Sunday, February 03, 2002

Yes, Al, you wuz robbed.  Robbed by a hate-crazed, ruthless Republican machine willing to stage a riot to intimidate ballot-counters; robbed by the Supreme Court's pretzel logic; robbed by a media so panicked by the phony "liberal bias" charge that it turned your every misspeak into a "habitual liar" story, while Fox and other right-wing media filled the air with habitual lies (no, you never said you invented the Internet; no, you never said you were the model for Love Story); robbed by expectations spun so low that your opponent was deemed presidential merely for not showing up drunk and incoherent; robbed by Ralph Nader's egomania; and robbed by Bill Clinton, the most gifted politician in a generation, who defined the legacy he so cares about by setting progressive politics and the environment back 10 years because he couldn't keep his goddamned zipper shut.  I can hardly imagine the superhuman control it must take to contain your outrage, waking up every day knowing you won the election. But you know what, Al?  You choked.  The easy layups you missed?  Your fault.  The match-point winners you tensed up and hit out of bounds?  Your mistake.  The clumsily, transparently different strategies and makeup artists you tried in each debate?  Your call.  It's not fair, Al; it sucks; it's like the lifelong honorable statesman Thomas Dewey being immortalized as a chump because one society dame quipped, "He looks like the little man on the wedding cake."  But it happened, and you've got more baggage than Marley's Ghost, and you can't win again; you can only get the nomination if the party decides to write off the White House till 2008. I hope someday to shake your hand, sir.  But I hope you don't run; I hope you spend 2004 slamming the Republicans and earning admiration as the loyal Drew Bledsoe to your party's Tom Brady.  Go Patriots. 4:04:27 PM    commentplace ()

Happy, happy birthday and get well soon to Fluffy Battle Kitten, whose Weblog I just know I'll be reading some night when my wife looks over my shoulder and sees the IE title bar saying "PUSSY! PUSSY! PUSSY!" And slack-jawed surprise and thanks to Burningbird for adding the world's lowest-priority Weblog to her Plutonian referer links.  This is an amazing honor for a newbie from the queen of the Weblog world (and sanest voice in its most squalid storm, which thankfully seems likely to flame out soon — I agree, this community is far too intelligent not to realize that basically well-meaning, even if sometimes noticeable, ego is more constructive than solely spiteful, venomous evil.  And these bloggers think they've seen big egos?  Wait till they get a load of me.). 2:48:00 PM    commentplace ()