Client 9

As the whole world knows now, New York Governor Eliot Spitzer got himself caught shipping a hooker from New York to DC last month. Whoops.

The much-heralded former Attorney General was elected about a year ago with a mandate to "clean up Albany." Unfortunately, Eliot interpreted "cleaning up Albany" as "fucking whores."

Eliot is a member of the Democratic Party (and endorser of Hillary Clinton--irrelevant point!) and, as I'm sure you can imagine, I usually find this to be a lot funnier when an anti-gay Republican gets caught having a tryst with a go-go boy.

But you know, this is pretty good stuff, too. I mean, Eliot was absolutely disgusted when he broke up a prostitute ring as A.G. a few years ago. So yes, dear B&E readers, Democrats can have their tawdry tales come to light, too. And when they do, they give us gems like this:

I have acted in a way that violates my obligations to my family and violates my, or any, sense of right and wrong.

What's he talking about? I don't get it. He didn't violate his family or a sense of right and wrong. It sounds to me like he violated a whore.

I sure wouldn't hold it against Mrs. Spitzer if she decided to John-McCain the New York Governor, who will now be referred to only as Client 9.

Hey, God! It's Me! Jerry!

I can't think of anyone God would be less happy to see than Jerry Falwell.

The Passion For The Blood

On my way to work the other day, I passed a bus that was still promoting the Christmas-appropriate movie, The Nativity Story. Naturally, this got me thinking about Christians.

Through letter-writing campaigns, right-wing media mouthpieces, and the like, Christians put a lot of pressure on liberal Hollywood to make more entertainments that are "family friendly" and "pro-Christian." One would think that The Nativity Story really fits the bill. It's a faithful presentation of the birth of Jesus. For those of you who may not know, it is Jesus Christ (or more simply, The Christ) that gives Christianity its name.

According to my extensive research (at boxofficemojo.com), The Nativity Story brought in a whopping $45,629,831. With its production budget of $35,000,000, one has to assume that New Line was hoping it would perform better than that.

Then there's Mel Gibson's The Passion Of The Christ. With its production budget of $30,000,000, it brought in a walloping $611,899,420. One has to assume that Newmarket was pleased enough to hand out some healthy bonuses at the end of 2004.

Families with children of all ages could enjoy The Nativity Story with its family-friendly PG rating. The Passion Of The Christ was handed an adults-oriented R rating.

The two movies portray two of the three most significant events of Christianity - Jesus' birth and death. Christians still need to wait for a new movie to show the resurrection of Jesus.

So what gives, Christians? Why so keen on the death of Jesus, and not so much on the birth?

Could it be the blood lust of the right-wing?

Naaaaah... Couldn't be.

No Longer Gay!

He may have been busted doing meth and getting massages from gay prostitutes, but after a stint in gay rehab (gayhab?), Ted Haggart is no longer gay.

No longer will Ted Haggart fantasize about freebasing crank out of broken light bulbs while getting rubdowns from nubile men.

No more will Ted Haggart think about meth-fueled men while having sex with his wife.

Never again will Ted Haggart be aroused at the thought of a sweaty, speed-induced tryst with a firm-buttocked hunk of the male persuasion.

That's right. Ted Haggart is a straight man. He's only interested in his wife.

And vast quantities of crystal meth.

The Joke's On Us

Mega-church pastor Ted Haggard has allegedly been paying a man to have sex with him monthly for almost three years. During the trysts, he's also apparently been snorting crank to heighten the experience.

So, you see, when "I Like My Men In A" Teddy Haggard preaches hate toward the queers, he's really just being satirical, exposing the hypocrisy and bigotry in others. Like Borat.

Abbreviated

The Mets win, and as exciting as it is that they've bounced back to force a game 7, I'm having a hard time handling the stress. I've become a heroin addict.

The New York Times ran an article yesterday I really wanted to comment upon. It was about how Dick Cheney feels the love when he travels to the midwest. The six-year-old who was obsessed with Dick Cheney ("I just like him! I really do!") was, naturally, from my hometown of Topeka, Kansas. There's a Lesson from Kansas there somewhere, but I don't have the time to figure it out. Seems like a scary fucking lesson, though.

Potential recent Dickheads might have included Mark "I'm gay! No, I'm a drunk! Wait, I was abused!" Foley; Bob "I Need the Salary to Pay My Legal Bills and Refuse to Resign" Ney; the Fox baseball commentator tag team of Thom Brennaman and Steve Lyons, who spent a minute making fun of a blind man sitting in the stands (Steve has also gotten canned for implying that Lou Piniella stole his wallet because he speaks Spanish, a racial slur I'm not even sure I get); Representative John Sweeney of New York, who may have gotten some travel paid for by Jack Abramoff (good luck with your re-election campaign, buddy); and Bill O'Reilly, who has apparently become addicted to his crazy pills, most recently claiming that a mother's life is never in danger due to complications during pregnancy. Dickheads all.

Dude, I gotta get ready for work!

Meat & Potatoes

meat and potatoes
Originally uploaded by dangunderman.

Meat is good. Potatoes are good. But if they're all you eat, they'll kill you.

Rick Santorum might want to keep this in mind as he runs for re-election to the Senate. In an article in the The New York Times, Tricky Rick is quoted twice comparing himself to meat & potatoes.

What does Tricky Rick consider his meat & potatoes these days? The softer side of his bigotry. On the campaign trail he's handing out a flyer called "50 Things You May Not Know About Rick Santorum." Number 2 is his support for colon cancer screenings, and Number 4 highlights his work with Bono to eliminate world poverty. I rooted around for a few more of the fifty things, but Rick's own campaign website doesn't include the complete list. So unless we get the flyer itself, we may never know those 50 Things.

But, come on, Tricky Rick. Do these 50 Things really add up to be your meat & potatoes? They're more like the bovine growth hormone in your beef. The genetic modification of your potatoes. Maybe -- just maybe -- those two little carrots offering some vitamin A on top of your meat & potatoes.

Sorry, Tricky Rick. Your meat is the money -- heading up K Street lobbying efforts and getting into bed with the corporate interests -- and your potatoes are the hates -- hating the queers, hating the immigrants, hating the women's rights, hating the liberal media.

Your meat & potatoes will kill you come election time, Senator Santorum, as they certainly should. Even if your opponent is the worst kind of feckless Democrat. But that's a posting for another time.

Worst Christians Ever

commandments
Originally uploaded by dangunderman.

Right-wingers love to put up the Ten Commandments anywhere that's public. I sometimes wonder how many of them have them up in their homes. Is that something you can get a warrant to find out?

Well, I'll grab any chance to highlight hypocrisy in these terrible Christians, and here are two lovely demonstrations:

On The Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert was doing his regular feature, "Better Know a District," interviewing Lynn Westmoreland from Georgia's 8th District. Lynn co-sponsored a bill to put the Ten Commandments up in the House of Representatives. The two videos about Georgia's 8th show Colbert nailing the hypocrite. It's a good time.

For a Commandment-by-Commandment approach demonstrating the terribleness of these right-wing Christians, the ever-reliable Nation magazine shows how Supreme Christian Leader George W. Bush and his Christian Cohorts of the Right have broken every single one of the ten, while piously pronouncing and touting their acceptance of Jesus as their Personal Savior.

I'm doing a better job living by the rule of the Ten Commandments, and I'm a godless heathen, for crying out loud. Get with it, Christians. You're making Jesus cry.

Shame On... Representative Berman

berman
Originally uploaded by dangunderman.

So there was all this financial disclosure by the US Congress today. Our country is run by a group of rich pricks. Shocking.

One of the choicest cuts of financial reporting meat comes out of the House Ethics Committee. They took nearly $1 million in privately-sponsored travel. And Democrats on the committee got a much bigger piece of the travel pie.

Representative Howard Berman, Democrat from California, led the pack, with $245,000 worth of free travel. Where in the fuck is he going? And how in the fuck is he getting there?

Shame on you, Representative Howard Berman. You're setting a bad ethical example. And shame on Gene Green, Democrat of Texas ($198,000 of free travel). And shame on Stephanie Tubbs Jones, Democrat of Ohio ($130,000). And shame on Mike Doyle, Democrat of Pennsylvania ($95,000). Berman, Green, Jones, and Doyle make up the top four House Ethics Committee travelers.

Shame on you. Shame.

[Thanks for sharing the link, HuffPo.]

6,000 Copies of Pure Gold, Baby!

mary cheney
Originally uploaded by dangunderman.

Some of you may know that Dick Cheney's daughter Mary is a lesbian. If you didn't already know it, John Kerry outted her during a presidential debate in '04, in what was a spectacularly awkward moment. Kerry's delivery of the word "lesbian"? Hilarious.

Anyway, Simon and Schuster paid Mary Cheney a one-million-dollar advance to write a memoir. In the month since it's been published, it has sold a whopping 6,000 copies. If Simon and Schuster was charging $166.67 per copy it would've almost broken even. Except, of course, shipping costs and overhead. Unfortunately, it's being sold for about fifteen bucks at Amazon. Whoops.

But what did they expect? I mean, seriously. Right-wing Cheney fans think Mary's burning in hell for her unholy acts of animalistic hedonism, and left-wing lesbian fans resent her lack of self-respect for campaigning for a bunch of war-mongering gay bashers. In other words, no one wants to buy this book.

So I want to know how many of those 6,000 copies sold were purchased by Dick and Lynne as gifts to friends and family. Maybe they're giving them away as no-bid contract perks to Halliburton!