My Favorite Dick, by Mike Gold – Brainiac On Banjo #119
May 25, 2009 Mike Gold 19 Comments
Dick Cheney. Gotta love him.
Here’s this paranoid fuck running scared all over the nation trying to taint the jury pool. Oh, clearly Cheney’s worried about being indicted – his daughter makes that perfectly clear as she runs around the nation defending her father. The Cheneys’ defense is simple: ever since we started pulling fingernails out of Moslems, you haven’t been attacked, have you, you ungrateful asshole? Quack quack.
Well, Dick’s right. And we haven’t had any elephant stampedes, either. Only Dick (and, possibly, PeTA) knows what we’ve been doing to them. Clearly, elephants are a lot larger than old rich Republican contributors, so Cheney’s probably not shooting them. And they’re a bitch to waterboard.
So… out of all this nonsense, who’s the guy I admire the most? Well, right now – and I never, ever thought I’d be saying this – it’s Erich “Mancow” Muller, the right wing radio guy. Mancow has been defending waterboarding as “not torture,” but, unlike cowardly liars like Sean Hannity, Mancow put his mouth where his money is. He got waterboarded. Live. On the air. In front of video cameras.
He lasted all of six seconds. In torture-time, that’s three-quarters of a gallon of water. And it’s about five and a half seconds longer than I would have lasted.
As soon as he was done coughing and gagging, Mancow said “yes, this is torture.” He knew he wasn’t going to be killed, he knew it would be over in a heartbeat (the average is 14 seconds), he knew the EMS was there, and he knew he wasn’t going to back to a prison cell for sleep deprivation or stress torture. Despite all those assurances and safety-nets, he only lasted six seconds and he was immediately convinced it was torture. It was being drowned, Mancow said, and he should know. As a child, he drowned and was, obviously, revived.
Here’s the link: www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKfEjdAkmbs. Warning: this clip of the entire event might not be suitable for children, hydrophobes or Republicans.
He stood up for his principles, and he admitted he was wrong. Mancow manned up. I wish ex-Vice President Dick Cheney was one-third as honest as Mancow Muller.
• • • • •
It is with great pride and even greater ego that I announce my weekly two-hour Weird Sounds Inside The Gold Mind ass-kicking bizarro music and blather show starts up this Sunday, May 31st, at www.getthepointradio.com 7:00 PM Eastern, replayed the following Thursday night at 9:00 PM Eastern. Love it or hate it or just get confused by it, you’ve never heard anything like it before. At least not since 1976.
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Martha Thomases
May 25, 2009 - 5:49 am
And what’s up with Liz Cheney appearing on all these shows to defend her father? Since when is being someone’s daughter a professional qualification?
pennie
May 25, 2009 - 6:40 am
Yeah, Liz gives lesbians everywhere a bad ride.
Dick Cheney, Dick Nixon…to paraphrase S. Freud: “Sometimes a Dick is just a dick.”
We all need protection with this Dick. STDs are the least of it.
Mike Gold
May 25, 2009 - 7:04 am
Martha: Well, it works for all the Kennedys. And, like, John Quincy Adams.
Pennie: For Cheney, rather STP than STD.
Martha Thomases
May 25, 2009 - 7:05 am
@Mike: Can you imagine the howls from the right if Chelsea Clinton were to go on television to defend the policies of either of her parents?
Jeremiah Avery
May 25, 2009 - 8:43 am
Personally, I’m all for waterboarding the idiot that approved the flight over NYC – put him through some of the panic New Yorkers felt.
The Republicans could regroup and expand their base but with windbags like Dick going around, it’s not helping matters other than to remind people of the past 8 years of the Howdy Doody Show. At least Bush is staying out of the limelight.
Mike Gold
May 25, 2009 - 8:46 am
Martha: They better start writing down their rants. Chelsea’s got an excellent political future ahead of her, if she wants to pursue it. She did a great job campaigning for her mother, and knocked ’em out of the park on talk shows and interviews. Now, if only she hadn’t murdered Vince Foster…
I realize (or at least suspect) you meant “during or right after the Clinton administration.” But, at that time, it would get twisted into Chelsea’s defending her father’s betrayal of the family. And that was before Fox Noise.
Martha Thomases
May 25, 2009 - 9:19 am
@Mike: Chelsea may have ruined her chance for a political career by working for a hedge fund. But, you’re right — she speaks very well.
Alan Coil
May 25, 2009 - 9:57 am
http://www.dickipedia.org/dick.php?title=Dick_Cheney
Oh, I just had to link to it.
Marc Fishman
May 25, 2009 - 11:17 am
As a native son of this fair city, I was here for the rise and fall of Mr. Mullen. He speaks his mind, and although I feel like everything out of his mouth is generally a lie, or at best “shock jock fodder”… this little incident certainly shows exactly what’s “ok” in “shoot you in the face” Cheney’s book. It’s the kind of thing I truly HOPE my generation will abolish when we get our shot at power. But time corrupts so many.
I guess what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. I say we indict Bush and Cheney… charge them with war crimes, and then subject then to a little baggin taggin boardin’ party too.
pennie
May 25, 2009 - 1:02 pm
One selfish erotic stud, Dick’s into group sex huge. Consider how many of us he fucked at once–and we never came!
A hardcore exhibitionist, right in public, for years, Dick got into Bush…
Mike Gold
May 25, 2009 - 2:06 pm
Madam! Such language!
pennie
May 25, 2009 - 4:40 pm
What? Dick? group? Bush?
Okay,hard as it will be, I’ll try to refrain from “public sex.” Promise.
}’;>)
Madam?
Better go tend to my girls…
}’;>)
Great column as ever Mike.
Mike Gold
May 25, 2009 - 8:19 pm
Don’t refrain from nothin’ on MY account, Pennie!
But say hi to your girls…
Vinnie Bartilucci
May 26, 2009 - 9:45 am
Mancow’s waterboarding was a pale imitation of the real thing. If you want to read about a real waterboarding experience, check out Christopher Hitchens’, as reported in Vanity Fair:
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/08/hitchens200808
He went the whole nine yards, masked, taken to an unknown location, the lot. Mancow’s version was peanuts.
I can, unfortunately, envision situations (the famous “bomb in a school” example) where “extreme interrogation” is a viable option, though certainly the last resort. One that must be considered seriously, one that one must be held accountable for after the fact, especially if it results in nothing. It’s somewhat similar to my standing on things like abortion the death penalty, and while we’re at it, war – spend a LOT of time making the decision, then spend a little more and know full well once you’ve made the decision, you can’t un-do it.
I recall one of the techniques called under scrutiny was forcing the prisoner to remain awake and standing for extended period of time. I recall a note in response from Cheney basically saying What’s the big deal? I have to stand for a long time while I do my work…f*ckin’ babies…
Go rent a copy of Stalag 17. In it, Otto Preminger plays the commandant who interrogates a prisoner by…making him stay awake, standing up. The scene closes with a representative of the Geneva Convention chastising the Commandant, reminding him that when the war is over, both sides will have to answer for their actions. Great scene in a great movie, one perhaps a few politicians should catch.
I’m quite sure, based only on the law of averages, that the Bush policies resulted in some hits, and that there are some truly dangerous people incarcerated. If there weren’t, Obama wouldn’t be trying to keep a similar policy going under his admin.
In a rousing speech last week that chastised the previous administration (without naming any names) for its policies of long term incarceration without trial, announced he was trying to draft his own policies of long-term incarceration without trial. The notable difference (that most of the conservican talk show hosts chose to ignore) is that plans to have his system carefully overseen and basically be the last resort type of thing I mentioned before. And while many will happily point and call double standard, I think it’s another case of Obama realizing that some things are needed, though not in the way and to the degree that the Bush adminintration did them.
Alan Coil
May 26, 2009 - 10:20 am
Torture doesn’t work to get viable answers. That fact has been proven time and again.
Stalag 17 was fiction. Fiction means made up, not real.
Vinnie Bartilucci
May 26, 2009 - 10:53 am
“Stalag 17 was fiction. Fiction means made up, not real. ”
Thank you for alerting us to this. I shall clarify my point, incorporating this new information.
In the film (which, as you have cogently pointed out to us, was fiction) fictional Nazis were using interrogation techniques which we are now usingin the non-fictional world. This was intended to draw a shocking parallel between the two. Similarly, the dramatic scene with “the Geneva man” reminding the Commandant that he will be held accountable for his actions can be used to draw a parallel to the fact that in the real world, similar oversight and accountability should be required in siilar situations.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/allegory
Quite often, fiction can be used to draw attention to real world problems in a way that will allow the lesson to pass through the barriers a person has set up against learning such lessons. Some people are more literal minded and while being well aware of the sharp differences between reality and fantasy, cannot always accept or understand that they can still reference each other. Or sometimes people race through the story or essay too quickly, seeking out words or phrases they recognize, latch on to them and use them in retorts, not actually reading the sentences and paragraphs which contain said words and phrases.
My apologies for not using a more universal or easily grasped illustrative technique.
Rick Oliver
May 26, 2009 - 2:10 pm
Keith Olbermann offered to donate a thousand bucks to charity for every second Hannity would endure waterboarding. Since Hannity didn’t have the balls to live up to his own words, Olbermann donated $10K to charity for Mancow’s six seconds of fame. I think Mancow is going to be on Countdown sometime this week.
Mike Gold
May 26, 2009 - 2:35 pm
“I think Mancow is going to be on Countdown sometime this week.” I’m still amazed. But it does explain how all that pig shit got on my roof.
Alan Coil
May 27, 2009 - 7:12 am
Mancow was on Countdown Tuesday night.