Archive Listing
February 24, 2007 - February 17, 2007

Friday, April 28, 2006

PUNK CONNECTIONS.  While we're out of town, we're giving you an opportunity to meditate on this first ever 360-degree tour of Britney Spears giving birth. It's provocative enough to raise all kinds of questions about the culture it's meant to communicate with. Who, for example, wouldn't feel a little bit of wonderment or confusion about how Britney's blatant sexuality fits into the feminist orthodoxy. Is it awful because it seems somewhat less than man-hating? Or is it okay because it flaunts the most indisputable capability women have that men don't? You pick it. This isn't the first time we've been puzzled about the context and consequences of contemporary feminism. Here's part of the Instapunk record on this topic:

Unmanliness.
Boola Boola.
Vietnam Psychosis.
The New Sex Appeal.
Miscellaneous Madness.
The Hillary Wing.
Anniversary.

See you first thing Monday morning with more.

Thursday, April 27, 2006

PUNK CONNECTIONS.  Thankfully, we're out of town, so we don't have to pay any attention whatsoever to anyone who's offended by this first ever 360-degree tour of Britney Spears giving birth. What does it make you think about? One of the things it made us think about is motherhood in general. Particularly in light of the fact that despite her recent bad press for dropping her kid on his head, Britney is pregnant again. This highlights the fact that what really makes a mother a mother is having children. Some of our prior thoughts on the subject may be more ambitious. Take a look:

Mother.
Ladies' Night.
Drudge Gets Sleazy...
Reforming the System.
Mothers and Sons.
Stepping In It.
Happy Mother's Day.
Mother Theresa.
Get Yourself a Cause.
Anniversary.

Meet us here at the same time tomorrow.

Wednesday, April 26, 2006

PUNK CONNECTIONS. It may not be art, but it's certainly iconic. In the punk way of thinking, that makes it a touchstone for every subject it might suggest or represent. We think it's funny that our proudly coarse mass media announced the creation of this sculpture but didn't have the guts to show more than a modest head shot to the teeming millions of Britney Spears-obsessed Americans. Why? Because she's giving birth. That's automatically more offensive than, say, Paris Hilton's night-vision sex video, which everyone has seen. Word has it that the sculptor intended the work as a pro-life statement, but pro-lifers were offended by his demonstration of the fact that babies come out of women's vaginas, which nobody should ever look at. Okay.

Thankfully, we're out of town, so we don't have to pay any attention whatsoever to anyone who's offended by this first ever 360-degree tour of Britney Spears giving birth. What does it make you think about? One of the things it made us think about is the whole abortion controversy. Of course, we've thought about the subject before, so take a good long look at Britney's parturition and then read the following.

Equality.
Not So Fast, Neal.
The Doorway.
So You Want to Have an Abortion...
She Was Hot.
Anniversary.

Guaranteed, you'll find food for laughter or thought in there somewhere. Come back tomorrow for a different perspective.

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

THE DEBATE. Duty calls. Due to extraordinary circumstances, the King of the Punks has ordered a special punk writer debate to be held between April 26 and May 8, 2006. We will report, or not, on the outcome upon our return, but in the interim we have prepared a series of entries that are (1) illustrative of the punk writer theory of connectedness, and (2) Not Safe for Work. Therefore, if you are a prude or otherwise easily offended, do NOT visit InstaPunk until May 9th. If you are anyone else, come visit every day, because we have an honest-to-goodness scoop to share with you in our inimitable way.

Now it's time to sharpen our scrivers and haul our battle-scarred torkjacks out of mothballs. Those of us who survive the Debate will be back.

Take care.

Monday, April 24, 2006

THE WAY. The whole liberal political-media universe has finally succeeded in becoming the opposite of everything sensible, truthful, and constitutional. Up is down. Back is front. Top is bottom. Lawfulness is illegal. Unlawfulness is admirable. Subordinates are superior to their superiors. Terror is politically correct. Hatred is fairness. Cowardice is principle. Speech is silence.

Can't see it? Permit me to specify.

Lawfulness is illegal. The President of the United States has the legal, constitutional authority to declassify classified information. This is indisputable. Consider the opposite case. If the President doesn't have the power to declassify information, who does? And if someone else holds higher authority in that function, how could we claim to be any kind of free republic? All the liberal claptrap to the contrary is absolute utter nonsense. And yet we get this:


Phooey.

Unlawfulness is admirable. The Mary McCarthy thing. Again, there can be no reasonable debate. Regardless of her political and even moral convictions, she signed an oath to her country not to reveal classified information to the press or public. She broke her oath and in so doing broke the law. This has nothing whatever to do with the First Amendment. No intelligence establishment could ever do anything to protect its country -- i.e., to fulfill its reason for existence -- if all intelligence employees were empowered to reveal any secret they wanted to. In breaking the law, Mary McCarthy betrayed the mission of her agency and her country. And yet we are subjected to this ludicrous blather:


"I don't know whether she did it or not." What puke. She confessed. Again, she wasn't fired for telling the truth, she was fired for telling, period. And the "revealing a CIA agent in order to support a lie" statement is even more vomit-inducing. Here's the real story. We can all be sure that Senator Kerry would love to be President of a country in which any intelligence operative who favored the opposition party could secretly plant stories in the press for the express purpose of discrediting him. Meanwhile, the reporters who conspired with the betrayer to sabotage the national security of their country are named Pulitzer Prize winners. Down is up.

Subordinates are superior to their superiors. Yeah, any handful of unhappy generals should always be sufficient to force the firing of their civilian boss. That makes sense -- according to 58 percent of the respondents to this web poll. But wait... here's a news flash for the whole stupid lot of you: The U.S. may be a democracy, but the military isn't. Generals don't get to fire a boss they don't like, anymore than you do at your place of work. Grow the hell up.

Terror is politically correct. So Hamas stands aside approvingly while a terrorist suicide bomber kills a half dozen Israeli civilians at a falafel stand, and great journalistic organizations like the AP, BBC, and Reuters join al Jazeera and other news networks in calling the event the "Tel Aviv blast" in their headlines. By this logic, 9/11 was an airliner crash or a building collapse,  Pearl Harbor was a pair of ship sinkings, and the Kennedy assassination was a tragically fatal head injury. The real lede -- information suggesting that the bomb blast was a cold-blooded murder sanctioned by the terrorist government of Palestine -- was either buried in the final paragraphs or glossed over altogether. Front is back.

Hatred is fairness. Just ask the New York Times. They can explain it to you.

Cowardice is principle. The Comedy Channel is filled with Bush-bashing, Christianity-demeaning comedies and comedians, and speaks proudly of its devotion to the First Amendment. But after choosing to censor a cartoon image of Muhammed on South Park while tolerating in the same show a cartoon image of Christ defecating on the American flag and the American president, they have the unmitigated gall to defend themselves thus (in an email sent to those who protested their disgraceful decision):


"To reiterate, as satirists..."? Uh, no. As satirists, the Comedy Channel folks were especially obligated to show the image of Muhammed. That they did not removes any right they have to claim that they are First Amendment champions.

Speech is silence. A couple of Arab thugs killed a Belgian boy for his Ipod last week. Since then, 80,000 Belgians have taken to the streets in protest, but if you read the accounts in the AP and BBC, you wouldn't know why. These purveyors of truth felt it was their responsibility to keep us from knowing that the murderers were probably muslims. Far better for us to be mystified and in the dark than know that unassimilated muslims are continuing to cause major unrest in Europe. The new mission of journalism is not to report difficult facts, but to conceal them. That's why the mainstresam media have also been working so hard to keep us from seeing the anti-American Mexican nationalism that's driving the protests of illegal immigrants against U.S. enforcement of its own laws. Up is down. Back is front. Top is bottom.

The good news is, there's nothing mysterious about what position a good liberal will take on any issue. Just turn the facts upside down, reverse the poles of right and wrong, and start spewing bile. It's a no-brainer.

Friday, April 21, 2006

UNDERCURRENTS. It's official. Madeleine Albright has been elected to the Democratic Hall of Fame, just as we predicted. The first sign of the elevation was the leaking by Editor & Publisher that the former Clinton secretary of state will be profiled in this Sunday's New York Times Magazine.  Since everyone remembers how effective she was at responding to al Qaeda attacks on U.S. embassies and the USS Cole, the Times didn't see fit to question her about the past but solicited her criticism of Condoleezza Rice and the War in Iraq, which she was happy to provide. But what's clearest about the interview is the fact that Ms. Albright has embarked on a new life, a kind of post-politics blooming that wiill undoubtedly make her a role model for many American women. She boasted about her exercise regimen and revealed the fact that she can leg press 400 lbs.

She was also eager to assign the credit for her curent fitness to her three office interns, Paolo, Giuseppe, and Antonio, who help her answer fan mail and supervise her workouts. As the Times reporter notes, "she positively glows with joie de vivre" when discussing her day-to-day activities.

Is there any romance she'd like to share with Times readers? To this, Secretary Albright responds with a girlish giggle before saying, "Of course not. I'm a very respectable woman. When I'm not lifting weights, I'm having tea parties and reading the papers. I have a reputation to uphold, you know, so I just carry out my responsibilities as a former secretary of state."


At a later point in the interview, Secretary Albright does turn serious when asked to identify the biggest lesson she took from her years in the Clinton adminitration. "I learned a lot," she says, "but the most surprising thing I learned was just how exciting it is to lie about sex. It's almost as much fun as the sex you're lying about."

Then she lit up a big cigar.

Welcome to the Pantheon of Democratic Gods.

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