On Hypocrisy, Hypocrites, and "Jock-Sniffer" Media Heroes

First, some background: months before the U.S. invaded Iraq, I wrote a letter to President George W. Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney, and to the then Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert. In it, I pleaded that we not invade Iraq and begin killing thousands – the word I used – of Iraqi “women and kids.” If the United States Government so wanted to remove Saddam Hussein from power, I would do it. I pointed out that I was the inventor of many, or most, of the tactics that would be required – something each of the addressees could easily verify – and asked for a reasonable budget, noting that what I asked for would be a small fraction of what invasion would cost. I guaranteed that I would kill Saddam, and - in order to prove I knew what I was talking about - provided a suggested method.

Of course, the letter did not draw response.

This morning, I’m listening to the president’s press conference. While I may have heard during my life – I’m an old dude – more toweringly obvious hypocrisy, I can’t remember when. It’s stupefying – I sit, staring in abject wonderment. The only time this man ever shows anything like male courage is the daring it must take to tell the nation he’s raping that it owes him co-operation. I can’t think, to save me, of anything like it, ever.

Rita always refuses to listen to people she detests, but I insist on it. Sometimes, it’s just to learn to what extreme things have gone with the speaker, and how outrageous they can get. I also think, when they’re opinion is opposed to mine, that the more outrageous their demeanor, behavior or remarks, the more favorable to my point of view it is. Most of the people bright enough – the only ones who count with me – will see the appalling behavior or remark for what it is, and react accordingly. The rest – extreme pro or con – can’t add anything worth effort to the topic of discussion thereof, anyway.

Sometimes, it’s just because they’re hilariously funny. Ann Coulter, for instance, or Rosie O’Donnell. Anybody with so obviously that little intellect who takes themselves so seriously is a blast.

Then, there’s the “jock-sniffers.” That one may need explanation. Most athletes of any stature are familiar with “groupies,” the babes who throw themselves at the latest object of their imagined affection, lust, or whatever. The male equivalent – at least from my point of view – is the wimp who wants to bask in the reflected glow of another guy’s competitive success. He wants to appear or hang out with the object of his adulation, the better to impress others – the “groupies,” sometimes. That kind of guy is the “jock-sniffer.”

This bunch is comprised of guys – guys whose closest brush with combat was a spat with his wife or girl-friend, mind you - who want to sound like a warrior. Here’s a partial list, see it you recognize what I’m talking about (of course, you may be like Rita, and have refused to listen to their blather and bilge):


Sean ("The Great American") Hannity
Bill O’Reilly (hid out in England during the Vietnam War, from what I gather)
Chris Matthews
George Will
Paul Gigot
Bill Bennett
Pat Buchanan
Rush Limbaugh (4-F with a 'pilonidal cyst' on his ass!)
Michael Savage (aka Michael Alan Weiner)
Pat Robertson
Michael Medved


And, then, of course, there’s that stalwart of liberty, our fearless leader with five deferments during war time, Dick Cheney. George W. Bush’s “service” during wartime prior to that as Commander in Chief is, of course, well-known. These pillars of patriotism are all for sending others into combat, for keeping them there as “long as it takes,” and for contempt of “cut and run.”

There will be a five minute hiatus from the keyboard while I turn off the radio and Bush’s pious pontificating, and settle my stomach.

No, make that ten minutes. I’ve a stomach strong enough to have eaten snakes and frogs – the latter alive, even – but this guy makes me sick. Through it all, including “Mission Accomplished,” he hasn’t made a mistake. Whew!

But, there you have it. Remember my mention of the movie, the Mask of Zorro, Don Rafael Montero? Re-assuring the new Zorro, Antonio Banderas, the old Zorro, Anthony Perkins, says that Montero, a member of the Spanish nobility will never recognize him – “a member of the Spanish nobility will never look directly at a peasant.” In the movie, Montero intends and attempts to simply blast out of existence hundreds of the poor he has used as slaves to mine his gold.

There, as I said, you have it. Mssrs. Bush, Cheney, and the warriors in the Pantheon of the Pusillanimous above believe they are patricians. Far better in the eyes of our maker than we, the plebeians, the peones. If they need to send us to die in their wars, or to have us sicken and die under their pollution of everything we ingest or breathe, how dare we complain or resist? When they have used and are finished with us, who are we to clutter up their beautiful streets, parks, and public buildings.

Oh, they will tell you that they’ve earned the right to use us, and to feel that way. It is after all, by means of their sterling character, mental brilliance, and surpassing skill, they have come to ascendancy over us.

I’d feel sick again, but that’s funny. As I remarked the other day in a “blog”:

“Contrary to indoctrination of yourselves and your children by the government-controlled news media and educational systems, the rich are seldom the big-leaguers they are made out to be. I’ve known dozens of corporate CEOs, for some of the nation’s biggest companies, and I can tell you that I wouldn’t trust them with “executive operating” of a lemonade stand. Most of these guys got where they are by lying, cheating, stealing, exploiting, and walking all over their co-workers. They excel, all right – they excel in acquisitive rapacity, greed.

“ . . . I’ve not only broken bread with the Captains of Industry, drunk with them, and covered their butts, I listened. I’ve heard their contempt for everything they profess publicly to believe, from the people they exploit to the system and government that gave them their power. I’ve heard them betray their concupiscent lust – not a few times twisted and depraved – their fascination with fame, and their willingness to prostitute literally anything and anybody for money and power.”

Come on! Have a good, intense look at Dick Cheney and tell me this is a paragon of male virtue and masculinity.

The truth is that the rich send the poor to die in their wars and anywhere else things are dangerous. As Rose O’Donnell (this nut case thinks someone - the government, actually - blasted the World Trade Center) said the other day, “Google it” – Google how many rich kids are serving in Iraq or Afghanistan, how many sons and daughters of senators, congressmen and congresswomen, or offspring of the Captains of Industry.

While you’re Googling and considering, consider how concerned our patricians really are for “. . . insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty.” Consider the President’s protestations that he is concerned that should we leave Iraq, “the enemy will follow us home.” Consider the border with Mexico, in that context. How do you protect your house by leaving the back door – or all the doors, for that matter – standing ajar?

I suppose you’d say, were you George W. Bush, Dick Cheney - or Don Rafael Montero, “Why, just kill all the neighbors.” It's the solution of the "nobility" to problems like that.

Is that what we’re planning? Damn – it scares you, doesn’t it? It’d scare you more, had you been where I have. As some of you may know, I was made homeless after IRS broke up my business and marriage in 1978, and took effective steps to assure that I could never be employed again. In 1985, when I had recovered and started over, they did it all over again, this time driving my teenage son to three attempts at suicide. As the result, once I'd been reduced to having to pick up women and live with them until they tired of me, I fought back with planted mikes in IRS and other government offices - a couple of congressmen and a senator.

I'm not homeless anymore, obviously and for, I think, what must be obvious reasons.

The experience, both as has to do with life on the streets – actually, I went to the wilderness, once the war had become a shooting one – and the microphone “bugs” in federal offices, I learned even more of the truth of things than what I’ve already mentioned.

I’ve learned that things are always the way they are because the people of the United States either care enough to change them or they don’t. Either way, they are the way they are because we made them that way. We make things the way they are when we don’t care far more often than otherwise. Usually, that’s because we’re like Don Rafael. We don’t look directly at it. Take the border, for instance. Ask yourself why no one – not even Lou Dobbs and the like – has told you that more than a hundred twenty kidnappers, pedophiles and sexual predators cross that border illegally every day?

“‘Spain dat to me, Luci!” (Anybody remember “I Love Luci?” Ricky Ricardo?)

And while you’re ‘splainin’, tell me why the nation that will spend a trillion dollars on Iraq and the domestic tranquility, common defense, general welfare, and liberty of its people – that’s rich, poor, even the ones killing our soldiers – won’t spend more than peanuts on its own homeless. Or, since we seem to hold our own destitute in such “don’t look at them” contempt, why it is that you won’t send at least a reasonable part of that to people like victims of the Indian Ocean tsunami.

The truth is, my country, you are a pack of sickening hypocrites like the man you chose to occupy your highest office. You offer, when cornered, all the same bloviating bullshit your “jock-sniffer” media heroes offer. The “Pantheon of the Pusillanimous” I had reference to above is there because they’re popular, you know – and the extended meaning of that is as obvious as you are to the world.

There’s one more thing, in closing, the War Powers Act words your “leader” used in luring a willing Congress:

“These military operations have been carefully planned to accomplish our goals with the minimum loss of life among coalition military forces and to innocent civilians. It is not possible to know at this time either the duration of active combat operations or the scope or duration of the deployment of U.S. Armed Forces necessary to accomplish our goals fully.”


Put that with “Shock and Awe,” with “Mission Accomplished,” and the “jock-sniffer” patriotism of Sean Hannity and the rest. Put it with your “. . . insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty.”

Out here in the real world, the street, we don’t believe a word you say.