Dandy New York Times op-ed columnist and alleged intellectual David Brooks took time out last week from admiring Barack Obama’s “perfectly creased pant” and bemoaning America’s disregard for his beloved educated elite class to explain the Mel Gibson mess in The Gospel of Mel Gibson. With all the pop-psychology gravitas of a Cosmopolitan sex advice column, Brooks declared Gibson the prototype narcissist, the “Valentino of all self-lovers:”

His self-love is his most precious possession. It is the holy center of all that is sacred and right. He is hypersensitive about anybody who might splatter or disregard his greatness. If someone treats him slightingly, he perceives that as a deliberate and heinous attack. If someone threatens his reputation, he regards this as an act of blasphemy. He feels justified in punishing the attacker for this moral outrage. And because he plays by different rules, and because so much is at stake, he can be uninhibited in response. Everyone gets angry when they feel their self-worth is threatened, but for the narcissist, revenge is a holy cause and a moral obligation, demanding overwhelming force.

Perhaps if Brooks weren’t so infatuated with that impeccable crease, he’d realize he just described the President.  Are all of the educated elite this dense?

“Narcissist” belongs to the “genius,” “love,” and “Nazi” category of words that have long ago lost their true meaning from overuse and misapplication (e.g., “I so love Obama because he’s like a genius who’s gonna fix all that stuff that dumb Nazi Bush messed up.”).  The prevailing view among clinical psychologists is that is that narcissistic personality disorder is rooted in self-loathing, not this precious self-love Brooks speaks of.  No matter.  Brooks’ educated elite class credentials give him the authority to use the term any way he wishes, and to diagnose Gibson based on a glimpse of the man at one of the lowest points in his life.  I wonder what penetrating insights Brooks could glean from the celebrated voicemails of Alec Baldwin and Pat O’Brien.  And was it self-love or love of underage sodomy that motivated Hollywood folk hero Roman Polanski?

At times, it seems Brooks is projecting his own self-realizations onto Gibson:

It is striking how morally righteous he is… It is striking how quickly he reverts to the vocabulary of purity and disgust… It is striking how much he seems to derive satisfaction from his own righteous indignation.

When Brooks says, “His breathing is heavy. His vocal muscles are clenched. His guttural sounds burst out like hammer blows,” I can picture a drunk, shaking, enraged, crazy-eyed Mad Max frothing into a phone receiver.  I can also picture a drunk, shaking, O-faced Brooks, dressed only in his Ginch Gonch, sitting alone in his dimly-lit living room surrounded by Zima empties watching an Obama speech on his Tivo.

With his trademark pretentiousness, the thinking man’s Anderson Cooper offers uncanny insights into Gibson’s relationship with Oksana Grigorieva:

Gibson was the great Hollywood celebrity who left his wife to link with the beautiful young acolyte. Her beauty would not only reflect well on his virility, but he would also work to mold her, Pygmalion-like, into a pop star.  After a time, she apparently grew tired of being a supporting actor in the drama of his self-magnification and tried to go her own way. This act of separation was perceived as an assault on his status and thus a venal betrayal of the true faith.

So not only is Gibson a narcissist, evidently there’s also some Christian persecution complex at play here (a subtext Brooks develops throughout the column; a piquant wink at The Passion of the Christ). Peculiar that a man like Brooks, who seems uncertain of his own personal convictions and tendencies—political, philosophical and otherwise—would assume such a cocksure position about another.

Is it conceivable that Gibson is just a drunk, bipolar, bigoted jerk being manipulated by a conniving gold digger more sophisticated than he?  His drinking problems are legendary.  He’s admitted to being diagnosed with bipolar disorder. And Grigorieva is no wilting violet whose sole purpose in life is to perform sex acts, take a punch with a smile, and give birth (like the wives of Charlie Sheen, for instance). This is not the standard-issue tabloid twit America has come to embrace. But you can’t milk an entire New York Times op-ed piece, complete with Homer reference, out of the simple explanation.

True-to-form, Brooks concludes the column with a hackneyed, partly-accurate, pseudo-lofty observation that Gibson is emblematic of “an era where self-branding is on the ascent and the culture of self-effacement is on the decline.”  You’ll notice the de rigueur educated class device of connecting the banal analysis with some indictment of society.

It’s true:  Twitter, Jersey Shore, $5 botox shots and the existence of the term “me day” may all be signs that society is devolving into some vapid, self-obsessed state of nihilism—the Hollywoodization of America. But the link to Gibson is a dubious one.  The so-called “narcissism” of Gibson’s breakdown isn’t that far removed from Miley Cyrus blogging about her own excrement, Tom Cruise publicly berating Brooke Shields over her pharmaceutical choices, and Oprah telling a national audience of millions, “my vajayjay is painin’.” The latter examples are arguably more vulgar cases of self-indulgence since those people knowingly acted in public.

Personally, I don’t fear for society because Mel Gibson yells awful things at his ex-girlfriend and is fond of racial slurs. I’m more concerned that over five million people care about Ashton Kutcher’s favorite kind of muffin and his views on immigration policy (Curious?  twitter @aplusk).  It’s this frenzied fascination with celebrities that landed a garden-variety Hollywood rage-extortion-Russian-whore story in the sublime pages of the New York Times op-ed section.  It’s what makes David Brooks tingle when he sees Barack Obama’s pants. And worst of all, it’s what put an unqualified, insignificant, marginally-competent socialist with a rock star complex in the White House.

David Brooks need not look towards Mel Gibson as a barometer of the decline of society.  He need only look at the narcissist in the mirror.

Bart characterized Obama’s first 100 days as “downright boffo,” immediately triggering in my head the question:  Which is more played-out and entirely unnecessary in Hollywood these days, the word “boffo” or Peter Bart?  

For those unfamiliar with Bart’s intellectual fortitude, let him paint the picture for you in his own words.  In June of last year, when the threat of a SAG strike loomed over Hollywood, he characterized the situation in his own particular, industry shill je ne sais quoi:

I wasn’t in Saigon before its fall or in Berlin before the Nazi clampdown, but I wonder if those cities were gripped by a similar sense of helplessness that afflicts Hollywood this week.  

Now, I’m no learned Variety editor-in-chief, but my guess would be ‘no’.  Reductio ad Hitlerum:  Nazis are the first resort of the lazy, enfeebled mind.  But it’s not mere stupidity (and lack of editorial oversight) that enables a comparison of a Hollywood labor dispute to Nazi Germany ─ it’s also an artificially elevated sense of self-importance coupled with debilitating myopia.  This is Peter Bart.  So in Bart’s boffo Obama article, we have the delightful phenomenon of one short-sighted, out-of-touch narcissist evaluating one of his own. 

Besides reading like the sort of uncritical, naive pablum one might find in a public high school newspaper op-ed piece, Bart’s meandering gobbledygook veers off-topic and (predictably) finds time to bemoan George W. Bush and FOX News.  As any astute Hollywood liberal who actually pays for a Variety subscription already knows, all of America’s problems are ultimately the fault of Bush and FOX (Nazis!!).

Some notable gems from the piece:

What has emerged from the 100 days is not confusion, but rather a clear presidential presence — one of focus and intelligence.

Actually, what has emerged is a community organizer in over his head who can’t pass gas without a cue from a teleprompter.  A “clear presidential presence” wouldn’t prance around the world to apologize for the American way of life to every crusty Euro and old world demagogue who’s willing to listen.  

And was it “focus” or “intelligence” that nominated a laughable succession of unqualified, unconfirmable, pedigreed rubes and cheats to cabinet positions without a basic vetting process?  

The Obama team has demonstrated it knows how to produce smartly staged European tours and how to meticulously manage the Obama Family Image, so that even adopting a new dog becomes a national obsession (will Mother’s Day and Father’s Day now be augmented by a Dog Day?).

Team Obama also demonstrated it can make its puppet bow down to a misogynist Saudi King; sit awkwardly while receiving an hour-long tongue lashing from Daniel Ortega; and meekly accept a book of anti-American propaganda from nominally-sane tyrant Hugo Chavez (who actually got something right when he previously called Obama a “poor ignoramus”).  

How’s this for “smartly staged” enlightened symbolism:  American citizens are scurrying in fear and horror of Air Force One while their commander-in-chief is making BFFs with a Who’s Who of oppressive, murderous, America-hating dictators.  That’s the kind of brilliant PR wizardry reserved for Chicago political machine flunkies and re-tread Clinton flacks.

I’m not sure why Bart mentioned the dog as an example of good PR, but I am sure I’ve been hanging in all the wrong circles because the “national obsession” with it completely passed me by.  The dog would have been an unassailable photo-op if His Glory actually rescued a needy animal.  But since elitists don’t deal in pound-dwelling mutts, Obama managed to piss off the animal advocate crowd by “rescuing” a purebred, pre-trained Portuguese water dog from Ted Kennedy’s personal breeder.  Among his many gifts, not only can this president manage to make Air Force One look bad, he can also villify a cute, fuzzy puppy. Not so boffo!

The presidential spinmeisters have shrewdly invited coverage from the likes of “Extra” and “Access Hollywood” and let US Magazine know that Michelle is a loyal reader while reserving for the New York Times the first glimpse of the White House vegetable garden.

So what if the stock market is tanking; the dollar is becoming the peso; the country’s credit is destroyed; the federal deficit is incomprehensible; spending is out of control; and the government is nationalizing  the banking and auto industries? We proles must rejoice because Michelle gave the New York Times a tour of her vegetable garden!

Though Nicholas Sarkosy never had a power lunch with George Clooney or served as a studio mouthpiece for a ceremonial industry newspaper, he had a much more informed, accurate and succinct evaluation of our president than Peter Bart:  “Unoriginal, unsubstantial and overrated.”  

So to summarize Peter Bart’s new math: “national obsession” over Bo the dog + Michelle showing off her garden = boffo first 100 days!  The man is more out of touch with reality than his buddy Tom Cruise’s views on post-partum depression.  He’s had his nose up the Hollywood Establishment’s ass so long there’s only one thing he can smell these days and its not the coffee.  Peter Bart is the ultimate star fucker.  In Barack Obama, he’s found his ultimate star.

At a time when reckless, lightweight, non-achieving ideologues are all the rage in American politics; when nary a meaningful accomplishment is needed to move up the political ladder; when substance takes a backseat to teleprompters and pedestrian, car salesman charms; Newsom is trying to parlay his overly-bleached smile, expensive suits and camera-ready prop wife (not pictured below) into the most visible governorship in the United States.  

The early conventional wisdom on Newsom─when first elected─was that despite the vapid pretty boy image, insiders knew he was he was going to be the next JFK, if not better.  Five years later the reviews are in: even the insiders realize that on his best day, he’s an embarrassment to vapid pretty boys everywhere. 

To date, Newsom’s greatest achievement as Mayor of San Francisco was getting re-elected in a landslide despite having repeated sex with his best friend’s/campaign manager’s wife (of course, he had to go through the motions of rehab following a Pat O’Brien style booza culpa).  Other notable accomplishments include arriving drunk to the vigil of a dying police officer; declaring a city-wide “Colt Studio Day” to honor a San Francisco-based gay porn company (there’s no such thing as too much pandering to the gay community in San Francisco politics); fellaciating a news reporter’s microphone on camera (admittedly, he may have been drunk or high on coke at the time); unilaterally ordering city agencies to issue marriage licenses to gay couples without any legal authorization to do so (he was ignoring the US Constitution before Obama made it cool to do so); offering no-questions-asked city ID cards and bank accounts to illegal aliens to help them launder save their money; appearing in the contact list of Paris Hilton’s hacked cell phone; increasing city funding of alternative lifestyle street festivals; dating a 19-year-old girl in between wives (though he honorably forced her to change her age on MySpace to 26 in anticipation of cameras catching them drinking together); and violating federal law in the name of sanctuary by failing to report illegal aliens negotiating their way through the city’s criminal justice system.  

Newsom’s reign over San Francisco reflects the tradition of City Hall legends Kwame Kilpatrick, Marion “Bitch Set Me Up” Barry, John Street and Ray Nagin─combining bad judgment, bad policies, incompetence, arrogance and corruption in creative, new ways.  The city is in disarray: bankrupt; filthy; ubiquitously potholed and cracked; and festering with drugs, homeless and illegals.  Its sanctuary-city status, touchy-feely approach to crime, and maniacal spending on social services have encouraged all matter of societal debris to migrate there in mass.  When it doesn’t smell like over-ripe trash, it smells like stale urine.  Not really what Tony Bennett had in mind.

Law and order is (sort of) maintained by an inept police department emasculated by Newsom’s fondness for illegal aliens and affirmative action.  His bizarre choice of police commissioner, Asian-American female Heather Fong (think of her as San Francisco’s version of Janet Napolitano but wimpier, less qualified and more stupid), helped him with the city’s considerable Asian and “progressive” votes, but didn’t help much with the crime rate in general or the homicide rate in particular, which reached a 13-year high under her watch.  Fong is best known for forgetting to take a required gun re-certification test and inspiring department-wide contempt and disorganization.

The SFPD recently found its way into national headlines when it was learned that a hapless undocumented worker with multiple felony convictions and at least four timeouts in San Francisco prisons had no trouble getting out and killing a man along with his two sons.  Per Newsom’s policy of progressive tolerance ─ multiple felony convictions notwithstanding ─ this unfortunate fellow was never reported to Immigration and Customs Enforcement for deportation.  

However, luckily for the SFPD, thanks to the existence of the San Francisco Municipal Transit Organization, the SFPD is not the city’s least organized and most dysfunctional agency.  Seemingly, the only thing killing more people in San Francisco than illegal aliens and common criminals is Muni busses.  But in all fairness, Newsom did ban all bottled water from city government offices to help the environment.

In a peculiar juxtaposition, while Newsom wants to capitalize on the Obama Inertia and ride his hallowed Burberry coattails into the California Governor’s Mansion, the broke, wretched San Francisco he leaves behind may well be a microcosm of the America Obama leaves behind once all of his hope/change jibber jabber has been realized. Both men stand for the same idiocy; they’re just operating at different points on their respective disaster timelines.

If there’s an upside to Gavin Newsom it’s the latest Mrs. Newsom.  This is not your father’s first lady.  Yes, she’s pretty; she knows how to smile; and she knows how to dress (putting her at least three legs up on another first lady I know).  She even comes complete with a Stanford pedigree.  But more importantly, she’s starring in a movie released last month where she engages in a three-way sex act with a Sasquatch and an alien (space, not illegal).  If there’s someone out there who’s put a Stanford MBA to better use, I’m not aware of it. Take that, Shriver!

One of Newsom’s Democratic competitors in 2010 will probably be another unaccomplished, philandering, dead-behind-the-eyes big-city mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa of Tijuana by the Sea Los Angeles.  Villaraigosa’s credentials include past membership in a Mexican street gang and changing his name mid-way through life to something more exotic (a la Barry Sotero)—the lovably ethnic Villaraigosa used to be Tony Villar, Jr. Other likely Democratic candidates include former Governor Moonbeam himself, Jerry Brown, and one-third of Capitol Hill’s NorCal half-wit trifecta, Diane Feinstein.  Clearly, not the best options… kind of like the sides menu at a county fair fish-on-a-stick stand.

At the rate Barry is debasing the Office of President of the United States, the empty suit movement should be debunked by 2010.  But as the 2008 presidential election demonstrated, the naiveté of the electorate can never be under-estimated.  If a dopey community organizer can be elected President of the United States, why couldn’t an aging, wannabe frat boy be elected Governor of California?

Last week, while Barack Obama was busy apologizing for America and lauding the laughable hokum of “Europe’s leading role in the world” in front of qualified world leaders at the G20 summit, Michelle Obama was apparently charming the unmentionables off the marveling Euros with her alleged grace and beauty. The on-going media orgasm over the first couple reached an indecently sloppy crescendo in Europe as the groupthink fiction which now passes for mainstream news bizarrely acclaimed the Obamas the new American royalty.  

In a previous article, I lamented the Obama administration’s perverting of the English lexicon to further its cultural mythology.  The president’s media confederates lovingly disgorged some of this mythology last week under the guise of summit coverage. 

In a particularly unsettling display of sycophantic idol worship, former Vanity Fair and New Yorker editor Tina Brown gushed: 

It was smart of France’s ravishing first lady, Carla Bruni, to let her husband go to the conference without her. The second Madame Sarkozy was a big wow when she visited London last March, but she’s a shrewd enough PR hand to know she would suffer in comparison to the first and only Mrs. Obama.

A simple google images search of the two first ladies reveals that one always looks like she just came off a runway, while the other… doesn’t.  To suggest that Ms. Bruni would be somehow upstaged by First-Lady-In-Training Obama is pure, uncut, Atlantic Coast hackery. 

The Washington Post’s Michael Gerson explained on NBC’s Meet the Press that he “was impressed by Michelle Obama’s grace, which is a national asset.”  In an effusive abcnews.com article comparing Michelle Obama to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, various observers are quoted saying things like “she has a fresh glamour;” “she’s very stylish, always looking amazing;” “she’s probably in the Top 10 of being best dressed, in the world.”  

Welcome to the media’s reinvention of Michelle Obama.  Evidently, Jackie O. has been reincarnated in the person of Michelle O.  This former campaign liability; this bitter, congenitally angry woman; this America-basher who needs a teleprompter to cue a forced, awkward smile is the new Jackie O.  

After this Jackie O. redux demonstrated her exalted grace by trying to manhandle the Queen of England to the horror of the slightly more decorum-conscious Brits, The Houston Chronicle tapped Syracuse University professor Bob Thompson for an explanation:

The power, the voltage of the Obama family is so great it not only can make the queen of England forget her own protocol but invite a violation of it. The whole Obama thing is like an unstoppable cultural force. Even the queen of England is all of a sudden playing footsie.

So powerful was this “voltage” that it was all the Queen could do to keep from knuckle-bumping Michelle. Indeed, it’s only a matter of time before the Obama “unstoppable cultural force” makes England the 57th state.

As for Michelle’s better half, MSNBC’s heart-smitten Chris Matthews effervesced:

He is the new us! That’s right, President Obama is in London tonight as the new emblem of the American people… We’ve got Barack Obama as our president and Michelle Obama as our First Lady. We’re all immensely proud… I thought about that scene for months, the first time they get to come as our American couple. To represent us, really in a new way. A kind of a sophisticated new leadership.

So what are the indicators of this “sophisticated new leadership”? Insulting the mentally-challenged on a late night talk show? Giving the British Prime Minister unplayable DVDs of ET and Star Wars? Suggesting Sarah Palin is a pig? Leaking information about a political rival’s peculiar sex habits to the press? Traveling with 12 teleprompters?  Attending the church services of a racist preacher for 20 years? Fear-mongering the financial markets to 12-year lows? Nominating a procession of tax cheats for cabinet positions? Filling out an NCAA tournament bracket on ESPN? Voting ‘present’? Snorting coke? 

When he wasn’t bowing down to Saudi kings, marginalizing the US, or doing to the European Union what my neighbor’s over-excited poodle sometimes does to my leg, BHO was engaged in his favorite pastime, blaming George W. Bush for stuff.  Percolating diplomatic tensions, increasing worldwide anti-American sentiment, international financial crises, etc… Bush did it.  Duh?! But now “the new emblem of the American people” will clean up the mess. 

Insulting the former regime at every available opportunity is the stuff of little men with inferiority complexes dressed in store-bought army general’s uniforms speaking to the unwashed masses from tall balconies in countries with more coconuts than pavement.  In his own, sophisticated way, our current president keeps telling us, “We won. You lost. Get used to it.”  

So this is class?  This is the new American royalty?  It seems more like the tacky overcompensation of the nouveau riche desperately trying to fit into a social stratum beyond its provincial qualifications.

The more the Obama mythology is repeated, the more it takes on the facade of authenticity.  Through outlets like this website, hopefully we can eventually transition the reality about the current administration from the politically incorrect underground to the sunshine of conventional wisdom.  

How do you say, “glorified community organizer” in Austrian?

The unveiling of OCO capped-off a terror euphemism trifecta for the administration.  Previously, the Justice Department scrapped the ghastly “enemy combatant” to describe war prisoners in favor of the much more uplifting, “detainee.”  Additionally, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano─who may be the only member of the administration more intellectually troubled than Tim Geitner─rebranded terrorism as “man-caused disaster.” (To review:  mail carrier; police officer; business person; but man-caused disaster… maybe the errant sexism has something to do with Ms. Napolitano’s romantic leanings.)  

Ever sensitive to the plight of our illegally invading friends from the south, Ms. Napolitano also refuses to use the term “illegal immigrant.” In an administration where the Secretary of Treasury is a tax cheat, it’s only fitting that the Security of Homeland Security does not wish to tarnish the image of people who illegally raid our country and pillage our resources.

Words are very important to B. Hussein Obama─they don’t describe the narrative, they structure it.  In college, he transformed himself from Barry—a hackneyed disgrace of a name befitting lounge singers and kid actors—to Barack, instantly making him exotic and interesting (a Barry snorting coke is a hapless junkie, but a Barack snorting coke is a conflicted soul seeking to open his mind, especially if he’s wearing a kente kufi hat while snorting).  During the campaign, two little, but very important, bumper-sticker and t-shirt friendly words helped solidify his candidacy.  Thanks to Hope and Change, Barry didn’t have to leak anyone’s kinky, sealed divorce papers to the media to get elected this time.

When more than one word has to be produced, Barry defers to his teleprompter to ensure rigid semantic integrity and to minimize his brain’s default proclivity of generating “uhhhhhs” and “ummmms.” In a recent speech before a requisitely awed group of business leaders, the teleprompter displayed the following gem, which The Father of the $1.2 trillion stimulus package voiced with contemplative gravitas:  “I don’t like the idea of spending more government money, nor am I interested in expanding government’s role.” The statement wasn’t followed by a “NOT!” or a “PSYCH!” or even a “FACE!” Just more contemplative gravitas.

In Barry’s bizzaro world, reality in and of itself doesn’t matter.  Words make the reality. Words matter. Teleprompters matter.  The biggest spending bill in American history never happened if Barry calls it a “stimulus.” But if it did happen, Barry never agreed to the bonuses.  But if he did agree to the bonuses, he did so unknowingly.

In the first half of the 20th century, Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf cobbled together a theory of linguistic determinism and linguistic relativity which would eventually become the unwitting foundation of the PC movement.  In a nutshell, Sapir-Whorf believed that language determines thought, not vice versa.  So call a prison a “correctional facility,” and the inmates should be so overcome by the warm fuzzies that they wouldn’t rape each other as much as when they thought they were stuck in a mere “prison.” Likewise, call welfare expansion a “tax cut” and more people will vote for you.  I doubt Barry read much Sapir/Whorf, but many of the same ideas are discussed in different terms by his favorite community organizer, Saul Alinsky, and his favorite unicorn wrangler, Karl Marx.

Marx believed words may be used to confuse and control the dolts, rubes and twits who constitute the governed.  An effective leader could introduce new words─or alternative definitions and combinations of old words─into the lexicon, and thereby induce the unlearning of old belief systems and the learning of new ones. Change the culture through words─one of the planks of the Cultural Marxist platform.  As Fred Barnes points out, BHO has already redefined “fleeting”: the quarter century of unprecedented economic growth which began in the first term of the Reagan presidency was “fleeting prosperity” according to our noble leader. “The Reagan Recovery is urban legend, my children, now don your purple Nikes and listen unto me…”

Moreover, the War on Terror was that dummy Bush.  General Secretary of the Central Committee President Obama doesn’t deal with wars or terror, he deals with contingencies and operations.  You say, “potato,” I say, “potato.” You say, “that sleeveless dress really shows off Michelle’s toned arms,” I say, “pre-menopausal hot flash relief.” You say, “sensitive language soothes the people,” I say, “social engineering through verbal eugenics.”

To distance the current administration from the words of the former administration is predictable, to do so from the words of the Founding Fathers is creepy.  Whether conscious or not, the end game of the current administration is to redefine the US Constitution in its own socialist, state-must-save-the-proles image. Now hopechange means abhorrent stimulus and bailout packages.  Soon it may mean government-run health care or restrictions on how much gas and electricity citizens can use.  The more Barry’s Obonics seep out of the teleprompter and into pop culture, the easier the administration’s task to remake America becomes.

Maybe Barry was stoned the day the English teacher pointed out that George Orwell was a warning, not a blueprint.

What's it going to take to put you in some Hope & Change today?

What was happening here? A good-n-proper reaction to the obligatorily reviled Ann Coulter? Did Sarah Palin say something unacceptably state-schooly on TV again? Did an enemy trollette deposit some right-wing talking point in an otherwise high-minded and compassionate Salon discussion thread?  Alas, something much more catastrophic had occurred: one of the flock strayed and had to be punished. 

Spunky feminist and noted Obama enthusiast Camille Paglia dared speak ill of the first seven weeks of the Obama Presidency in her most recent monthly column, and Salon’s intellectual backwash devoted readership would not stand for it. So just what did Ms. Paglia say to force these rabid jackals to cannibalize one of their own? Ironically, nothing critical about Obama himself, rather, she criticized “his flacks, fixers and goons — his posse of smirky smart alecks and provincial rubes” who led The Chosen One astray. In fact, she bent herself into a yoganidrasana to avoid criticizing Obama, “in whom [she] still [has] great hope and confidence.”

However, it seems that even critiquing the lackeys, yes-men, tax cheats, polished turds and fellow Ivy League Affirmative Action admits who now infest the White House  Best and the Brightest Part II is enough to mobilize the Hope/Change Musketeers into battle since it’s an admission that all is not rainbows, sunflowers and waterfalls in Obamatown… “just give him a chance, man, it’s only March.”

Of course, for a litany of reasons discussed on this site at length, Obama’s first two months in office have been a study in ineptitude, failure, and public embarrassment. It’s too early for an “I told you so,” but what we’re seeing now is about what one would expect if a clueless, inexperienced community organizer with socialist erogenous zones was rammed into the White House by a desperate, frothing electorate more concerned with punishing the old guy than picking the right new guy.

Ms. Paglia’s Salon article and comment section betray two strains of debilitating denial currently ravishing the Obama Left.  The more obvious case is that of the rank-and-file goose-steppers who see nothing wrong with bungling cabinet appointments to the point of absurdity; inexplicably insulting our strongest foreign ally; publicly indulging a juvenile personal vendetta against a meanie radio host; fear-mongering the Dow to 12-year lows; signing the filthiest pork bill in U.S. history without reading or writing it; lifting America’s knickers and bending over for the much more clever Vladimir Putin; closing Gitmo without an exit strategy; etc.  In the eye of the true believer, all of this is miraculous and wonderful by definition because Obama did it.  For this group, any blemish on Obama’s record is sooner the fault of George W. Bush, Sasquatch or the Illuminati than it is that of the first African-American President of the United States.

Ms. Paglia’s brand of denial is more sinister. Unlike the “Bush lied, babies died” types, she’s smart, honest and perceptive enough to identify the idiocy within the Administration itself, but can’t fathom how it may possibly be attributed to Obama. Yes, Obama surrounded himself with rubes, thugs and hacks who are now embarrassing him and the country.  But he was The One who was either too weak, too inexperienced or too stupid to select better people. Yes, “the White House [looks] like an oafish bunch of drunken frat boys,” but guess who was the Rush Chair when these lightweight dweebs pledged?  

Should it surprise anyone that the same guy who cultivated the affections of crooks, terrorists and racists while building his Chicago power base didn’t change when he moved to the White House?  You can take the community organizer out of the hood, but you can’t take the hood out of the community organizer (a statement that applies equally to the current Chief of Staff). Perhaps it’s time we add competent executive leadership to the ever-expanding laundry list of items above Barry’s pay grade.

Ms. Paglia can’t imagine how her archetypal Leader of Men can possibly screw up.  She and the tweed and Volvo crowd she hangs with could not bear the personal devastation attached to admitting the problem is with BHO himself.  Surely the American intelligentsia is much too sophisticated to be duped by pretty platitudes deftly read from pretty teleprompters by a glorified used car salesman in a hand-tailored Burberry suit.  These people are personally invested in playing the role of de facto Obama apologists.  The cognitive dissonance associated with Obama buyer’s remorse would drive them to double-up on their daily intake of martinis and Xanax.  By rationalizing his inadequacy, they vindicate themselves.  Obama isn’t incompetent, his people are.  Actually, now that I think about it, Stalin was really a pretty cool cat, the Politburo made him do it.  

Obama’s recent treatment of Gordon Brown gave us a small window into the kind of guy we’re truly dealing with: classless, offensive and tacky (odd that this also seems to describe socialism!).  This is not how presidents behave.  Unfortunately, it appears that this president’s skill set does not extend beyond campaigning.  On the job training is for Wal-Mart greeters, not American presidents.

Though Monday’s inaugural  Late Night with Jimmy Fallon seemed serviceable on paper─featuring Robert De Niro, Justin Timberlake and  Van Morrison─the jittery, sweaty, nervous and not-so-endearingly timid Fallon could not execute, making the show unbearable before the first guest ever appeared.  Of course, it’s not fair to judge Fallon based on the first show.  Keenan Ivory Wayans, Magic Johnson and Chevy Chase each had awkward late night debuts as well, and they lasted for several weeks. 

Once I sort of got beyond Fallon’s stiff, distractingly uncomfortable presence and adjusted to his 10-word-per-second delivery, I was able to make out some of the opening monologue.  Here’s the highlight:  

In California, a 16-year-old boy had sex with his 24-year-old teacher. Traumatizing. Doctors are saying it will take years of therapy just to wipe the smile off his face.

This is the kind of late-night edgy that’s supposed to get the college crowd to tune in at 12:30.  The rest of the jokes were of the Jay Leno circa writer’s strike caliber. Compounding the predictable, uninspired material was Fallon’s amateurish, dreadfully obvious reading of it.  Whatever preparation he’s had for this show, he clearly skipped teleprompter class.  It was not so long ago that our TV talk show hosts were better with teleprompters than our presidents.

In an unprecedented move, the show may have actually jumped the shark less than twenty minutes into its first episode with a segment called “Lick it for $10” ─think Monte Hall meets bad SNL writing (legendary grossly overrated Lorne Michaels is the show’s Executive Producer). Here, audience members were given $10 to lick things people would not normally lick, like a copy machine.  How’s that for hip counter-culture a la a young Dave Letterman?

Sweating, mumbling, stammering, losing his train of thought, and giggling like an awkward schoolgirl who just said “poopie,” Fallon tediously labored through his mostly-scripted interview with the personality-deficient Robert De Niro. Perhaps anticipating disaster, Fallon pre-recorded a video vignette with De Niro called “Space Train” to be inserted as comedy filler in the middle of the interview.  Though it was unfunny, dull and unacceptably embarrassing given the amount of time Fallon and his writers had to prepare and test the material, it may still be De Niro’s best performance since 1995.

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Justin Timberlake provided the show with its best moments─faint praise for a show with people licking copiers.  Confident, relaxed, and organic, he seemed much more at ease in the host’s domain than the host. The contrast between his demeanor and Fallon’s left me wondering how Fallon got the gig in the first place (and how much coke he may have been on during taping).  The best host in the building was sitting in the guest’s chair.  

After Timberlake and Fallon recycled some SNL bit they once did together, Timberlake did an impersonation of John Mayer─which I didn’t understand because I don’t acknowledge John Mayer (but the audience seemed to love it)─and Michael McDonald.  McDonald was spot on and funny, almost  as funny as the year-old Family Guy version which gave new life to Michael McDonald impersonations.  

Just when the show was building a little energy with Timberlake pushing Fallon into the background, enter Van Morrison to disappoint everyone who stayed up through 55 minutes of dreck to watch him perform. Though he was kind enough to pick Sweet Thing, a song from his exceptional 1968 Astral Weeks album, he wasn’t kind enough to remain sober prior to getting on stage.  He barely moved, slurred his words and appeared to take a brief nap in the middle of the song.  

Yes, Conan O’Brien was abysmal in the beginning as well.  But he had the excuse of very limited on-camera experience going in.  The bar is set higher for an SNL alum who, even if he can’t interview, should be more comfortable with the rest of the now well-established late-night talk show formula.  Moreover, Fallon may not have that same slack on his NBC leash that O’Brien had.  O’Brien didn’t have to compete for market share with  Facebook, Grand Theft Auto, TiVo, two more capable, established hosts in the same time slot and dozens of new cable/satellite networks.  For its part, NBC has to sell ad space in a much different economic climate today than in 1993 when O’Brien debuted.  Ultimately, the network may not have the same patience to allow Fallon to grow into the role (if he’s even capable) that it had for O’Brien.

Even Fallon’s built-in audience of gay men, sensitive metrosexuals and googly-eyed, twenty-something women is sure to quickly grow tired of the awe-shucks, self-effacing, dopey-guy-with-messy-hair shtick unless the show fundamentally improves. O’Brien at least had good writing to compensate for some of his early shortcomings.  Fallon doesn’t have that luxury.

With his trademark look of severe yet not unwelcomed constipation, his trusty acoustic guitar in hand, working class diva Bruce Springsteen kicked off Barack Obama’s We Are One Inaugural Celebration concert at the Lincoln Memorial on January 18.  Indeed, Bruce had much to celebrate.  Just a week prior he scored himself a Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song for the film The Wrestler, beating out the worthy likes of 16-year-old Miley Cyrus and Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue cover girl Beyonce Knowles.  Within the next two weeks, he’d be releasing a new album and headlining halftime festivities at Super Bowl XLIII.  Most importantly, on this grand day, he was performing in front of his latest favorite Democrat, helping to usher in a historic new era of something or other (I always forget the required tag line, I just know something is really historic).

While I have no doubt Bruce eagerly slurps up Hope, Change and every other empty, saccharine platitude Obama unloads, I can’t help but notice the marketing angle here.  Springsteen debuted Working on a Dream, the first song from the new album of the same name, at a November Obama rally.  With its vapid, generic message of hope and something or other, the song seems like the perfect musical score for the feel-good Obama Movement.  Given the current international Obama psychosis, aligning himself with The Great Man might actually sell more albums than twelve minutes at the Super Bowl, and help keep him relevant─for the moment, anyway─in a congenitally ADD culture.

Springsteen has had profitable alliances with social causes before.  In the early 90s when the luster on his flannels began to fade (remember Human Touch and Lucky Town?), Springsteen didn’t emerge from the $2-And-Under cassette bin until he discovered his heartfelt concern for the gay community in 1994’s Streets of Philadelphia.  In the 80s, when the likes of Eddie Murphy and Andrew Dice Clay were ridiculing gays before fawning, sold out arenas and very few celebrities dared taint their image by speaking up, Bruce’s energies were focused on love tunnels and dancing in the dark.  But when gays went PC, Bruce went with them.

After producing a string of embarrassing albums to close out the 90s, Bruce again found himself dangerously close to utter irrelevance.  This time he took a page out of Al Sharpton’s business plan and went after injustices in the black community.  Inspired by the case of Amadou Diallo, the Guinean immigrant who was shot at forty-one times and killed by four NYPD officers, Bruce produced the song American Skin (41 Shots) which decried the evils of racial profiling.  The fortuitous timing of the song’s release coincided with a series of shows at Madison Square Garden, the production of the Live in New York City album, and an HBO special.

If one death can sell albums, surely three thousand deaths could move some product.  Thus Springsteen weezed out his 9/11 album, The Rising, a predictable, hackneyed collection of mush expressing The Boss’s reaction to the tragedy.  In fact, so powerful was this tripe that it prompted equally predictable New York Time’s writer A.O. Scott to dub Springsteen “the poet laureate of 9/11.”  I suspect if Springsteen put out an album of belching and vomiting sounds (which he may have attempted with his The Ghost of Tom Joad effort), music critics would hail it as majestic and revolutionary. The Cult of Springsteen and the mythology of his greatness have never waned in the mainstream media.  Sounds like a glorified community organizer I know.

TheSmokingGun.com took a bite out of Springsteen’s blue collar, common man’s common man branding when it published a concert rider from his 2002-2003 world tour.  With its strict Beluga caviar and linen tablecloth requirements, the 22-page document made Springsteen look more like Diana Ross than Arlo Guthrie on the blue collar-to-diva continuum.  The common man’s saxophone player, Clarence Clemons, required a whole roast chicken delivered to his dressing room in the middle of each show.  That sax solo in Jungleland must make a man hungry.

Springsteen’s approximately 12 minutes at the Super Bowl will be very expensive ones, presumably too expensive to allow him time to curse the Vietnam War or extol the Glory of The Obama.  With NBC charging $3 million for 30 seconds of advertising, Springsteen’s extended commercial is worth over $70 million.  That should limit him to pimping just his art, not his politics. Though Springsteen isn’t releasing his set-list before the show, the 2000 extras making up his on-field audience who have been rehearsing their excitement and passionate fist pumps at a Tampa Bay high school may have some idea what’s in store February 1.  Hopefully they’ve been pumping Born to Run, not Working on a Dream.

After the requisite Obama orgasm, the voice, belonging to show host Richard Greene, explained that this show was the West Coast launch of something called Hollywood Clout, a forum for Hollywood celebrities to use their influence on the radio to “celebrate the New America” (translation: to peddle the predicable, de rigueur political agenda of mainstream Hollywood). Finally! Where has this Richard Greene, this visionary pioneer, been all this time?! At last, refuge for displaced, left-leaning celebs to speak their mind! Free at last. Free at last… and so forth.  The inaugural celebrity of the inaugural West Coast show was announced as Daphne Zuniga, former Melrose Place tart and occasional Gavin Newsom plaything.  I switched to sports talk.

This was Air America, or whatever carrion remains these days following the October 2006 bankruptcy filing of the leftist radio network.  Like most people who were ever aware of Air America in the first place—and there weren’t many—I long ago forgot about its existence.   Evidently it’s back… or it never left… or whatever.  Following reorganization, downsizing and a change of ownership, from the ashes of Air America Radio has risen the glorious house fly of Air America Media. Now it’s Media, not Radio… Get it?

This second generation Air America has been moping around national airwaves for nearly two years, serving up programming piecemeal to its mish-mash of lowly, ratings-deprived affiliates (including Phil Hendrie’s new LA home, KTLK AM 1150).   I gathered from my brief, unintended exposure that the network’s new, image-defining buzzword is progressive.  This is not a network of bitter, enraged liberals prattling on about stolen elections and missing WMDs.  This is a network of empowered, high-minded progressives prattling on about stolen elections and missing WMDs. Same pig, different lipstick.

On this night, Richard Greene wasn’t just progressive, he was giddy—giddier than even Keith Olbermann when he first heard Tim Russert was dead.  For this was more than simply the launch of  Hollywood Clout West, this was the beginning of a week-long pre-party leading up to the Inauguration of The Great Man, and the concurrent tacit validation of the network’s existence.  The operating theory, as I gleaned from Mr. Greene, seems to be that Obama will be the defibrillator the sinking network has long sought, and Air America will ride his Apollonian coattails into relevance.   With Obama finally in office, Air America can reposition itself as a community of love for Obama, instead of bile for George Bush, then reap the succulent fruit of the Obama tree.  Sounds good on paper, why not? This isn’t your father’s Air America.  This is Air America 2.0.

This brings me to the most interesting aspect of Air America (yes, there is one):  its catastrophic failure. As far as I’m aware, an adequate, satisfying postmortem on the first incarnation of Air America has yet to be produced. How did this liberal wet dream become such a nightmare? Democrats are the ruling class of Hollywood and the mainstream media. What was so tricky about radio that they couldn’t figure out?  They entered the market with a daunting war chest and a comprehensive national marketing campaign in the form of gushing, buttery media coverage, but still flamed out. Why couldn’t they simply apply all of the lessons learned over the years from selling bad movies, bad TV and bad acting into selling bad radio? Selling is selling, right? Ultimately, the product should be irrelevant. Certainly it must be more difficult to convince the moving-going public that Ben Affleck isn’t a talentless hack but a viable leading man worthy of a $14 ticket than it is to convince a radio audience that Janeane Garofalo can make you hate George Bush even more, and at no charge.

So what happened? One leading theory blames Air America’s ill-conceived top-down marketing strategy. Instead of doing the whole populist, grass-roots thing and building an audience from the ground up, Air America used its bloated coffers to ram its way into the big, coveted markets and simply assumed people would listen. A fortune was spent on market entry, but then the product—completely untested—couldn’t deliver. Air America bought the best hooker in town but forgot all about the Viagra.

Here the situation gets murky. What made the product so useless? Perhaps there never was a place for new liberal talk radio to begin with because that function was already served by NPR and complemented by the mainstream media? Maybe the Bush-bad-Bush-dumb-Bush-kill mantra 24/7 became tedious too quickly? Maybe heavy-handed urban elitism doesn’t appeal to Middle America, liberal or otherwise? Perhaps the problem was the talent chosen to deliver the message? “Uninteresting, un-engaging, whiny, shrill and didactic with little to no prior radio experience” were probably not the best job requirements in retrospect.  Could the problem have been with the audience? Surely liberal listeners are too full of sunshine, rainbows and hope to sully themselves with the vitriol inherent to partisan talk radio the way conservative listeners do? Or, maybe the problem was a more practical one – a message consistently chastising corporations and the institutions of capitalism might have frightened off major advertisers, hampering the network’s long-term sustainability?

Fortunately for Air America, it may never have to figure out precisely what went wrong. The marriage of the new President to the new Congress could spawn a return to the Fairness Doctrine, sparing Air America the indignity of having to produce a desirable, market-worthy product. After all, what’s our government for if not bailing out incompetence and propping up failed business ventures at taxpayer expense?

For now, Air America will be drunk on Obama and enjoy a spiritual renaissance.  Whether or not this translates into a palpably different product remains to be seen.  Likewise, there is no real evidence to suggest that a shift from the “Bush lied, babies died” model to an Obama worship paradigm will prove economically effective.  Despite their profound efforts to parrot conservative talk radio, liberals never understood what actually made it work.  My guess is they still don’t understand.  That knowledge-gap, new administration or not, will keep Air America a wretched, un-listenable mess relegated to the squalid fringe of AM radio.

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