Wednesday, October 20, 2004
No Casualties, No Mistakes, No Problem
This morning, I visited some precincts of the Internet I'd never been to before. A new magazine called n + 1 features some interesting political e-mails on its front page, including a suggestion that it's time for the United States to break up into seven different nations based on political affinities. The Northeast and Great Lakes states would be part of something called "Red Sox Nation" and governed by Howard Dean. For that, I can almost forgive the Northeastern myopia that makes people think the rest of the country is as compelled by the Red Sox/Yankees rivalry as they are.
(Digression: Hype aside, what the Red Sox have done against the Yankees this week is remarkable. They have come from a 3-games-to-none deficit in games to tie a series at 3 apiece, which has never happened in 100 years of baseball playoffs. The winner of tonight's game 7 advances to the World Series. The Sox haven't won a World Series since 1918, when a pitcher named Babe Ruth was the ace of their staff. In 1920, the Sox sold Ruth to the Yankees, where he became the greatest player in the history of the game. They call the Sox' failures since then "the curse of the Bambino," and it's why the Yankees will win game 7 tonight. Various writers on the Internet have been arguing that for John Kerry to win, the Red Sox must lose, because it would be too much good fortune for New England to have both of them win.)
Bob Harris, who's had a varied media career, including blogging for Tom Tomorrow's website and doing the voice of Tomorrow's Sparky the Penguin character in animated features, has set up a website of his own, and on it he imagines what it would be like if Karl Rove managed Charles Manson's campaign:
OK, that's not just the quote of the day--it's the what-the-fuck quote of the year.
This morning, I visited some precincts of the Internet I'd never been to before. A new magazine called n + 1 features some interesting political e-mails on its front page, including a suggestion that it's time for the United States to break up into seven different nations based on political affinities. The Northeast and Great Lakes states would be part of something called "Red Sox Nation" and governed by Howard Dean. For that, I can almost forgive the Northeastern myopia that makes people think the rest of the country is as compelled by the Red Sox/Yankees rivalry as they are.
(Digression: Hype aside, what the Red Sox have done against the Yankees this week is remarkable. They have come from a 3-games-to-none deficit in games to tie a series at 3 apiece, which has never happened in 100 years of baseball playoffs. The winner of tonight's game 7 advances to the World Series. The Sox haven't won a World Series since 1918, when a pitcher named Babe Ruth was the ace of their staff. In 1920, the Sox sold Ruth to the Yankees, where he became the greatest player in the history of the game. They call the Sox' failures since then "the curse of the Bambino," and it's why the Yankees will win game 7 tonight. Various writers on the Internet have been arguing that for John Kerry to win, the Red Sox must lose, because it would be too much good fortune for New England to have both of them win.)
Bob Harris, who's had a varied media career, including blogging for Tom Tomorrow's website and doing the voice of Tomorrow's Sparky the Penguin character in animated features, has set up a website of his own, and on it he imagines what it would be like if Karl Rove managed Charles Manson's campaign:
If Karl Rove was managing Charles Manson, there would be GOP members of Congress on MSNBC right this minute, accusing John Kerry of murdering Sharon Tate in a drug-addled orgy of death.Quote of the Day: Dear reader, I give you George W. Bush, as reported by Pat Robertson, in response to Robertson's prewar concerns about American casualties in Iraq: "Oh, no, we're not going to have any casualties."
Plus, they'd say he played a lousy guitar, couldn't get the Beach Boys to listen to him, and once carved a swastika into his own forehead.
The Democrats would be able to disprove a few of the allegations -- pointing to the obvious lack of a scar in Kerry's forehead, for example. After a series of notes from Kerry's doctor and discussions of how the epidermis heals, it would still take Wolf Blitzer a freakin' month to stop asking why John Kerry carved the swastika. But eventually, most of the allegations would die down.
Still, in the aftermath, you'd have millions of people vaguely certain that Charles Manson and John Kerry both thought they were the Fifth Beatle.
OK, that's not just the quote of the day--it's the what-the-fuck quote of the year.
