worth in free publicity, and captures the imagination of America.

Please join us in our goal to raise $350,000 to make and fly the first ever Presidential Blimp in history.

What planet are these guys from? In 2007, do people descend into a state of reverent awe whenever they see a large gray cylinder flying in the sky? Call my a cynic, I really doubt that the entire nation would collectively pause with wonder to follow the journey of a rented blimp.

Do they really want to invite the obvious joke here?

Finally, am I the only one that finds it ironic that the supporters of Ron Paul, the ultra-libertarian who votes against every bit of government spending he can, want to throw away more than a quarter million dollars so people can look into the air and say “Oh, hey. Is that the Goodyear blimp?”

UPDATE : It gets better. Not only are they wasting money, but this image posted on the official Ron Paul blimp site takes pride in the fact that they’re “dumping” the cash into a ridiculous stunt to hype their next money bombing :

So they’re comparing donating to Ron Paul’s campaign to dumping a bunch of tea in Boston Harbor? If you think giving your money to Ron Paul and his magical blimp is a good idea, you might be better off just throwing your money into the harbor instead.

UPDATE from Tom: pulling the backwards “LOVE” out of the word “REVOLUTION” is an especially nice touch.

Tomorrow’s Voice has another little surprise. I’ll post a link when it goes online. For now, let’s just say it’s one of the reasons blogging has been even more sporadic than usual over the past month or so.

Fairly stunning story on Giuliani just went up on the Village Voice site:

Three weeks after 9/11, when the roar of fighter jets still haunted the city’s skyline, the emir of gas-rich Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifah al-Thani, toured Ground Zero. Although a member of the emir’s own royal family had harbored the man who would later be identified as the mastermind of the attack—a man named Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, often referred to in intelligence circles by his initials, KSM—al-Thani rushed to New York in its aftermath, offering to make a $3 million donation, principally to the families of its victims. Rudy Giuliani, apparently unaware of what the FBI and CIA had long known about Qatari links to Al Qaeda, appeared on CNN with al-Thani that night and vouched for the emir when Larry King asked the mayor: “You are a friend of his, are you not?”

* * *
In retrospect, Giuliani’s embrace of the emir appears peculiar. But it was only a sign of bigger things to come: the launching of a cozy business relationship with terrorist-tolerant Qatar that is inconsistent with the core message of Giuliani’s current presidential campaign, namely that his experience and toughness uniquely equip him to protect America from what he tauntingly calls “Islamic terrorists”—an enemy that he always portrays himself as ready to confront, and the Democrats as ready to accommodate.

The contradictory and stunning reality is that Giuliani Partners, the consulting company that has made Giuliani rich, feasts at the Qatar trough, doing business with the ministry run by the very member of the royal family identified in news and government reports as having concealed KSM—the terrorist mastermind who wired funds from Qatar to his nephew Ramzi Yousef prior to the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and who also sold the idea of a plane attack on the towers to Osama bin Laden—on his Qatar farm in the mid-1990s.

More.