Joe-the-Jackass, Update

No. No they did not. No one told Joe that his 15 minutes were up. No one told him that he needed to go home, pay his taxes and do something about the fact that he is not a licensed plumber. Nor did they remind him that he is not a foreign--or domestic--policy expert, either.

Rather, someone convinced him that his was an excellent story. That he should write a book. That he should say he was going with a small publishing house out of the goodness of his heart and not because the medium, larger and probably most of the smaller houses, are still laughing at the very idea.

Joe emerged from obscurity during the middle of the third presidential debate, on October 15, 2008. His book is going to be released December 1. Yes, that's December 1 of 2008. Apparently Joe and his publisher are putting as much effort into the writing, fact checking and editing as the McCain campaign put into vetting the Palin and Joe himself.

I wish I could say that it would flop; that it would hit the remainders table ten minutes after it reached the stores. But other than the absolute right guy being elected, nothing seems to makes sense this year. So all I can do is applaud any and every publishing house who turned them down and weep with shame for the one who didn't.

Random Shout and Question of the Week

If I see one more pundit pull out their list of probable candidates for 2012 I am going to throw something.

Given the likelihood that a boot will, in fact, be smacked into a talking head, is the television covered by homeowners' insurance?

Random Question of the Week

When will Joe the Unlicensed Plumber reach the end of his 15 minutes? Or will we have to keep hearing from this uninformed jackass through November 5, when he's called upon to offer his "analysis" of the republican implosion?

How Do You Respond to Utter Stupidity?

I spent a good bit of the day trying to write a post about the Michael-Savage-on-autism idiocy, otherwise known as "Look! Someone need to boost his ratings again!"* I didn't get very far because I couldn't come up with a clever way to bitch-slap him into next Wednesday. Not that I would ever do that. Ahem. So I checked with a much wiser friend who reminded me that I shouldn't add to his link pile and that he didn't deserve the effort anyway.

Fortunately, Gene Weingarten*, the Washington Post's resident funnyman, had already come up with the perfect response:

"Do you remember Michael Savage, the poisonous right-wing radio talk show host whom I reported about in my piece on 24-hour punditry? Michael is back in the news for expressing the opinion, on the air, that "99 percent" of all children diagnosed with autism are "brats" who haven't been told to "cut the act out." He said: "They don't have a father around to tell them, 'Don't act like a moron. You'll get nowhere in life.'"

Savage is not retracting this, even though he admits it might be a little wrong. And I don't blame him. Getting things a little wrong is okay. I remain a supporter of Michael Savage, because I am a fan of his column "Savage Love," in which he deals forthrightly with the fact that he is gay and proud of it, and joyfully gives out highly knowledgeable advice on techniques for active, hedonistic, sexually adventuresome gay males like himself. I LOVE that column." **

The only thing I have to add is this: It's a shame that Michael Savage appears to no longer have a father around to tell him to stop acting like a moron.


* I linked to Media Matters on this because 1) they were the first ones to push it mainstream, thus pissing off MS; and 2) because linking to the Savage site made me queasy. You can Google it.
** Yes, yes. I know--and so does Gene--that Michael and Dan Savage are not the same people. And therein lies the joke.

The Return of the $54 Million Pants

Last summer I wrote a post about a DC administrative judge who was suing a dry cleaner for 54 million dollars because they lost his pants.

At issue was a two-word sign on the counter: Satisfaction Guaranteed.

They lost his pants, so he wanted satisfaction: the cost of the pants plus compensation for his "mental suffering, inconvenience and discomfort."

Apparently never having heard the old axiom "a man who represents himself has a fool for a client," Judge Roy Pearson included in his opening statement a smidge of rhetoric: ". . . never before in recorded history have a group of defendants engaged in such misleading and unfair business practices."

Fortunately he lost, though for the owners of the dry-cleaner it was a phyrric victory as they spent more than 80,000$ on legal fees. (Pearson was ordered to pay the court costs, separate from legal fees.) And fortunately for us, but unfortunately for Mr Pearson, the commission that decides whether to reappoint administrative judges was meeting around that time. Surprise! He lost his job a couple of months after the case ended.

Fast forward one year and Surprise! Roy Pearson is suing the District of Columbia for the loss of his job. It's only a million dollars this time, but God only knows who he'll sue for the loss of his marbles.

Bonus SUPER Dammit

John Tanner, voting rights section chief of the Justice Department explains that elderly minority voters are not disproportionately disenfranchised by rules requiring voter IDs because "our society is such that minorities don't become elderly the way white people do; they die first."

No really! Watch:




He made this comment on October 5, 2007. And it would appear that he still has a job.