The Mensch and the Motherfucker:
It's an amazing thing when the old Bob Dole shows up - not lovable curmudgeon Dole of appearance on The Daily Show, not pathetic shaky Dole of a recent Fresh Air interview (where Dole was there to hawk his book on his war experiences and host Terry Gross kept asking Dole questions about the state of contemporary politics. Dole would answer and then say he thought he was there to talk about his book. It was pathetic, in a time-to-make-Grandpa-into-Soylent-Green sort of way). No, not those Doles, but Bob Dole the mean motherfucker who would cruelly eviscerate opponents, stab people in the back, and undermine a Presidency.

Motherfucker Dole made an appearance in the New York Times yesterday in one of those elder-statesman-must-be-heard columns, weighing in on the whole filibuster debate, about which he had previously said that the Senate ought to be "careful" in getting rid of the rules. But someone spiked his Muselix with Metamucil, and the shit's moving strong now.

He "hopes" that a compromise can be reached with the Democrats on the nominations of 10 judges, and then he adds, "But let's be honest: By creating a new threshold for the confirmation of judicial nominees, the Democratic minority has abandoned the tradition of mutual self-restraint that has long allowed the Senate to function as an institution." How about this: "Let's be honest, you shaky, pen-grippin' bastard: the judges were nominated and turned down by the previous, Democratic-led Senate. How about the President respectin' that advice and consent?" "Let's be honest" is a great technique, man- you say that, and you can lie about any fuckin' thing you want.

It's only topped by "to be fair," a rhetorical device which creates illusions of balance and which, of course, Dole says later: "To be fair, the Democrats have previously refrained from resorting to the filibuster even when confronted with controversial judicial nominees." See? Bob Dole is a fair man - he gives mad props to the Democrats of the past. Fair and honest - it's the magnificent illusion of Bob Dole, a cretinous, bile-spewing political coward and loser who, to be fair and honest, is infinitely preferrable to the hideous hellspawns now hunkered down in the cellars of the Senate, insidiously planning the downfall of Democrats and democracy.

Meanwhile, Al Gore once again proves what motherfuckin' freedom of speech is with his latest barnburner, where he rips the guts and nuts and viscera out of the Republicans and shows it to them before they hit the ground. He goes after all of it, man, all the anti-American bullshit that the Republicans have been advocating: abbrogation of the rule of law, abandonment of tradition, the calls for vengeance against the judiciary, religious demagoguery masking radical political agendas, the undermining of the founding documents, the crisis mentality inflicted on the American public, the rank hypocrisy of the arguments against the filibuster, the squelching of dissent, the potential for a descent into tyranny. Said Gore, "Our founders understood that there is in all human beings a natural instinct for power. The Revolution they led was precisely to defeat the all-encompassing power of a tyrant thousands of miles away."

What an honorable man. What a defender of the nation. What a magnificent indictment of the plague that is contemporary conservatism. Yes, Al Gore is a mensch, our better angel of the political landscape. And therefore he must be ignored, of course.