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August 1, 2006 - July 25, 2006

Tuesday, August 30, 2005


God Blames Bush

God says, no, it's not his fault.

NOBODY'S FOOL. After months of silence regarding his role in the grim tide of events around the world, God gave a surprise press conference yesterday in Los Angeles for members of the U.S. and some international media. The event was presided over by David Boies, lead attorney for God's legal team, who fielded questions from the floor. His client participated via a computer-email hookup for close to an hour. The XOFF News Team has obtained the following transcript:

DAVID BOIES. On behalf of the Lord and Creator of the Universe, I'd like to welcome you all, and I'd like to thank Capitol Records for allowing us to use their facilities for this unprecedented event. I will read a short statement approved by my client, and then we will take some of your questions. Here's the text of the statement:

"I understand that many many people around the world are not pleased with certain happenings that have occurred in recent months and years. I wish to state for the record that I sympathize with all those who have suffered and are suffering. I further wish to state that said suffering has been caused in large part not by divine intention, but by human error. I therefore cannot accept responsibility or liability for any losses, damages, or reparations that might be owed to individual human beings. I will now attempt to answer questions, although under advice of counsel, I must warn you that I cannot speak to specifics which may be pertinent to future litigation."

My office will give you copies of the text afterwards. We'll proceed now to the question-and-answer phase. Yes, Chris, you had your hand up?

CHRIS MATTHEWS, MSNBC. To touch on what is occupying everyone's attention today, I'd like to say that I'm a good Catholic except for being pro-choice, and it's an honor to meet you. I want to ask about Hurricane Katrina, which is only the latest in a pattern of increasingly violent weather, including the recent tsunami, that has killed hundreds of thousands of Asians as well as hundreds of Americans in the southern states. Do you accept any responsibility for these catastrophes, or is it rather the case that human -- and especially American leadership -- has so failed in its planning and execution of environmental policy, as well as foreign policy, that you really can't be blamed?

GOD. That's exactly right, Chris. A certain amount of weather is normal, of course, but what we've seen lately is outrageous by any standard. Your scientists long ago identified the danger of global warming caused by human-generated greenhouse gases, and most of the world's nations were prepared to solve the crisis with the Kyoto protocols. The United States in particular has chosen to ignore climate change and the extreme storms it might generate, and now you are paying the price. I had nothing to do with it. Oh, and Chris, did anyone ever tell you you talk too much? Less is more, believe me.

AN NG, HANOI CITY TIMES. Two questions. Are you saying that the terrible loss of life we've experienced due to weather is the fault of the greedy running dog capitalists of the west, and by this I mean specifically George Bush of the United States? And if so, why is it that weather in Asia kills hundreds of thousands and in America only hundreds, if that?

GOD. The answer to your first question is yes, although I cannot mention individual names because of legal considerations, you understand. The answer to your second question is somewhat more complicated. Unfortunately for many, the United States is the most powerful and influential nation in the world, and its will is therefore imposed -- rightly or wrongly -- on billions who are powerless to disagree. What has been clear for almost half a century now is that the American people -- and their institutions, including the Supreme Court of the United States -- have decided that no American citizen should die from any cause, including disease, old age, natural catastrophe, plane crash, auto accident, war, et cetera. I used to have the power to intervene at times in such affairs, but the American supreme court has, in a long series of decisions, eliminated my right to do so. It is, at this point, illegal for me to correct the imbalance of death and suffering that exists between the United States and the poorer nations of the world. Soon, I expect, the more progressive Americans will pass laws that prevent me from afflicting any American with any ailment or injury under any circumstances. Such is the power of western liberalism. My hands are tied.

AHMED SIH, AL JAZEERA. I must confess that I am very disappointed to hear you speak in this way. Are you not Allah, who chose the Prophet Muhammed as his voice and strong right arm? I hear you condemn the selfishness and greed of the infidel Americans, but I do not hear you promise the vengeance, bloodshed, and justice we have learned from Muhammed to expect. What is your explanation of the war of aggression fought by Americans against my Arab brethren, and what are you going to do about it?

DAVID BOIES. Give us a moment. (Thirty to forty seconds of typing by Boies, followed by an interval of silence and more typing.)

GOD. On your knees, Ahmed Sih! Who are you to question Allah, Lord of Creation? There's only one question you should concern yourself with: how might YOU submit to MY will more perfectly. I shall deal with the Americans in my own way, in my own time. That is all.

MAUREEN DOWD, WASHINGTON POST. Speaking of the war in Iraq, could you comment on the despicable behavior of a president who takes months and months of vacations while American children are dying in the Sunni Triangle?

DAVID BOIES. Give us another moment. (More typing, etc).

GOD. I have no comment at this time, except that you really do need to break it off with Don. He's just playing you.

ANN COULTER. Quit shrieking, Modo. If this is really God, he's drunk or just killing time. How could he resist an opportunity to mess with a ship of fools like this one? Me, I have no questions he's in any mood to answer.

GOD. Hi, Ann. Like your skirt. And thanks for the beaucoup laughs. I have no answers you're in any mood to question. So there.

PAT ROBERTSON, CHRISTIAN BROADCASTING. I regret to tell you, O Lord, that like Ahmed Sih -- and unlike Ann Coulter, apparently -- I am grievously disappointed to hear you speak in this way. Since when are you bound by the sinful rulings of the Supreme Court? Does this mean that you will do nothing to end the holocaust of abortion and the immoral spread of a secularism which even denies you credit for Creation itself? Are you simply going to stand by and watch us fall into decay and hellish ruin? Is there no hope for us?

GOD. Hey, Pat. Chill. You really should have paid more attention in your science classes at Yale. Or didn't you take any? Do you really think I have the kind of time it would take to be the personal totem you make me out to be? That I'm available every second to improve your personal finances, make your wife understand you better, and punish all the other sinful beings you fancy more sinful than yourself? Your scientists aren't idiots, you know. They're pretty close to the mark when they describe Creation as an ancient moment when certain natural laws were set in motion, so that things could progress pretty much on their own afterwards. Do you imagine that I deliberately designed the duckbilled platypus? Pfui. And if I really were the kind of personal deity you say I am, why would I care about a few fetuses when I have been doling out plagues, wars, and irreparable heartbreaks of every kind since the dawn of your sorry history? Grow up. And while you're at it, quit pretending to speak for my son. He's as sick of it as I am.

STEVE DOUCY, FOX NEWS. Excuse me, sir. I'm a weatherman for the Fox News Channel, so forgive me if I ask a question that's a little off topic. You seemed to be blaming the tsunami on George Bush -- maybe not in so many words, but effectively, if you know what I mean -- and the thing is, the tsunami wasn't a weather event, per se. It was caused by an earthquake. Earthquakes aren't caused by global warming, are they?

GOD. I know it's in the nature of your puny species to obsess about details. I don't. I'm the Big Picture type. If you really want to know, I couldn't care less about HOW tsunamis and hurricanes are the fault of the American government. They just are. You'll have to take my word for it.

PAUL KRUGMAN, NEW YORK TIMES. Isn't the situation with Hurricane Katrina really an extraordinary nexus of numerous strands of incompetence by this administration? Isn't it possible that you played some part in arranging a kind of expose of Bush and his cronies -- to demonstrate in vivid terms that he caused the hurricane by blowing off Kyoto and then made it impossible to formulate an effective response because all the National Guard troops are in Iraq, and people can't even get away because of his mismanagement of gas prices? Are you sure you're not trying to tell us something with all this? And could you comment on the two successive presidential elections that have been stolen by this criminal?

DAVID BOIES. These are all matters that are too specific for divine comment, Paul. (Boies consults the computer screen.) Although God does offer an aside. He says, and I quote, "I thought you were an economist, Krugman. Did I miss something?"

SIMON FREAS, WALL STREET JOURNAL. Speaking of economics, could you comment on the housing market? Are we in the midst of a real estate bubble that's about to collapse? A simple yes or no will do.

GOD. Personally I'd advise diversifying into equity markets and, as an inflation hedge, money market funds.

RANDI RHODES, AIR AMERICA. I can't believe you ducked that question about Iraq. Now you're exchanging chit-chat with corporate fascists. Incredible. I demand to know why you humiliated Ahmed Sih like that. He's the victim here. His country has been invaded by imperialist aggressors, and you diss him like some punk Republican. Where were you during Abu Ghraib? Holding the camera? I'm not saying I believe in you anyway, but in case you do exist, I have to ask you on behalf of all the grieving mothers in the world, what DO you have to say about that evil, lying monster George W. Bush and the illegal, genocidal war against Arabs in Iraq? What about the weapons of mass destruction that weren't there? What about--

GOD. Silence, riblet. If you knew how to read between the lines at all, you'd see that I've already made it clear I have nothing to do with the war in Iraq. I don't "hold cameras." And where do you get off talking to me like that? Of course I exist. But if I don't care about a few million aborted fetuses, why would I care about a few hundred grieving mothers? You can't have it both ways  -- unless you're, and that's right, you ARE -- an American. Even if you pretend you really aren't. And if I want to humiliate a boring fanatic from al jazeera, it's no skin off your nose, is it? My question to you is, what is it exactly you're so pissed off about? Haven't I said practically everything you'd want me to say -- that everything wrong on the planet is the fault of your President, that I'm powerless against the self-appointed demigods of your Harvard Law School, that I don't give a rat's ass about the Right to Life, and that I, the Creator of the Universe, have chosen to arbitrarily limit my power to that of initial cause, thus confirming that everyone and everything you see around you is the spectacular accident you prefer it to be? Is there no end to your self-serving demands? What if I told you that I'm only holding this idiotic press conference in the first place because my attorneys suggested it -- that they were paranoically concerned that I'd experience a PR backlash from Hurricane Katonah, or whatever you call it, because I dared to splash a few of your cities as part of my Grand Plan for--

BOIES. (clicking off the computer terminal) Excuse me, I think I'd better call it a day right there. I'd ask you to disregard the last few statements. God has been very upset about the recent weather events in the south, and he's close to total exhaustion. Thank you, thank you, for your time. Don't forget your copies of the official release....

What we can't figure is why Boies didn't take a question from Time or Newsweek. Was that a divine instruction or just another accident?

UPDATE, 1:26 PM. Re the AWOL InstaPunk. This just in from a blogger in Michigan:



He reports the picture was taken on Rte I-70 South from Detroit. The vehicle was moving at an "extremely high rate of speed." Needless to say, we are growing VERY concerned. We can't keep making up all this tasteless stuff without him.




Monday, August 29, 2005


World Champions

The Ewa Beach, Hawaii, Little League Team

NAILBITER. It was a great game between Hawaii and defending champion Curacao, marred only by an umpire's call more amateurish than anything done by kids in the series. In what should have been an inning-ending double play in the third, the Americans caught a Curacao baserunner in a rundown between second and third, then threw out another baserunner attempting to steal home. The runner was doubly out. He ran out of the basepath trying to elude the tag, but was deftly tagged from behind anyway. Only the umpire standing ten feet away at home failed to watch any of it but the runner sliding across home plate. Curacao scored another run after the uncalled third out, taking a 3-1 lead.

The Hawaiians could have lost heart at this turn of events, but they responded in their next at bat with a pair of lead-off homeruns to tie the game once more. Curacao fought back, too, and grabbed a 6-3 lead in the fifth with a pair of their own homeruns, one with a runner aboard. When the Americans went down 1-2-3 in the bottom of the fifth it looked as if the game might be over. But the Hawaiian relief pitcher, Vonn Fe'ao, took the mound at the top of the sixth with a look of ice-cold fury in his eyes and seemed to keep throwing his pitches harder, edging up to the Little League equivalent of a 98 mph fastball.(The smaller field dimensions increase the effective speed of a pitch.) A Curacao runner reached third, where Fe'ao stranded him with an inning-ending strkeout.

Fe'ao also scored the first run of the Hawaiians' gutsy comeback in the bottom of the sixth (and last chance) inning, which tied the game with a couple base hits, adroit baserunning, and a turn of speed that converted a possible game-ending double play into a third run.

In the top of the seventh, Fe'ao threw even harder, reaching the equivalent of 100 mph with his fastball. His manner on the mound was so intimidating that it drew a rebuke from ABC commentator Brent Musberger, but that didn't save the heart of the Curacao lineup. Fe'ao struck them all out with hardly a wasted pitch.

Michael Memea, the catcher, was first up for the Hawaiians in the bottom of the seventh, and as he walked to the plate, the camera caught a glimpse of Fe'ao striding back and forth in the dugout like a caged tiger, waiting for his own imminent turn at bat. He never got the chance. Memea blasted a centerfield homerun (his second of the game), and Hawaii brought home its first world championship ever.

Both teams have plenty to be proud of. Curacao played hard and well. The Hawaiians played as if they simply weren't going to accept anything less than victory. Congratulations are due to each and every player, coach, and parent.


Remember this name: Vonn Fe'ao

And we'd also like to go on record as saying that Vonn Fe'ao is a name to remember. In a few more years he could be burning up the majors with his passion for winning. We'll be waiting.

UPDATE. InstaPunk is still missing... Someone sent us this snapshot from upstate New York, but the car was apparently quicker than the shutter.



Please let us know by email of any sightings. He's long overdue at the office.




Saturday, August 27, 2005


Test Drive

InstaPunk is missing. He was last seen test driving this car. He could be
anywhere by now. If you see him, please email the site. We're worried.




Thursday, August 25, 2005


Our Favorite Liberals:
Michael Moore Update


Extreme Makeover

GOODNESS RESURGENT. Well, they say you can't keep a good man down, and Michael Moore seems to be recovering nicely from his post-election depression. It helps to find worthwhile things to do, things that keep you so busy you don't have time to dwell on catastrophes past.

Luck helps too. If you hate Jews, for example, it's normally impossible to find situations in which you get to laugh at the conduct of the Israeli army. Normally, they roll out fast, kick some Palestinian ass, and go back home grimly triumphant. But Allah has been smiling on his adopted son Michael; according to IsraPundit:

If you were watching closely FoxNews coverage of the Kfar Darom Expulsion, you would have seen among the media pool Radical Leftist MICHAEL MOORE, famous propagandist Hollywood director, standing outside the Kfar Darom Synagogue with a smirk and his video camera, shooting humiliating video footage of the Jews being dragged out of the Synagogue, to show his friends, the peace-loving Palestinians, Moveon.org and the ISM.

What could be more fun than watching Jews carrying crying Jews out of their houses in Israel? Maybe only one thing, but it's a thing so good that it takes away the sting of getting  thrown out of Israel. You can help use a grieving mother to score cheap political points against the commander-in-chief of your country. Cool:

Politics have again made for strange bedfellows: Michael Moore cares about a Dead White Guy. Moore is among the internationalist socialists and anti-U.S. fanatics supporting protest operations in Crawford, Texas, outside President Bush’s ranch.

The protest’s figurehead is Cindy Sheehan whose son, Casey, was a soldier killed in Iraq in April 2004. An obliging media portrays Sheehan as one-woman-making-a-difference, but Moore and groups such as Code Pink-Women For Peace, MoveOn.org and others orchestrate the events and publicity.

But what happens when the grieving mother leaves the media stage for a while? Why, you can fill in the time helping to organize a brand new liberal way of supporting the troops. Who wouldn't want to get in on something like this?

Anti-war protestors besieged wounded and disabled soldiers at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, D.C, a new web report will claim!

CNSNews.com is planning to run an expose on Thursday featuring interviews with both protestors and veterans, as well as shots of protest signs with slogans like “Maimed for a Lie.”

The conservative outlet will post video evidence of the wounded veterans being taunted by protesters, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

Yes, if you're a good man, you have to go the last mile in supporting the brave troops who are trying to free Iraq from Halliburton, parliamentary democracy, and the Great Satan. Allah be praised.

More fun than a barrel of monkeys, and it definitely lifts the thunderheads of depression, even if a lonely cloud or two remains and starts following you around with a video camera. What are you supposed to do about persecution like this?

Michael & Me," my self-financed, independent film, recently debuted on Amazon.com.

Michael Moore argues that America possesses "too many guns." If so, why in the last 20 years -- with gun ownership up -- has violent crime declined in America? Liberals believe gun control reduces crime. Does it? What about the effect on urban crime when cities outlaw so-called "cheap Saturday night specials"?

How often do Americans use guns for defensive purposes? I wanted to put this question to Moore. He tells us, for example, that over 11,000 people die each year because of guns. But how many Americans credit their lives with their ability to use a gun to defend themselves?

"Michael & Me" asks why, if America possesses "too many guns," is the murder rate among Japanese Americans actually lower than in Japan? And why, in England, with severe gun restriction, is the English murder rate growing, and the violent crime rate -- assaults, car thefts, hot burglaries -- now exceeding ours?

As Moore did in his entertaining film "Roger & Me," I sought out the director -- some might say "ambushed" -- in order to ask him a few questions. 



The nerve. As if a REAL film producer doesn't have enough tricks up his sleeve to thwart and even upstage an amateur like what's-his-name. What do you do? You grab a bigger headline than he ever could:

There  may soon be less of  Michael Moore.

The portly propagandist is doing a stint at the Pritikin Longevity Center & Spa in Aventura, Fla. — also known as the "fat farm for the rich." Moore is learning how to cook healthy meals and exercise and attending classes on "life re-education."

The program starts at $3,800 a week and promises enrolees they'll "learn a new approach to eating," "never have to diet again," and can lose up to 12 pounds in the first three weeks.

The facility also has "cosmetic/medical treatments, such as intense pulsed light, botox injections, and Restylane."

But is this the whole story? Not on your life. A REAL celebrity knows when to take a hard look all the way around the table and go "all in." The XOFF News Team has learned that Michael Moore has signed a seven-figure deal with the ABC show Extreme Makeover to devote an entire season to the largest single challenge in the history of cosmetic surgery and the allied arts: to make Michael Moore attractive.

No expense will be spared. Teams of surgeons have been gathered from around the world, as well as dentists, ophthalmologists, personal trainers, clothing designers, hair stylists, and makeup artists. Their specific objectives include pioneering new surgical techniques to raise a recognizable human face from the melted-pudding-with-a-mouth Moore presently possesses, eliminating hundreds of pounds of flab and cellulite without actually requiring Moore to employ any self discipline or exercise in the process, and subtly altering Moore's eyes to eliminate (or reduce) their look of low animal cunning and sadistic megalomania.

Robert Ruth, a spokesman for Extreme Makeover: Michael Moore Edition, says, "There's no question that it's a risk. Michael is about as repulsive a person as anyone could imagine. Up close, he's even worse than he is in public. Two of our producers have already gone on long-term disability, and three more have quit. But that's what makes reality television so exciting. We'll succeed or fail live on TV in 22 weeks of the most grueling beautification project ever attempted. Be sure to tune in."

We can't wait. How about you?

While you're waiting, here are a few other delicious morsels about our favorite suppurating boil:

Two Peas in a Pod.

Palme D'Or for Michael Moore.

Michael Moore's Little Oysters.

Abuse of Power, Chickenhawks, and the Limbaugh Defense.

Plus, a link to the site of our good friend Dave Hardy: MooreExposed.com.





Wednesday, August 24, 2005


Dowdifying Dowd

Back from her multi-month vacation hiatus.*

"I mean, I like to exercise... (I'm) psychopathic about it."
-- Maureen Dowd

PROFESSIONAL JOURNALIST. Like many people, I suppose, I used to read Maureen Dowd's columns and think, "What the hell is she talking about?" She makes references to current events, but the landscape is always rearranged in ways that make it oddly remote from reality, as if she were living in some alternate universe. At that point, I could have taken the wise course followed by thousands of other readers and simply shrugged, turned on my heel, and walked away. But there was something about her that gnawed at me, as if, contrary to superficial appearances, there really was a sentient human being lurking inside her delusionary world of mangled quotes and malicious mixed metaphors.

Then I read the following passage in one of her columns from January 2005:

In all those great Tracy/Hepburn movies more than a half-century ago, it was the snap and crackle of a romance between equals that was so exciting. Moviemakers these days seem far more interested in the soothing aura of romances between unequals.

In James Brooks's "Spanglish," Adam Sandler, as a Los Angeles chef, falls for his hot Mexican maid. The maid, who cleans up after Mr. Sandler without being able to speak English, is presented as the ideal woman. The wife, played by Téa Leoni, is repellent: a jangly, yakking, overachieving, overexercised, unfaithful, shallow she-monster who has just lost her job with a commercial design firm. Picture Faye Dunaway in "Network" if she'd had to stay home, or Glenn Close in "Fatal Attraction" without the charm.

The same attraction of unequals animated Richard Curtis's "Love Actually," a 2003 holiday hit. The witty and sophisticated British prime minister, played by Hugh Grant, falls for the chubby girl who wheels the tea and scones into his office. A businessman married to the substantial Emma Thompson falls for his sultry secretary. A writer falls for his maid, who speaks only Portuguese.

(I wonder if the trend in making maids who don't speak English heroines is related to the trend of guys who like to watch Kelly Ripa in the morning with the sound turned off?)

Art is imitating life, turning women who seek equality into selfish narcissists and objects of rejection, rather than affection.

I realized, of course, that the whole column was really about herself , and then in an instant I realized that all her columns are really about herself. The distorted politcal topology she delineates day after day is , in fact, an accurate rendition of the "Universe of One" inhabited by a very lonely, insecure, and needy lady named Maureen Dowd.

If you'll think about this notion for a moment, it makes such great sense that it seems to explain everything that is otherwise unexplainable in her whacked-out commentary. She doesn't much care about using leader dots (that's ellipses for the snobbish among you) to transform the meaning of quotes into terms that suit her because she is accurately quoting all that she really hears or listens to. She still does it even though her journalistic sins in this regard have been formally recognized:

Dowd's critics, especially James Taranto, have often accused her of editing quotes and adding ellipses so as to change the quotes' intended meanings; the word "dowdify" has been coined to describe this habit. The word has been used as parlance among conservative journalists and bloggers to describe any wilful misinterpretation of a quote.

But she cares no more than Mrs. Malaprop about the ignominy of having such a pattern of blunders named for her. Why? She regards herself as a wit, and she believes that wit exists not to illuminate the topic but the speaker. She is always performing in a drawing room peopled by those whose admiration she desires. Every word of her writing reflects this perspective. She affects a chatty, breezy style reminiscent of cocktail party gossip as her preferred voice for condemning outrageous global-scale crimes against humanity. She is deaf to the dissonance of a catty little girl voice issuing from the throne of the star chamber. She cannot hear herself because she is always merely seeing herself talking brilliantly. Amd that's what she wants from us. When she refers to Rumsfeld as "Rummy" she practically insists that we see her scowling and gesticulating in her couture dress while sipping a glass of chic white wine. The real purpose of calling him Rummy is to convey her superiority to him, and the reason for talking about national and international policy is the same. She is showing us exactly where she wishes to be placed in the scheme of things, which is always, invariably, at the center of attention.

It gets easy to understand Maureen Dowd's columns when you have internalized this model of her universe. Whatever she seems to be writing about, she is always talking about something that is obsessing or troubling her in her own life at the moment. If you doubt it, take a look at her recent columns about her favorite bete-noire George W. Bush. These are important because they mark her return after a mysterious "hiatus" from her job at the New York Times, which began at least as early as the first week of June:

Where's MoDo?...  Have you noticed any of President Bush's critics at the New York Times or Air America Radio being shipped off to a prison camp lately? Me, neither, although the official explanation for Maureen Dowd's current hiatus is still pending....

Yet in her very first column after returning to work, she wrote:

It's amazing that the White House does not have the elementary shrewdness to have Mr. Bush simply walk down the driveway and hear the woman out, or invite her in for a cup of tea. But W., who has spent nearly 20 percent of his presidency at his ranch, is burrowed into his five-week vacation and two-hour daily workouts. He may be in great shape, but Iraq sure isn't.

It's worth stressing the fact that her little razor slash about a five-week absence from the White House comes hard on the heels of her own (minimum) eight-week absence from her duties at the Times. When we dial in the "Universe of One" effect, we can see that Maureen is clearly troubled about some aspect of her own vacation hiatus. But what? We can obtain a clue here by examining the always fertile realm of Dowdian equivalencies. For example, she chooses to equate the President's physical "shape" with the plight, the nationwide "shape," of Iraq. She may regard this as wit, but for those who are truly concerned with the suffering of U.S. troops and Iraqis in wartime, the jest falls a bit flat. It's flippant, and because it calls more attention to a turn of phrase than to the elements it manipulates, it's more self-aggrandizing of the writer than demonstrative of anything like truth. The Iraq War is being pressed into service as a punchline, nothing else.

But Dowd has somehow equated them in her own mind. It must be that there is something cosmically important about the term "great shape." This is confirmed by another of her equivalencies, seen in the phrase "five week vacation and two-hour daily workouts." The thoughtful reader must conclude that Dowd has the subject of exercise on her mind.

Can we possibly prove such a theory? Yes. Turning to her latest column, (titled My Private Idaho, and note the possessive pronoun) we read [emphases mine]:

W. vacationed so hard in Texas he got bushed. He needed a vacation from his vacation.

The most rested president in American history headed West yesterday to get away from his Western getaway - and the mushrooming Crawford Woodstock - and spend a couple of days at the Tamarack Resort in the rural Idaho mountains.

"I'm kind of hangin' loose, as they say," he told reporters.

As The Financial Times noted, Mr. Bush is acting positively French in his love of le loafing, with 339 days at his ranch since he took office - nearly a year out of his five. Most Americans, on the other hand, take fewer vacations than anyone else in the developed world (even the Japanese), averaging only 13 to 16 days off a year.

W. didn't go alone, of course. Just as he took his beloved feather pillow on the road during his 2000 campaign, now he takes his beloved bike. An Air Force One steward tenderly unloaded W.'s $3,000 Trek Fuel mountain bike when they landed in Boise.

Gas is guzzling toward $3 a gallon. U.S. troop casualties in Iraq are at their highest levels since the invasion. As Donald Rumsfeld conceded yesterday, "The lethality, however, is up." Afghanistan's getting more dangerous, too. The defense secretary says he's raising troop levels in both places for coming elections.

So our overextended troops must prepare for more forced rotations, while the president hangs loose.

I mean, I like to exercise, but W. is psychopathic about it. He interviewed one potential Supreme Court nominee, Harvie Wilkinson III, by asking him how much he exercised. Last winter, Mr. Bush was obsessed with his love handles, telling people he was determined to get rid of seven pounds.

Shouldn't the president worry more about body armor than body fat?

I think we can now begin to put the pieces together. Beginning in January, Maureen decided she was fed up with not being able to find a boyfriend who was her social superior (or at least her equal). Returning to that column, we can now read it with the following emphases:

In all those great Tracy/Hepburn movies more than a half-century ago, it was the snap and crackle of a romance between equals that was so exciting. Moviemakers these days seem far more interested in the soothing aura of romances between unequals.

In James Brooks's "Spanglish," Adam Sandler, as a Los Angeles chef, falls for his hot Mexican maid. The maid, who cleans up after Mr. Sandler without being able to speak English, is presented as the ideal woman. The wife, played by Téa Leoni, is repellent: a jangly, yakking, overachieving, overexercised, unfaithful, shallow she-monster who has just lost her job with a commercial design firm. Picture Faye Dunaway in "Network" if she'd had to stay home, or Glenn Close in "Fatal Attraction" without the charm.

The same attraction of unequals animated Richard Curtis's "Love Actually," a 2003 holiday hit. The witty and sophisticated British prime minister, played by Hugh Grant, falls for the chubby girl who wheels the tea and scones into his office. A businessman married to the substantial Emma Thompson falls for his sultry secretary. A writer falls for his maid, who speaks only Portuguese.

(I wonder if the trend in making maids who don't speak English heroines is related to the trend of guys who like to watch Kelly Ripa in the morning with the sound turned off?)

Art is imitating life, turning women who seek equality into selfish narcissists and objects of rejection, rather than affection.

It would seem that her affair with a very powerful and well connected married man had just gone south. She thought he viewed her as an equal -- and definitely more acceptable than the "jangly.. overexercised" wife -- but he dumped her for a mere chick, probably a famous but callow Kelly Ripa type. Interestingly enough, the exercise motif attaches to both rivals, including Kelly:

Kelly Ripa gained an amazing 80 pounds in her recent pregnancy and was back to her svelte physique in weeks.

And so Maureen finally decided that the only way to get her lover back, or to find an equally powerful replacement, was to get her aging body into peak condition. She hired a personal trainer and even went to the extreme length of taking a leave of absence from the New York Times, the better to commit herself to getting into "great shape."

Sadly, though, where the spirit was willing, the flesh was weak. Either she lacked the discipline to stick to her regimen, or her pecs and glutes and abdominals were too far gone. At any rate, she "got bushed" and finally took "a vacation from (her) vacation." Nothing has improved. She feels guilty. All this time, she should have been caring "more for body armor than body fat." And she's wasted all those months on what turned out to be no more than  "le loafing." Worse, the old boyfriend, whose heart she thought might grow fonder in her absence, refused to meet with her; he didn't even have the common decency to "simply walk down the driveway and hear (her) out, or invite her in for a cup of tea."

That's what's so supremely galling about George W. Bush. All those supremely powerful men are the same. Everything comes easily to them, and the women they should be consorting with are simply used and -- as soon as they make any demands -- contemptuously discarded as "selfish narcissists and objects of rejection." Nothing works. If you make a name for yourself by being fabulously witty about torture and roadside bombs, they dismiss you as a bitch who talks too much and leave you for the first bimbo with a great ass "who speaks only Portuguese." Then, if you stoop to catering to their basest instincts by slaving in the gym to develop a body to die for, they completely forget about you while you're away. Life sucks. It's kind of like a long bloody war of attrition in the middle east where you just can't win and you can't seem to walk away, and all the time the men who are responsible for making you so miserable just lie and smile and play with their toys and get away with everything.

It's hard to know what to say. Maureen, we're sorry things aren't working out for you. Maybe Rummy really will leave his wife one day. You can never tell.

*To be perfectly honest, this photo isn't completely 100 percent accurate. But it's true in certain terms. Think of it as a photographic, uh, ellipsis.




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