Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Liar, Liar...World on Fire

By Paul

I picked on President Bush last week. Let's turn now to Deadeye Dick Cheney. A person's s own words are often most damning.

"I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency." Vice President Cheney, June 20, 2005.

Asked 365 days later (June 19, 2006), if he still believed the insurgency was in its "last throes," Cheney told Bloomberg News' Holly Rosenkrantz, "I do."

All this is in keeping with the Vice President's canny knack for predicting the future. "My belief is we will, in fact, be greeted at liberators." (March 16,2003)

And who could fail to appreciate the future Veep's irony when asked about his five draft deferments during the Vietnam War? "I had other priorities in the sixties than military service." (April 5, 1989) Right. Not having his ass shot off.


Especially the commercials.

Tuned into the last ten minutes of "Good Morning America" yesterday. Here's what they lobbed at me, back-to-back.

-- Kirstie Alley urging me to slim down the Jenny Craig way.

-- Stanley Steamer offering to clean my carpets of dog poop and cat vomit.

-- Seemingly endless spiel for Blue Shield, helpful if I slip and fall in the dog poop or cat vomit.

-- GMA promo for February shows featuring "Love." February is sweeps month and the time of that truly newsworthy event, Valentine's Day.

-- One minute of kitbitzing on the set, with a nod to Dr. Martin Luther King Day.

-- Commercial for a horse show in Orange County.

-- Audi pitch, in the event I don't want to ride horses.

-- Breathe Right nasal strips commercial, perhaps allowing me to better smell the fine leather interior of the Audi.

-- Greenlight Financial commercial offering to re-finance my mortgage now that my house has clean carpets and a new car in the garage.

-- Dexetrin weight loss commercial in case Kirstie Alley's Jenny Craig system failed me. (Television, it seems, is not so much a "vast wasteland" as a vast waist land."

-- Selsun Blue anti-dandruff shampoo, because after losing all the weight, I'm going to wear fashionable black to Whisky A-Go-Go on Sunset Blvd.

-- Back to the GMA set for 10 seconds of chit-chat, brought to you by Lean Cuisine to keep that fit physique.

-- Teaser for a romantic Lifetime movie, excellent choice for a slim, dandruff-free, Audi-driving, clean-carpeted, health-insured, clear-breathing, refinanced moron who has not yet screamed obscenities at the TV screen.

-- Back to the set, where they toss to a brief segment of local news, to be followed by the Regis and Somebody Show.

Excuse me, I have to take something for this crushing headache and profound sense of depression. I feel so lousy, even Saddam Hussein's half-brother is doing better than me.

By Paul


  1. I will only say that although I find George W. so horrible that I can not stand to see or hear him speak, Dick Cheney brings out an anger so intense that I can feel my head about to blow off! Have you ever noticed that they both adopt an air of bemused tolerance (often accompanied by the "chuckle", oh, how I hate the "chuckle") whenever they are questioned about the many lies and inconsistencies in their statements? Just seeing his picture makes me mad.

  2. If you live in the Detroit area recently you also get the local newscasts spending 18 out of their 20 minutes of airtime covering the Detroit Auto Show. My oldest son walked by and says, "Why do they cover the Auto Show like it's news?"

    "Because the local news is a shill for the auto companies."

    As for Old Spotted Dick, every time he says something I'm reminded of "The Princess Bride" where the guy keeps saying, "That's inconceivable!" And finally the Mandy Patinkin character says, "You know, I'm not sure you're using that word correctly."

    Maybe Ol'-Come-Quail-Hunting-With-Me-Dick is confusing "woes" with "throes" or "toes" or "joes" or...

    Mark Terry

  3. Mark,
    There's another Mandy Paninkin line from "The Princess Bride" that might be appropriately aimed toward the Vice President. "My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die."

  4. This is just too easy.....finding comic fodder with lame ducks like "sure shot" Dick Chaney (who's befitting the name "Tricky Dick" ---if that name hadn't already been taken) and commercials on TV.

    Even another stellar braintrust,VP Dan Quayle seems like a Rhodes Scholar compared to Cheney.Say what you will about Quayle's intellect, he never claimed to be a psychic.

    Alas, commercialism doesn't stop with TV, though. Everywhere there's billboards marketing what I should wear, the perfume I should use, the best gym in town, where I should and what I should eat, and anything else that is for sale. Despite all the Spam blockers, I get emails about plastic surgery or refinancing my house, or refinancing my plastic surgery.

    Yes, even those corporate giants like ABC have to "keep the lights on." So they encourage people to hawk all kinds of stuff, even noxious urgings to run out and purchase a tripe Bantam House paperback.
    However,your disdain for TV seems to be attenuated insofar as you choose to watch TV, and GMA in particular, to begin with. Paul, though you're as depressed as Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti [and there may be numerous reason for you feeling so], don't lose your head.......your headache can be cured by HEAD ON.....applied directly to the forehead.

  5. Pam, I agree. Those condescending smirky smiles are an insult to the intelligence of the American people or any people for that matter.

    And Paul I laughed out loud at your commercial woes. I couldn't agree more. It's crazy-making to have to sit through all of them before you get to watch the program, which seems like 15 long. The other thing I hate is when a news program plays a ten-second bit of video back-to-back, over and over. Like we don't notice that it's the same footage?

  6. Just think, Deadeye Dick has a tricky ticker. We can hope...we can hope. What an ass he is. Still, I meet morons who still "support" him and his boss. The ads on ABC. Yep. All fear-driven if you look at the pattern-*food*look better*diet*medical care(for when the first three fail). Consume, spend or die. That's what they do.

  7. Well, I don't watch TV that much except the news - I make smart ass comments and take after my Dad, by sometimes yelling at it. An author friend has to remove all potential missiles from the sofa area when his wife watches the news and the top two twits are on the tube.

    Mind you, I do get a bit shirty when there are way too many ad-breaks during the last five minutes of a new Doctor Who episode I haven't watched. Oh, and the only time I watch morning TV is at the gym, and the sound is turned down - I make up my own captions or smirk at the body language. :-)

    Great post, Paul. Loved the run down on the ads. Life is too short to list the shortcomings of the twits in residence in the big white house. Besides, there are probably some people on here who actually like them, and I really don't like to offend. :-D

    Gotta go paint. Gack, how do you guys keep up with writing a heavy wordload each day? It's gruelling doing the painting equivalent. Sigh.


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  9. Every four years, Americans get to decide the leader and deputy leader of the world. The rest of us have to put up with your decision!

  10. I get my kicks from C-Span these days. It's easier on the mind.

    Otherwise, I, too, would be watching those TV commercials that used to provide my income. My favorite these days is the one for Restless Leg Syndrome. Huh?

    If as many Americans had this dreaded made-up disease as the amount of advertising justified, we'd all be twitching and dancing like zombies.

  11. from Jacqueline

    OK, late on the block today (been writing - funny, that). Cheney - oh, he just gives me the creeps. I look at that man and wonder whether I'm in the midst of a horror movie - well, yes, that's war, only I'm not in the middle of it, and sadly, those that are were put there by a man who protected his tail right, left, and center during Vietnam. Cheney is one of the horsemen of the apocalypse as far as I'm concerned - the others being Bush, Rummy and Rove.

    The only TV I watch is the BBC news, and even that's having its weird moments lately (that Beckham thing), but at least I don't have to watch endless commercials featuring grilled runny cheese; SUV's that are too big even to hold the grilled-cheese filled people; Depends or - yes, you've got it - the diet acceleration pills, and gastric reflux drugs.

    I have to say, what I like about BBC America, is that the journos who anchor the news really aren't shy about asking the tough questions of their politician interviewees - I just love it when Katty Kay says, "Well, that's all very well, but don't you think ...." and you know she's about to slide a knife, very sweetly, into someone's jugular.

    Thanks, Paul, as always.

  12. And now comes a convicted liar (Scooter Libby) who is the right hand man of the high holy liar of this administration. But not to worry the truth still won't come out, Scooter will be pardoned at some point, if he isn't Dick would have to worry that Scooter might regain his memory.