Holy water, Batman! Mr. Self-important, Christopher Young, perennial Little Rhody multi-office political candidate and Olympic table-flipper, is back in the news.
No, Chris wasn’t being persecuted by local bank branch employees because they knew of his stance on federal monetary policy. This time, it appears, he had a superb fit of self-induced impetuousness. Maybe it was just past his bedtime, and he was sleepy and cranky.
The Urinal’s lovely Smith Hillette, Cynthia Needham, reported that when Young spoke on the gay marriage issues before the House Judiciary Committee on May 8, he sounded tired and emotional while speaking against combining superior behavior and marital bliss.
As Needham wrote, “Young chided committee members for falling asleep, accused them of corruption, of not believing in God and said their need to repay favors drives their legislative decisions. After Young quoted at length from the Bible, Rep. Raymond J. Sullivan, Jr. (D-Coventry) warned him to be careful as such quotations are subject to misinterpretation.
Apparently thinking he’d heard Sullivan say something about Satan, Young asked ‘You say Satan a lot, don’t you? You like that term, don’t you?’ ”
Hey, what’s not to like about Satan, except for his notoriously short temper and occasional treatment of sinners as if they were suspects at Guantánamo. And hey, Repre-sentative Sullivan — that’s Mister Satan to you, pal.
MCCAIN’S MAN, BURMA SHAVED
Ah, what of Mr. Straight Talk, the mighty Republican presidential candidate, who is generally not bothered by the compliant national media?
Mark Penn, Billary’s right-hand man and chief advisor, was forced to resign from her campaign (although, of course, he still might be giving her input) because he was lobbying for the Colombian government, for passage of a free-trade agreement opposed by Senator Pantsuit. So we hope everyone notes how one of Dubya McCain’s boys has also been screwing the sordid international pooch to line his pockets.
Newsweek reported that Doug Goodyear, the man chosen by McCain to run the GOP convention this summer, and the CEO of a $3 million lobbying firm, works for the military junta in Myanmar. Yep, that’s the junta with a horrid human-rights record, the same fun guys who recently refused US aid for victims of the catastrophic cyclone in their country. You know how hard it is to quickly do the math in taking your proper cut off the top.
Funny, isn’t it, how Barack Obama gets ridiculed for the ranting of a preacher with whom he has no official contact, yet Hillary and McCain have greedy, morally dubious types cozying up, whispering advice in their ear, and being compensated for their wise counsel, while they simultaneously do dirty work for even more repulsive types. Who are the bigger whores? Johnny or Hilly, or their friends, Doug and Mark? No matter, all birds of a feather.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
Once again, Comedy Central cuts closer to the truth than the mainstream media. From The Colbert Report, as noted in Charles Kaiser’s “Full Court Press” blog on radaronline.com:
ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: McCain has “such a passion for Iraq — that’s his Viagra.”
STEPHEN COLBERT: “I guess the warning on that should be, ‘If your erection lasts more than a hundred years, pull out!’ ”
VOICE OF THE BARON
“Don’t get buffaloed by the blowhards who say that middle class people now have capital gains too: Eighty percent of that $39 million is going to about 7,600 people who make $200,000 a year or more.”
That’s Jim Baron, cutting through the baloney in his “Politics as Usual” column in the Times of Pawtucket this past Monday. Referring to the governor and the General As-sembly, Baron offers this terse (and spot-on) analysis: “Why won’t they freeze the flat tax phase in or readjust capital gains? Because they care about rich people more than they care about you. Perhaps, more accurately, they are more afraid of what rich people might do — hold back political contributions, for instance — than they are afraid of the average constituent.”
BATTLE OF THE BISCUITS
Perhaps it is due to a wee bit of embarrassment (having just voted in Boris Johnson, one of the most “colorful” Western politicians since Jesse “the Body” Ventura, as mayor of London) that our jickey siblings across the pond have so overreacted to the Oreo. The biscuit-mad Brits feel under siege because of the recent introduction of this Yank fave-rave to their culinary markets.
“[The Yanks] are trying to snatch the biscuit from our mouths and replace it with a tackier piece of inferior confectionary,” one British tabloid howled, while another tab took a more traditionally Laborite warfare approach: “An imperial juggernaut of a biscuit backed by one of the world’s biggest food companies.”
While the Oreo will never replace the “Jammie Dodger” (a popular biscuit of shortbread & raspberry jam, not a throwback Brooklyn baseball fan in stateside sleepwear) in the heart of a true Englishman, the Oreo is making inroads with many in the UK. In fact, some British Oreo aficionados had been indulging in black market cookies for years.
Anita Rawal, a personal assistant from Borehamwood in north London, told the Christian Science Monitor that her entire family likes Oreos to the extent that she would have her mother-in-law in Nepal (where they have been available for some time) send them to her in England.
Still, many Brits will not give up without a fight. “Before we know it, the next generation of kids will not know the word ‘biscuit’ at all,” Borehamwood resident Faizaan Sack-ett raged to the Monitor. “Whether it is fast food, TV chat shows or cookies, we must resist all that is American for the sake of our souls.”
Send Jammie Dodgers and Pulitzer-grade tips top&j@thephoenix.com.
