It's all about Glenn Greenwald, isn't it? While we lay waste our talents getting and spending on the Republican debate, only Dubba-G keeps fighting the good fight, devoting lengthy, sub-referenced, abundantly codiciled blog posts that capture the nation-sweeping excitement of the Comey testimony. He takes a slap at "the truly odious Joe Klein," and who can't feel the Greenwaldian tension? Beats there a heart so cold it doesn't thrill to the excitement of full-bore Klein hatred?

But wait: Here's Joe Klein himself, also hot on the trail of the Comey. And his fellow Swampland critter Karen Tumulty right there with him. So if they're all writing about the same dull topic, and also writing about each other, why does Jewcy need a couple of paunchy, self-pitying goys to do its blog snark about them? Why can't we just get down with the hot new "bag" of outsourcing journalism, and farm all this work out to some Anglophilic grad student in Bangalore?

I'll tell you why, Nick. Because in my day we didn't need all these "facts" and "figures" to clutter up our crystalline prose. By God, we got the news through sheer horse sense! We're not just a couple of wet-behind-the-ears linkalists, dammit! We're riding the high country of real reporting, and J. Jonah Jameson and Perry White and Tony Vincenzo are beet-red with aggravation at our high-spirited hijinks. And just to show you how hard it can be out there, try and read these sentences from our assigned beats this week, without putting your head into that set of shark's teeth I've got hanging on my rec-room wall.

Michelle Malkin:

The Hot Air team has broken out the popcorn.

Kausfiles:

(Yes, I'm extrapolating here from Pear's role in the 1995-6 welfare debates.)

Glenn Greenwald:

It is because the Beltway class is as corrupt and barren of integrity and judgment as they are.

Danger Room:

So Horiuchi is building a circuit that he hopes that can emulate how "interaural level differences" are processed "in the bat brainstem and midbrain."

Swampland:

Almost-candidate Chuck Hagel discusses "America's Role In The World" at the Center for National Policy in Washington.

ZZZZ! Wha—uh? Please don't cut my dick off, Mr. Hitler!

I think every one of those gems could be turned into a catchphrase every bit as good as "In the absence of weights, I am employing isometrics" or "I don't understand your hostility towards me" or "Bitch set me up."

Am I at 500 words yet?

Why aren't any of our targets writing about the Wolfowitz endgame? (Can somebody just shoot me now that I'm writing about the Wolfowitz endgame?) What about Prince Harry's royal draft dodge? Why are the media elites ignoring the story of the lamb panda? Who dares to speak for the surgical sponge left in Judge G. Blair Harry? How long can we continue to ignore the link between the sixth grade teacher attack prank and the eighth grade substitute teacher gay sex money shot? All I can say is, "What happens in Ms. Buford's class stays in Ms. Buford's class."

Yes, Nick, this crazy, mixed-up hill-of-beans world is too much for the citizen journalists who have made this week so regrettable for both of us. In this maelstrom of decay, you can trust Michelle Malkin, and it's on the shoulders of the diminutive firecracker that we must at last bestow the mantle of our blogger of the week, because she's the one who came up with this: "Forget about the candidates and the questions and the campaign. Call the wah-mbulance: Journalists are whining about the food and restrooms."

Which sucks, actually. So no, the blogger of the week is Mickey Kaus, because he compared either me or you to either Jimmy Stewart or the Duke. So he wins it.

But then again, where else but in Noah Shachtman's Boom Boom Room can we be reminded of the timeless lesson that you really can cook yourself to death in a tanning booth, just as you can die if your underwear's too tight or have your head eaten by a spider-infested bouffant? He calls it the Danger Palace, but he's making the world a safer place.

Then again, how can we not give the Palm to Karen Tumulty, who not only shares a name with New Brunswick, N.J.'s first and shittiest restaurant but wins all our hearts with a self-effacing "Just found the link. Blogging 101." And what of Glenn Greenwald, locked in an eternal struggle against his bizarro-universe counterpart Green Glennwald, a.k.a. John-Alberto Gonzales-Ashcroft?

And have we no sense of decency, at long last, if we don't join in the general disapprobation of John McCain's drunken sailor joke—perhaps the only thing on which all this week's bloggers agree?

Yes, Nick, they're all winners. To us, they're all our sons, and I guess they are, I guess they are! Everybody's a winner in what will undoubtedly be our last hurrah as the world's oldest boy band. And we're winners too! We are, we are! So why do I feel so bad?

Previous Movable Snipes:

To: Tim Cavanaugh From: Nick Gillespie Subject: Mickey Kaus Thinks Mitchum is a Deodorant

It's late as I'm writing this—just five minutes before thermonuclear disaster, if the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists can be trusted (earlier this year, the retro group arbitrarily pushed their clock ahead two minutes but are still demanding $3 off their Domino's cheesy bread—a meal deal is a deal, even if it's being delivered by a bunch of irradiated zombies)—so forgive me the scream of consciousness prose style. Not only is it late in the day, but I actually put something back on the grocery store shelf today because it contained trans fat. Which means it's late in my life, though unfortunately not late enough to prevent me from having to file. I'm not fully convinced that trans fat even exists. I mean, how the hell did we go from not giving a shit about trans fat to locking down old-school Crisco like it was heroin (which really isn't so bad)? The trans fat hysteria strikes me as a tad too similar to the Great Chlamydia Scare of 1988 (or maybe it was just my great chlamydia scare of 1988): a never-before-heard-of sexually transmitted disease that is almost always asymptomatic? What will those antibiotic pushers think of next? How naive do they think we are?

Which is another way of saying that, like you, "Rudy" Ruettiger, and Vince Foster, I miss the '90s. The 1990s, the 1890s, the 1790s–it doesn't really matter, because anyway you slice it, they all go down in history as pre-Glenn Greenwald's Unclaimed Territory and Good Times Novelty Blogge, so they all go down a little more smoothly than the current era. (By the way, I'm becoming increasingly convinced that he boosted the title How Would a Patriot Act? from Timothy McVeigh.)

Do you still remember the '90s, Tim? A time when you, like Emilio Estevez, could dream that your best work was still ahead of you? Or maybe just that your worst work was behind you? I don't know when the '90s started exactly—probably some time after Time's Karen Tumulty reported on George H.W. Bush buying those tube socks at J.C. Penney—but I know they ended definitively when Newt Gingrich took Wendy the Snapple Lady as his fifth wife.

At least you're getting paid to read this crap and those blogs—from what I understand, the patrons of Jewcy are paying for this, although as part of their membership fee they also get one birthday call a year from a Z-list celebrity who happens to be a member of the Chosen People. Really, is there any better way to celebrate than by having Corey Feldman call you for bail money even before the check from your grandmother clears? I for one was appalled that the FCC in its recent report on "Violent Television Programming and Its Impact on Children," singled out the post-Feldman Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as small-screen terrrorists, capable of giving kids nightmares.

You had probably passed out by the time Mickey Kaus did link to our exchange (it was already after noon), putting him in second place after Noah Shachtman in terms of noting what the goyim over at Jewcy are up to:

"Vigorous Sucky writing with Gillespie and Cavanaugh. (They know they're being vigorous. It's like watching the creaking John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart pretend they are young cowboys in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence. Still good!) … 2:08 P.M.

I don't know what's more disturbing: that Mickey wrote about Chrysler after we mocked him on that score yesterday or that he doesn't really know his Western movie history. Liberty Valance came out in 1962, when Wayne was only 55 years old and still a decade and a girdle away from dancing with Bea Arthur on Maude and almost 15 years away from starring with Stewart in The Shootist, when the two guys were almost as old as Mickey is now. I'm not saying Mickey is a wuss—indeed, I don't even know what that term really means—but he probably thinks Mitchum is a deodorant.

In any case, I think I've cracked the Kaus code, which is somewhat less-interesting than the Da Vinci Code or even Morse Code: Mickey only allows himself to think and write in phrases that could legally appear on vanity license plates.

I agree with you that the biggest—and most ignored story—of yesterday was the realization that Rev. Jerry Falwell lookalike actor Richard Paul had been dead for close to a decade (a close runner-up: that "Eric Alterman…plays poker with Edsall.") The former Carter Country star had quite possibly the most fully achieved dewlap in Hollywood this side of post-Shining Time Station Alec Baldwin. I had spent the better part of the past decade petitioning Falwell to do a one-man show about Paul (no relation to the great and good Ron Paul, though perhaps Richard is in a slightly better position to grab the GOP nomination for 2008). Alas, I realized too late that petitioning the Virgin Mary to intercede probably wasn't going to work on a Baptist.

The question that Michelle Malkin dodges on her blog isn't why Falwell died yesterday but why did it take him so long? I knew he was a goner once he blew the whistle on the Murderer from Hope in 1994's The Clinton Chronicles (god, one more reason to miss that decade). As I recall, Falwell wandered through that shockumentary like Raymond Burr waddling through Godzilla: 1985 or Gene Kelly rollerskating while reciting Coleridge in Xanadu: The Rev. possessed complete control over his instrument as he revealed how the bodies were piling up at the Mena airstrip like so many kilos of Latin American coke. (Side note in the style of Kaus: Are there any people more odious than those who insist on being prefixed by the honorific "Reverend"? Maybe those who dub themselves "Ambassador"? Are you listening Sharpton? Keyes? Yglesias?) And by the way, why is Miss Firecracker referring to Abdullah al-Muhajir by his American name, Jose Padilla? I give Malkin a week before she's signing off with "Allahu Akbar!" and doing her cheers in a burka. Game, set, match, Brother Tim; we lost the battle with radical Islam the minute we started wearing helmets when we rode our bikes. Do you think Bin Laden wore a helmet in the caves of Tora Bora? Richard Paul's death likely signalled the start of The Rapture (when's the last time you saw a "If the Rapture Comes, This Car Will Be Driverless" bumper sticker?). The alleged dirty bombers have won, the clock is ticking ever closer to midnight, and here's hoping those Atomic Scientists—and the rest of us—even get a chance to try Domino's new foldable pizza (finally, a chain pizza you can fold!) before Xenu, or whoever Muslims pray to, returns…

Continue reading… "Drunken Sailors and Moonbats"

To: Tim Cavanaugh From: Nick Gillespie Subject: Elementary, My Dear Cavanaugh

So, Tim, we meet again, like Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarity at Reichenbach Falls. Or maybe Sandler & Young at the Foxwoods Casino, together again for the last time. Is it too early in the week to start snorting Adderall? Or sticking needles in my eyes? Or how about in your eyes? In a land of blogs, the blind man may be king.

Before we get on to discussing a bunch of blogs that I literally need to be paid to read—life being too short on such pursuits even if we live to be 200—I want to underscore how sick and tired I am of being paired professionally with you, first at Suck, then at Reason, and then occasionally at your current perch, where you shill for big media and corporate interests. Suddenly I know how Eydie Gorme must have felt all those years, carrying a real sack of rotten potatoes around on the stage and trying to keep the smile going. You know better than anyone how lucky you were that the Los Angeles Times hired you just minutes before I was going to shitcan you at Reason for conduct unbecoming a libertarian (really, Tim, how can you not agree that Mother, Jugs & Speed makes a great case for privatizing emergency medical services?). But I do owe you for a remarkable piece of advice—"Never pass up an opportunity to have sex on TV with Gore Vidal"—that I look forward to using at some point in the future, preferably after the Rapture has begun. (Are we even allowed to make Rapture jokes at Jewcy? Writing for this site, I haven't felt this Catholic since Mark Foley stopped IM'ing me).

So I went over to Kausfiles as directed, for about the first time in about a decade (slight exaggeration) and was immediately discombobulated by the newest item, "To Wuss or Not To Wuss," in which Mickey Kaus rats out Andrew Sullivan as a hypocrite about using the term "wussy." Everything really did change on 9/11, Tim, and the stakes have never been higher. Mickey—who I know a bit and with whom, at least up until now, I have always been on very friendly and flattering terms, except for the time I likened Bloggingheads TV to a lost act from Waiting for Godot—always seems to narrating a soap opera whose storyline is absolutely impenetrable, like Dark Shadows without the implied vampire sex (and hence much less interesting). It seems that Sully got mad at Mickey for defending Ann Coulter for saying John Edwards is light in the loafers. And then Old Duke, the trusty dog, came barking like mad from the old coal mine on the edge of town, where Jimmy and Mike were trapped while playing hide-and-seek, blah, blah, blah. There's so much blogrolling going on at Kausfiles, you can't read the damn thing without getting splinters in your teeth (and while we're at it: Thanks, Mickey, for linking for a column about speeding-crazed and accident-prone politicians by Reason's own Radley Balko).

Whenever I read Kausfiles—and knowing that Kaus writes mostly from bee-yoo-tee-ful Southern California—I'm always reminded of those stories about German intellectuals hanging out in Santa Monica during the Holocaust. Despite the sunshine and the beach, Adorno, Mann, et al., just couldn't get the horror in Europe out of their minds. With Mickey, it's like the opposite. You can imagine him in a death camp somewhere, practically on his way to the showers, and he'd still be fervently debating some technical point about capital gains, or welfare reform, or the new grill on a Chrysler LeBaron: "Matthew Yglesias is trying to sucker me into blogging about a 'variety of education-related topics.'"

Speaking of horrifying scenes of human carnage, let's truck on over to Michelle Malkin's blog. You know, nobody uses the terms "wingnut" and "moonbat" better than our finest diagnostician of Bush Derangement Syndrome (who once, long ago in a distant galaxy, wrote a great story for Reason about racial dynamics in the war on drugs). Really, she can sniff out BDS from farther away than Bill Frist could read Terri Schiavo's aura. But the fact is that Malkin's blog today is a snooze, with items about stuff like "John Doe legislation" that will protect folks who turn in suspicious-looking Arabs who turn out to be innocent. "Watch this bill closely," muses Malkin. "Keep an eye on who supports and who opposes it. This will tell you much." You can get that sort of vitriol from a Magic 8-Ball, Tiresias!

It's tough to believe that Malkin hasn't peaked after her riveting turn a couple of weeks ago as a cheerleader belting out "The Defeatocrats' Cheer" in living video. I haven't felt that sorry for someone in a cheerleading outfit—or been that sick to my stomach—since "Hey Mickey" went out of heavy rotation on MTV in 1982. Seriously, fuck the surge in Iraq: Just drop Malkin and Toni Basil on the Sunni Triangle and watch the fight go out of those insurgents faster than John Kerry got out of Vietnam.

Does anyone use italics in the blogosphere better than Glenn Greenwald? I don't think so, Tim, and I'm willing go to the mat on this. This guy gets it, you understand? In fact, sometimes he gets it with italics and bold. Just take a look at the long, indented paragraphs that run through his blog like, I don't know, stink on rice (where is that Adderall?). Greenwald is the author of The New York Times bestseller How Would a Patriot Act? (yeah, I stopped reading too after "Times bestseller") and the surefire forthcoming smash, Tragic Legacy, which will also savage George W. Bush. Finally, someone willing to take on an all-powerful president with approval ratings in the low 30s!

I like the fact that Greenwald attacks Fred Thompson, who really ought to be the next Breath Assure pitchman once his presidential bid goes South (which ought to happen as soon as the Tennessean enters the race). Greenwald also attacks a bunch of "real journalists" (e.g. Joe Klein, Jonathan Alter, and John Yoo—yes, that John Yoo) who attack bloggers. More power to him, and to me. Though not to you, Tim, as part of the corporate media. Beyond the italics, though, the most striking thing about Greenwald's Salon blog is that you don't have to sit through the 20-second ad to read the content. Which really had become the best part of Salon, don't you agree?

That stink filling the room isn't simply my own decaying prose, Tim—I'm about to head over to Time mag's Swampland, "a blog about politics in the nation's capital." Only a gigantic journalistic behemoth such as Mr. Luce's mag could marshal the resources required to deliver Jay Carney's laser-like insight into a new 5-minute "testimonial" video by Bill Clinton about his better half that's posted at Hillary's official website. "The question, of course" writes Carney, "Is the video effective? Or does it backfire? Will Bill's fluid and persuasive delivery remind people that Hillary's not nearly so good a politician as her husband? Or will having the ultimate political salesman making the pitch on her behalf be a net benefit? Having watched it a few times, it feels to me like a net plus for Hillary. But I could be wrong."

Goddamnit, Tim, why can't you and I write prose like this? Does this guy eat dilithium crystals for breakfast?

Seriously, journalists everywhere—and especially at your misbegotten rag, which can only do 20 percent ROI, so it's understandable why your billionaire owner has to start cutting the fat—are always bitching about how penny-pinchers are shutting down foreign bureaus. Read a couple of items into Swampland—"That's Hagelian!" reads one groaner by Joe Klein—and you'll be complaining that Time hasn't shut down enough of its domestic bureaus yet.

Wired's Danger Room is a better big-media blog (based on two five-minute reads today). It's written by Noah Shachtman and it covers "what's next in national security." I'm not sure I care all that much about the general topic but, oddly enough, the blog has a more interesting range than most of the others we've been told to read over the next couple of days. Certainly the graphics and headlines are fun and the content is informative, if only because it actually aggregates news rather than simple bloviation.

Who wouldn't find a post about government researchers working to help dogs track down terrorists based on their body odor? But maybe that just appeals to me because of the years I spent working with you.

–Nick

Previous Movable Snipes:

Jonathan Ames and Amanda Marcotte [Jewlicious, The News Blog, Gothamist, The Revealer, Maud Newton]

John Derbyshire and Daphne Merkin [James Wolcott, Reason's Hit & Run, Design Observer, Kesher Talk, Matt Yglesias]

Michael Helke and Fiona Maazel [3 Quarks Daily, Crooked Timber, Daniel Drezner, Nerve's The Scanner, The Elegant Variation ]

Spencer Ackerman and Melissa Lafsky [Captain’s Quarters, Feministing, TNR's The Spine, Jossip, Wonkette]