Author Archives: Tom Crippen

Limbaugh Slaps

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The Republicans just got whacked hard by the voters. They have to show everyone they’re not a bunch of clowns. So what does Limbaugh do? He bitch slaps the new chairman of the party. In public. He could have straightened out Steele by telephone. But Limbaugh wanted everybody to see him dressing down the one man now in charge of the Republican Party.

Rush knows what he is doing. The worse conservatives do, the more important Rush becomes as leader of the ardent remnant. The better conservatives succeed, the more we become a broad national governing coalition, the more Rush will be sidelined.
I guess.  Frum describes rational calculation, selfish but rational. But I can see Limbaugh playing out his little feud on sheer reflex.  If you can push someone around, push him around — that seems to be the wingnuts’ ruling principle. These people are programmed to glom onto attention and self-importance.
Obviously, the feud is good news for the country. In a best case, the wingnuts drop the Republican Party and it breaks apart. In a medium case, the party gets maued-maued over and over and comes across as a crippled entity. In a worst case — there is no worst case.
UPDATE: Via Andrew Sullivan, a funny bit by a guy named Christopher Orr over at The New Republic. Rare to find a liberal who can do clever stuff with words.

I would like to clarify a comment I made yesterday that has caused me untold heartache and remorse. When I described Rush Limbaugh as the “clown prince of the GOP” I intended my words to be understood entirely as a compliment. Mr. Limbaugh is self-evidently royalty in the deepest, most God-given sense of the word–yet he is still approachable, a wise and kindly jester beloved by children and animals. Not like those Kennedys.

I am filled with shame that my words may have been misunderstood, or worse, twisted by those jealous of Mr. Limbaugh. I have been unable to eat or sleep or laugh or enjoy prescription medication, and the hours that my unintended calumny was allowed to stand will weigh heavily on my conscience in the years to come. So let me set the record straight: I formally retract, for the record and without exception, any negative implication that might be inferred from anything I have said about Mr. Limbaugh, and from anything I might say at any time in the future. Indeed, I strongly recommend such “pretractions” to anyone who worries they might inadvertently slander Mr. Limbaugh–especially, though not exclusively, those who hope to work in Republican politics in the next several years.

Rush Limbaugh is the physical embodiment of otherwise irreconcilable gifts: puppies and war eagles, moonbeams and space-based lasers, Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne and Eddie Murphy pre-Golden Child. He is chocolate cake, bacon, and a stiff shot of rye rolled into one, but not fattening. He is a leader not only of his party and this nation, but of the entire Milky Way, which spins reverently about his lordly axis. He is the alpha and omega, the ne plus ultra, the capo di tutti capi. He is America, minus any of the bad stuff.

Forgive me for ever implying otherwise.

—Christopher Orr

Ain’t That the Way of It

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Garfield Minus Garfield voices a fundamental truth, again.

I was inspired to do the link by Noah’s review, in the latest Comics Journal, of a big Garfield book and a collection of Garfield Minus Garfield. As you know, a guy named Jim Davis creates (or oversees production of) Garfield and has done so for decades. Lately, a character named Dan Walsh has taken to Photoshopping out Garfield from the strips and then posting the results. Basically, what we see is the strip’s human character talking to himself, and it’s hilarious and sad. 
Noah brings in Jorge Louis Borges, and the two of them nail it:

The point is that the genius here is Davis’ — and it also isn’t. Borges has a short essay in which he argues that Edward Fitzgerald’s translation of Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat was greater than anything either could have done alone. “[F]rom the lucky conjunction of a Persian astronomer who ventures into poetry and an English eccentric who explores Spanish and Oriental texts… emerges an extraordinary poet who resembles neither of them.” Something like that seems to have happened here as well. Davis is an aesthetically dicey mainstream cartoonist; Walsh is a wannabe rock-and-roller who never hit it big. Together, though, they are, as Borges said, an extraordinary poet. Erase Garfield and you are left with a Davis who is just the same, only funnier.

American Psycho — Aids Parable or What?

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Lawrence, one of my cafe rat buddies, just asked me if I had read American Psycho. (Answer: no.) He had just finished it and said he was puzzled. According to him, American Psycho‘s chief character is obviously gay and the business about his being a heterosexual serial killer is actually the fellow’s coded confession for being an irresponsible jerk who has spread AIDS to unsuspecting partners. Lawrence says that, page by page, the book makes little sense if you don’t read it that way. But he has turned up no one who agrees with his theory. Wikipedia, the movie version, googling “American psycho” and “AIDS” — all blank.

So, if anyone has read the book, what do you say? And if nobody has, whatever. 

You Got to See This

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Via Memeorandum and Wonkette, a 13-year-old named Jonathan Krohn addresses CPAC. It’s incredible. The kid is exactly like Al Franken imitating a wingnut blowhard, but miniaturized way down. He’s got all the authoritative hems and haws and the body language, but the bridge of his nose is such a tiny distance over the microphone. 


Huffington Post has an interview. “I got into politics when I was eight years old. Six years now. And I got involved because I started listening to talk radio. … Bill Bennett really became an idol for me. I listened to him every morning from 6 to 9 for, oh, years.”

UPDATE:  If he’s 13, why was he 8 six years ago? Fuck.

UPDATE:  I think this is him with Malkin. He’s got good body language.

New Favorite Quote

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Just found this at the top of Talking Points Memo.  Jim Cramer, cable tv’s excitable money man, says of bank nationalization:


We must take the debate out of the hands of the dreamer academics, and into the hands of practical business people, no matter how much we despise them for getting us into this fix in the first place.


The thought is kind of beautiful, in its way. 

Is the War Over?

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We were talking about another series of theme posts and I suggested “Are Comics Respected Yet?” It seemed like an obvious choice since, as I read the world, comics are now just starting to be respected and therefore find themselves in a touchy in-between state like that of blacks in 1965. A lot of ignorant goodwill is directed their way in a fashion that can be a bit galling. And for every ounce of ignorant goodwill they also encounter at least an ounce of open hostility.

Or so I thought. But, going by my co-bloggers’ response, I might be behind the times. Beacuse they were indifferent to the idea, which suggests that the status of comics is way more secure than I thought.

So is that the case?
And why did comics have such a tough time getting this far? My theory is that public literacy has been a hard-won battle pushed along by shaming techniques similar to toilet training. Not that I have any data on the question.
If anyone wants to comment, I’ll note here that I realize comics have always had better status in Japan and France than they do in the US.