Messages and the Messenger:
Let's play catch up here on a couple of things:
Compare and contrast the interviews in the last couple of weeks by the BBC of Bill Clinton and by Ireland's RTE of George W. Bush. The right wing was giddy with the idea that Clinton went into a "rage" at the Beeb's David Dimbleby (one of those oh-so-fey British names that just makes you think all British men are pussies, soccer riots notwithstanding) because Dimbleby kept pressing the former President on the Lewinsky hummer. Clinton actually lectured Dimbleby on the press taking responsibility for its actions: "Look, you made a decision to allocate your time in a certain way, you should take responsibility for that, you should say 'yes, I care much more about this than whether the Bosnian people were saved and whether he brought a million home from Kosovo'" But most of the media didn't report what Clinton said, reporting instead about how a BBC exec was ejaculating all over the ratings potential of the broadcast. Sure, Clinton might have been pissed, but he did not back down. He went toe to toe with Dimbleby and kicked him in the nuts to calm Dimbleby's Lewinsky erection so the interview could move on to other things.

Unlike, say, Bush, who looked like a babbling fool in the face of RTE's Carole Coleman, who dared to ask follow-up questions, dared to make Bush answer a question rather than stick to his script. Looking like such a scared little pussy he might as well have been named "Dimbleby," Bush kept clawing for air like a sack of kittens sinking in a river: "Let me finish please. Let me answer your question and then you'll follow up," Bush told Coleman, not seeming to understand that in most countries, politicians don't tell reporters how to do their jobs. Bush's people were incensed, incensed, damn it, so they lodged a complaint with the Irish Embassy because Coleman was dissin' their man. In fact, the Irish, who do seem to understand what it means to be citizens of a democracy, were pissed off at how Bush treated their reporter. But it must have come as one helluva surprise to Europeans, who protested the war by the millions, that, according to Bush, "most of Europe supported the decision in Iraq."

And as for that stupid fucking piece of shit Bush/Cheney campaign video of Democratic rage that counterpoints images of Hitler with John Kerry, it's fuckin' hilarious. It's like that moment in Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors where Allen makes a documentary biography of TV producer Alan Alda, towards whom Woody has a blind hatred. Allen's film shows Alda's character raging at an underling and transposes that with Hitler at a rally. The Bush campaign's video is just as funny for a couple of reasons. First, it's just so over the top it might as well have been made by a couple of chimps with a camera and an AVID. Second, the words that are used to represent the "rage" of Democrats are not all that rageful, when compared with, say, the Vice-President telling Pat Leahy to "Go fuck yourself." In fact, they sound kind of rational. There's no hatred of America here. There's anger at Bush. Check out the script. If Dick Gephardt saying "The President is a miserable failure" is the best they could do to exemplify the hate of those opposed to Bush, then, shit, no wonder they needed Hitler to pad the thing.

See, it's a video for dumb people. Hitler was mean, ergo Democrats are mean. Now, none of the Democrats in the video have, to our knowledge, sent millions of people to their slaughter or, say, started a war of aggression against a nation that posed no threat to it, like Hitler or . . . well, let's not go there, shall we?