Politics & Funk

“Face to face
And back to back
You see and feel
My sex attack”

–Billy Idol

When he was 10, Billy Idol joined the Cub Scouts. He wasn’t Billy Idol then, he was William Michael Albert Broad and he was living a rather unremarkable existence in Goring, England. He went to school, played sports, climbed trees, went to the theater, attended church, did the dishes, hung out with his mates and engaged in the normal activities of a 10-year-old boy. For this reason, it wasn’t much of a surprise that when most of his peers joined the St. Mary’s Cub Scouts, Billy did, too.

But unlike his friends, Billy’s career as a Cub Scout was short-lived. And the reason he was asked to leave the chapter—a mere 3 months after he joined—forecasted a destiny that could not be properly groomed by tying square knots and building tepees. Sure, Billy had already displayed a bit of a wild streak, but when he was caught by his scoutmaster feeling up a girl five years his senior behind a hotdog stand in the midst of a soapbox derby, it became abundantly clear that he had talents far beyond whittling. He was pure sex, a budding cocksman of epic promise, and such a threat to the moral integrity of the Cub Scouts that his presence could no longer be tolerated.

Yes, in October of 1965, William Albert Broad was given the boot by the St. Mary’s Cub Scouts. Months later, a teacher would write “Billy is idle,” on one of his school papers, in reference to Billy’s apparent disinterest in school. Ten years later, Billy would officially adopt the stage name Billy Idol during the formation of the Sex Pistols’ inspired punk band Generation X. Five years later, in 1984, he’d release his first solo album, Billy Idol, and armed with killer hair, a closet full of leather and an insatiable libido, he’d become a full-blown glam-rockstar and one of the earliest sex symbols of the burgeoning network MTV.

Since then, Billy’s almost died twice—first due to a motorcycle accident and then a mammoth overdose of GHB—but fate tends to smile on the hypersexual and Mr. Idol is still alive and thrusting today. In fact, he released Devil’s Playground, his first album in ten years, in 2005, and has been touring throughout 2008 in support of it.

It was three days ago—the morning after his Halloween show in Prague—that Billy’s agent, Leonard Washington, rang the central offices here at Politics and Funk.com. To be honest, the editorial staff was extremely hung over, and we only answered the phone as an alternative to breaking it into pieces to stop the ringing. But regardless of how haggard we may have felt at the moment, Leonard Washington sounded much worse.

He told us that he had been up throughout the night trying to prevent Billy from being…..Billy. According to Washington, age has done little to quell Idol’s appetite for drink and women, and he had crashed a Halloween party the night before, downing a handle of Maker’s Mark whiskey and fornicating with a corset-clad college student in an attic. At the peak of his intoxication—minutes before he did a back-flip into a keg stand—Idol had confided in Washington that he was a huge fan of Politics and Funk and that he considered it the supreme avenue for online political discourse. He then proclaimed that the media’s coverage of the 2008 election had sickened him and that he felt a burning desire to set the American public straight on a few things before they stroll to the polls like “bloody fucking sheep” on Election Day.

“So, what does this have to do with us?” Chief Editor Jamal Nesbit finally barked into the phone.

“Well, Billy wants to endorse, and he wants to do it on P and F,” Washington replied.

“No way, no guest writers and no endorsements, those are the core principles of P and F. Call The New York Times, they’re lusting for more Obama endorsements.”

“He’s not voting for Obama.”

“What, you’re telling me Idol digs the GOP? Fuck, what kind of world is this?”

“No, not McCain either.”

“Oh, so he wants to write in Ron Paul’s name?”

“Wrong again.”

“Well, then, who?”

“Idol isn’t a shill for the two-party system. He’s voting for Nader. He wants 600 words and if you don’t give it to him he’s vowed to de-flower the daughters of your entire staff.”

“Ha, he’ll be in his seventies by the time they’re of age, he won’t even be able to get it up.”

There was a pause on the line and a scream from somewhere distant. Washington sounded confused and frazzled, like the master of a vicious albino pit-bull whose thirst for the mailman could not be denied. Nesbit had transferred the call to speaker phone, and the brainchild of P and F sat in a crude semi-circle perplexed at the commotion. To be honest, we didn’t have a clue what was going on. But then, a low, staccato humming boomed through the phone.

“It’s a bass-line,” Nesbit said.

It was. Billy proceeded to serenade us with an a capella version of his 1984 hit, “White Wedding.” It was a robust performance and we were all pretty impressed, including the sole female member of the P and F team, copyeditor Laura Lane Welch, who flung herself on top of the speaker phone. Her eyes were glazed over and her body was convulsing in delight.

“What’s happening,” Nesbit asked.

“That my friend, is the female orgasm,” Head Editor Eli Percepied said.

He was right.

It is hard to strong-arm an independent webzine with no real journalistic motivation except the exercise of ego, but Billy Idol did just that. By sending Welch into fits of erotic bliss, he made it apparent that his threat of plundering our first-borns weren’t idle ones. We were faced with a grim choice, and to be honest, an easy one.

So without further adieu, we present to you the presidential endorsement of Billy Idol. And if the prose seems unedited, well, that’s because our copywriter couldn’t work on this piece without being sent into spates of sexual exhilaration, so we decided to just publish it raw. Besides, I think Billy prefers it that way.

Read Billy Idol’s endorsement.

Tags: Barack Obama, Billy Idol, John McCain, Leonard Washington, Politics and Funk, Ron Paul

I am not a writer.

In fact, I hate writers, they are so bloody pompous.

When I meet them, I laugh at them and their wasted talents. The real poets end up on the cover of Rolling Stone in leather briefs and lipstick, not writing for some fucking rag that no one reads. So I apologize if my words are crude, but I feel compelled to share something with you regarding this election: you are on the verge of really fucking it up.

Who am I talking to? No, not you jingoist, morally-obsessed, inbred shit-heads who are voting for John McCain. Your shockingly primitive brains are of no interest to me. If I was the king, as I fucking should be, I’d banish you all to Alaska and build huge fences around the state so you couldn’t get out. You bloody hillbillies have the collective intelligence of a crushed PBR can.

No, I don’t care to sway any loyal GOP followers, as their hideousness is so vile it actually makes me feel un-sexy. Nor, do I seek to pull votes away from the solipsistic fervor of mainstream liberalism. If you identify in totality with the agenda Democratic party, then you should be forced to spend the rest of your life in a sports bar full of New England Patriots fans. This will expose you to the horror of myopic loyalty, you pansy, liberal fucks!

No, these words aren’t intended for loyalists of either of the two major parties, as they are both beyond hope. This letter is addressed to one specific demographic, and that is the so called progressive wing of the Democratic party.

Yeah, that’s right, I’m talking to you so put down the fucking bong and listen.

You’re so fucking heady with your Obama “Change” shirt on, but do you have a goddamn clue what you’re voting for? You’ve got peace stickers all over your Che poster (I’m sure he’d approve), a fucking picture of Thoreau on your wall, and Zinn’s Peoples History of the United States on your dresser (btw, he’s voting for Nader), yet you’re about to cast a vote for a neo-liberal with a thirst for hegemony, Wall Street bailouts, government wiretaps and corporate campaign contributions, whose one consistency is choosing political expediency over political fortitude.

Barack Obama is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Sure, he’s sexy, but so am I and do you really want me in control of the presidency?

Remember when he said he was going to take public financing during the general election? Well, he reneged, and in doing so struck a huge blow to the burgeoning clean elections movement.

Remember his opposition to the Iraq War? Yeah, well, that was a nice talking point, but unfortunately he voted to fund the war in the Senate instead of showing some courage and standing up to the bloody neocons.

What about his opposition to the Patriot Act? Oh yeah, he voted to authorize that, too?

But, wait, wasn’t he opposed to the FISA bill? Didn’t he promise to filibuster it? Yup, he did, before he caved and voted to provide immunity to the telecommunications industry for spying on Americans

Ok, you say, but at least he’s anti-war, right.

Fuck no, you ignorant Yankee. Obama’s a hawk, just look at the foreign policy advisors he’s surrounding himself with. He takes advice from Madeleine Albright, architect of the economic sanctions that led to the death of 500,000 Iraqi children under the reign of Bill Clinton. When they asked that fat toad if she thought it was worth it to kill 500,000 kids to exert America’s imperial dominance, do you know what she said?

“I think this is a very hard choice, but the price–we think the price is worth it.”

Five hundred thousand kids dead due to a lack of food and medicine and somehow this shrew validates it all so casually. And where Bush started, Obama is ready to take up the reigns. Sure, he’ll pull us out of Iraq, but only so he can expand the war in Afghanistan. Just weeks ago, he committed to send over 15,000 more troops once he’s president, proclaiming that “the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11 are still at large and plotting.”

So you better find Barack a Stetson, because it appears America’s about to have another cowboy occupying the presidency.

“So, what do you expect me to do?” you ask. “I mean, I know Obama isn’t perfect, but he’s the at least better than McCain, isn’t, he?”

You’re goddamn right he is, but that doesn’t mean you should vote for him.

There are 50 states in this nation of used-car dealers and only nine of them are in play in this election. If you don’t live in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Florida, Colorado, New Mexico, North Carolina, Missouri, or Indiana, you’re free to vote your conscience and you should.

So cast your vote for Ralph Nader.

This pimp has spent the last 50 years protecting everyday Americans from the corporations that prey upon us. He started his career by taking on the auto industry and is also responsible for the passage of The Clean Air, The Clean Water Act, the EPA, The Freedom of Information Act and a slew of other consumer-related reforms. He wants to cut the bloated Pentagon budget, truly abandon the American war doctrine, provide single-payer healthcare, mandate public financing of elections and demolish the corrupt two-party system.

Unfortunately, this true American hero has been excluded from the debates by the Republicans and Democrats, who have conspiratorially mandated that a candidate have a showing of 15% in the polls to participate—but you have the potential to right this wrong.

If Mr. Nader gets 5% of the national vote on Tuesday (he’s currently polling close to it), he will be granted public financing if he chooses to run in 2012. This means over 80 million dollars in funding and a chance to crack the corporate duopoly that’s been dominating politics for the last century.

Think about it. Do you really identify with Barack Obama’s policies? Do you really think that change comes from a candidate whose list of top donors is full of the Wall Street investment firms that precipitated the economic meltdown?

Declare your independence this Tuesday and a cast a vote for Ralph Nader.

Do it for yourself, do it for America, or do it for Billy fucking Idol, because outside of the pure sexual power of glam rock stardom, a vote is one of the most terrible things to waste.

Billy Idol is a British pop star. His views are his own and don’t necessarily represent those of Politics and Funk. He was granted this space after he threatened to plunder our first-born daughters.

Tags: Barack Obama, Billy Idol, FISA, Goldman Sachs, Madeleine Albright, Pariot Act, Ralph Nader

Who is Kirk Watson?

He’s just an archetypal Texas politician with a sweet, southern drawl. Unfortunately, on Tuesday, he found himself at the mercy of MSNBC anchorman and resident interrogator Chris Matthews. Watson, who currently serves in the Texas state senate, was called upon to articulate his support for Senator Barack Obama. Instead, he ended up on the wrong side of Matthew’s brutal, rhetorical assault.

Why settle for claim or win, when you can have them both?

Does Pat Robertson loathe you? Would he drive a cross soaked in holy-water through your aorta if he had a chance? The answer is yes, if you fall into one of the groups below.

A Protestant, Methodist, or Episcopalian

“You say you’re supposed to be nice to the Episcopalians and the Presbyterians and the Methodists and this, that, and the other thing. Nonsense. I don’t have to be nice to the spirit of the Antichrist.”

-The 700 Club, January 14, 1991

A Hindu or a Muslim

“When I said during my presidential bid that I would bring only Christians and Jews into the government, I hit a firestorm. ‘What do you mean?’ the media challenged me. ‘You’re not going to bring atheists into the government? How dare you maintain that those who believe in Christian values are better qualified to govern America than Hindus and Muslims?’ My simple answer is, ‘Yes, they are.’”

-The New World Order, By Pat Robertson

An Asian

On the February 7 edition of the The 700 Club, Robertson said that people who have received too much plastic surgery “got the eyes like they’re Oriental” while he put his fingers up to the side of his face and peeled his eyes back laughingly

A Feminist

“The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.”

-1992 Iowa fundraising letter opposing a state equal-rights amendment

An Employee of the State Department of the U.S. Government

“Maybe we need a very small nuke thrown off on Foggy Bottom(nickname for the state department) to shake things up.”

-The 700 Club, 2003

A Liberal Professor

There are “thirty to forty thousand” left-wing professors who “are racists, murderers, sexual deviants and supporters of Al-Qaeda”

-The 700 Club, March 21,2006

A Planned Parenthood Supporter

“It[Planned Parenthood] is teaching kids to fornicate, teaching people to have adultery, every kind of bestiality, homosexuality, lesbianism - everything that the Bible condemns.

-The 700 Club, 1996

A Homosexual

“[Homosexuals]want to come into churches and disrupt church services and throw blood all around and try to give people AIDS and spit in the face of ministers.”

- The 700 Club, 1/18/95

No dog can go as fast as the money you bet on him ~Bud Flanagan

Fuck Bud Flanagan. He’s dead and his words echo false right about now. They simply don’t take into account the evolution of the American political consciousness, or maybe it’s de-evolution, as it often seems. He’s not sitting in this desk where I am at the moment. He hasn’t spent a Saturday afternoon sifting through media reports and news articles detailing every minutia of the race for the GOP presidential nomination. He’s not wearing a v-neck t-shirt at dusk, rubbing his fingers up and down his temples, and glaring speculatively at this computer screen. In fact, Flanagan, a popular British entertainer during World War II, left this planet when Rudy Giuliani was only 24.

Just a young buck and a Democrat then, Mr. Giuliani was in the process of graduating from NYU’s law school. After getting a degree in theology from Manhattan College, he had initially flirted with the idea of priesthood in the Catholic Church. However, after meticulous consideration, he opted for a profession as an attorney instead. His career would turn out to be a fast moving and illustrious one.

In 1970, he joined the United States Attorney’s Office in Southern New York. Three years later, he was appointed Chief of the Narcotics unit, and soon after he moved to Washington D.C. to serve as the Associate Deputy Attorney General for Gerald Ford. After a quick stint in a private law practice during the Carter years, he returned to Washington to work under the Reagan administration. There he served as the Associate Attorney General, the third-highest position in the Department of Justice. In 1983, he was appointed U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. It was then that he received national attention for his patented “perp walk,” in which he would parade suspects in front of previously alerted media.

Bud Flanagan never saw any of that. He didn’t know that in Giuliani’s 28-year career in law enforcement he garnered a reputation as a “gunslinger,” “a straight-talker,” “a quick draw,” and “a tough, kick-butt policeman,” as CNBC talk show host Chris Matthews recently described him in a November 6th segment. Bud Flanagan didn’t see 9/11. He didn’t see the image of Rudy in front of America’s television on that day and for days to come. He didn’t know that Giuliani would be proclaimed “Man of the Year” by Time Magazine in 2001 with a mythological-looking cover shot, and become an icon of strength and stability across our America. Nor could he have predicted that Rudy Giuliani would be the GOP frontrunner in one of the most bitter and partisan elections in the last century, and that he would potentially face off with Hillary Clinton.

And clearly, Bud Flanagan had no idea that despite Rudy Giuliani’s pro-life and anti-gun positions, his three marriages,his propensity for cross-dressing, and his generally secular nature—all of which have been perceived as astronomical problems in his conservative electability—he would be endorsed by America’s most popular right-wing evangelical Christian minister, Pat Robertson, on Wednesday November 7, 2007.

Because if Bud Flanagan had known these things there’s no way in hell he could have said what he said, as clearly Rudy Giuliani is not only a very fast dog, but a dog so stealthy, vicious, bloodthirsty, and eminent, that one would have to be a Puritan to consider not betting the house on him—and as I stare at the political futures board on the website of the InTrade Exchange, my eyes light up at the diminutive price a share of Mr. Giuliani’s presidency is going for.

It’s 16.5 cents!

A 16.5 cent share of Mr. Giuliani will pay out a dollar if he takes the whole thing down next November, which he very well may. And even if he gets close, Rudy shares will easily jump in price to between 42 and 50 cents, making for a potential profit of three fold. I’ll likely have to sell then because my conscience will start to get to me, but the temptation to ride the money horse all the way to the finish line will be present.

The endorsement of Pat Robertson on Tuesday was a stunning victory for the Giuliani campaign, and it wasn’t because what Pat Robertson says makes a single bit of sense, because it doesn’t. Robertson has exposed himself through the years to be a full-fledged lunatic—an anti-gay, anti-Muslim, anti-feminist, anti-Protestant, xenophobic zealot—whose has stated publicly that 9/11 was punishment for pornography and that religions other than Christianity represent the anti-Christ. The amount of delusional vitriol that he has spewed over his last thirty years is so immense that I’ve created an entire page of the highlights because I couldn’t possibly detail them all here. However, I do find it necessary to state for the record that Mr. Robertson has claimed on numerous occasions that he consults with God about how to use catastrophic weather and terrorist attacks to punish immorality….and also boasts that he can leg press 2,000 pounds.

Besides his bizarre and abhorrent behavior, Mr. Robertson is also at odds with Giuliani on his most prized issue, 9/11. Giuliani has run his campaign as the 9/11 candidate, invoking the national tragedy and his role in its aftermath as evidence of his strong and passionate leadership. His selling point has been his adamancy that the United States did nothing wrong. “The people who deserve blame for Sept. 11, I think we should remind ourselves, are the terrorists — the Islamic fanatics — who came here and killed us and want to come here again and do it,” the former New York City Mayor said in a recent campaign stop in Florida.

However, Robertson does blame Americans for 9/11. In fact, he believes that “rampant internet pornography, rampant secularism and the slaughter of 35 to 40 million unborn babies,” were the cause of the tragedy. In a television interview with fellow Minister Jerry Falwell, he agreed explicitly with Falwell’s assertion that the “gays,” “lesbians,” “pagans,” and the “ACLU” were responsible as well.

So what gives? Apparently, the notion that ideological continuity is needed to form a political pact.

Giuliani’s tacit commitment to appointing “strict constructionist” Supreme Court Justices who might overturn Roe v. Wade was evidently enough to get Robertson in the bandwagon. Also aiding the decision was likely the realization that Giuliani may take the GOP nomination with or without the endorsement of the evangelical right, potentially leaving leaders like Robertson out in the cold. Over the last few months, there has been plenty of hullabaloo about evangelicals refusing to vote for Giuliani and possibly even running a third-party candidate who truly espouses their moral values. Focus on the Family founder James Dobson stated that “he cannot, and will not, vote for Rudy Giuliani in 2008,” in a May editorial, adding that his decision was “irrevocable.”

As the leader of one of the largest evangelical organizations in the country, Dobson’s opinion looms large. But at this point he may be left with few options besides prayer to stop Rudy Giuliani from pulling away with the GOP nomination.

From the get-go, Giuliani’s strategy with the evangelicals has been a simple one: divide and conquer. As long as he got a piece of the ‘moral’ vote, he believed he could win the GOP nomination and then use the prospect of a Hillary Clinton presidency to rally the remainder of the religious right hold-outs. With the endorsement of Robertson, he may have done just that and more.

In a CNN poll released on November 4, Giuliani continues to lead all other republican candidates by a significant margin. His 28% share of the vote puts him 9% ahead of Fred Thompson and 12 points up on third-place finisher John McCain. In addition, a recently released AP poll showed that Mr. Giuliani is the second choice of 1/3 of Republican voters who support one of his rivals. This figure towered over second-place finisher McCain, who 19% chose as their back up. Although at first glance a seemingly odd and barely relevant metric, the ‘back-up poll’ speaks volumes about the potential success of Giuliani. To be blunt, he’s much more tolerable than everyone expected, which is really all he needs to be.

Although supporters ideologically similar to Giuliani are few and far between, there are a large contingent of conservatives who align with the former New York Mayor for one reason; they think he can beat Hillary Clinton. For years, the Republican revolution of the 90’s has been painted as a movement based upon moral values, specifically a vehement disapproval of abortion and marriage. Although this was the catalyst for the groundswell of Republican support that ushered in a Republican majority and two terms of George Bush, it appears the evangelical base has become a ‘team player’ for the Republicans and will still vote GOP—despite the fact that their nominee may be an adulterer who occasionally wears women’s clothes.

By default, Rudy Giuliani will become their candidate, and once he starts to pull away from the GOP pack, the religious right will fall in line and arm itself for the fight. Preachers will begrudgingly endorse Giuliani like falling dominos, and parishioners will eagerly sign away check after check. Mr. Robertson will shout from his pulpit that the Lord has told him over a round of golf that Hillary Clinton is the devil incarnate, and that if she’s not stopped the world will either cease to exist or be run by God-hating liberals who will ban the Bible and clothes. The partisan divide will exacerbate, the Presidential race will get nasty fast, and Giuliani, the eternal pugilist, will be ready and frothing at the mouth for a fight.

Oh, and one more thing. Shares of Giuliani presidential futures will peak sometime around next August—in the midst of a nation-wide heat wave and a brutal GOP offensive—at 48 cents per share. Buy now, or forever hold your peace.

Note: In the belief that “music soothes the soul of the even the most savage beast,” Politics and Funk has provided a complimentary musical selection to close out this editorial. If you would like to listen to it, please click here

The evening before Halloween is one of those moments in every calendar year that have a visceral feel to them. It’s not quite the jovial excitement of Christmas Eve, or the drunken patriotic slurring that accompanies a Fourth of July celebration. It’s more of a niche in time, like the fleeting seconds before plunging from one year to another—the countdown, from ten, during which you grasp a bottle of champagne in one hand and search with a free eye for a prospect to greet with a fat, sloppy, New Year’s kiss.

It feels a bit magical and eerie at the same time, and as I walk down Broadway at dusk searching for a last-minute costume I am afflicted with the excitable vibration that accompanies trading away one’s persona for another. One night—that’s all I have—a mere 6-8 hours to shift identities and go nuts, put on an ape suit and a Nixon mask and scare the living shit out of every hippie walking the streets.

However, quickly, I realize that such a costume might not actually resonate at all, and might even be viewed by some as a “bummer.” It would be much better to go with something more pop-culture friendly and iconic, or, to maybe just buy a green-fringed jacket with myriad badges, pins, and ribbons, and call myself an “An American Hero.”

After a protracted negotiation, I do just that, and as I wear my newfound identity out the door I immediately feel transformed into a different, zanier version of myself. I am a caricature, a wild-man, and maybe even a bit deviant and … possibly similar … to the way that Vincent Margera felt last summer before he fondled and groped two teenagers in two separate incidents at a Lakewood, Colorado mall and skate-park.

According to the Denver Post, Margera—who is best known as Don Vito, the fat and unintelligible uncle of MTV star Bam Margera—was convicted on October 31 of two charges of sexual assault with a minor. After hearing the verdict, Vito collapsed in the middle of the courtroom and screamed, “Just kill me now, I can’t spend my fucking life in prison. I didn’t do anything,” while writhing on the courtroom floor. Deputies rushed in with a wheelchair and a defibrillator, although witnesses were unsure if Mr. Margera actually had to be resuscitated.

Damn!

Don Vito has gone down hard, and barring a miraculous appeal, he will stay in the clink for quite a while. And although I find him a reprehensible subject, a potential life sentence does seem a bit harsh for putting a sticker on a fourteen-year-old girl’s breast. I mean could we expect anything less from slovenly Uncle Vito? Maybe we are just as guilty as he is.

When Vito first emerged on MTV’s reality show Viva La Bam, it was as an object of torment for Bam and his friends. They would mock him, demolish his possessions with sledgehammers and cranes, and, on occasion, dress him up in women’s underwear. All of these things were mildly funny, but not nearly as funny the things Vito seemed to do on his own accord. At somewhere in the realm of 400 pounds, with a penchant for drink and a mumbling, unintelligible, idiotic method of speech, Don Vito became a caricature of himself. Whether he was taped to a wheelchair, lying semi-naked on a hotel bed with his left testicle exposed, or making aggressive comments to blind dates regarding their most appetizing body parts, we laughed at Don Vito, because what he did, though nowhere near admirable or normal, was really goddamn funny.

As Viva La Bam progressed, the popularity of Uncle Vito grew to the extent that he was no longer a supporting role but often the focus. His obesity, inarticulateness, male chauvinism, drunkenness, and generally lewd and bizarre behavior were rewarded by money and pop-culture status, so it only seemed natural that when he showed up for a public appearance with the rest of the Margera crew he would be in character. Apparently, Don Vito was so intoxicated at the two photo shoots he attended that he urinated in his pants. After he was finished, he proceeded to fondle the breasts and buttocks of three girls between the ages of 12-14.

What in God’s name would let a normal person think they could get away with this? Sure, a bit of the blame goes to MTV, but it’s hard to fault them for much more than the destruction of American music. But, clearly, no sensible person could argue that this behavior is rational, or for that matter legal, could they?

Actually, Vincent Margera’s lawyer did just that!

Attorney Pamela Mackey, who formerly represented Kobe Bryant in a 2003 rape allegation, based her client’s defense upon the theory that Margera was innocent of sexual assault because the assault was perpetrated by his alter ego, Don Vito, who, due to being a character in a popular reality show, could not be prosecuted for his actions. “Fans expected to see Don Vito, not Vincent Margera. You may find the behavior vulgar and disgusting, but it was done to amuse, to entertain, to get a laugh,” Mackey said—which, of course, makes perfect sense.

Because clearly there’s really no other way to get your kicks than tying one on, urinating all over yourself, and then lunging at the chest of fourteen-year-olds!

The reality is that Mr. Vito played a part on T.V. for so long that he forgot it was just that. He forgot that despite his powerful role as America’s favorite degenerate uncle, he still had to follow laws of basic decency. It slipped his mind that couldn’t simply trample over those who awarded him money, prestige, and fame—that he couldn’t just plant his fat, greasy fingers upon the chests of America’s pre-pubescent daughters and expect the collective civil consciousness of our country to sit back and continue to fill his pockets and elevate his ego.

Mr. Margera didn’t remember that sometimes you reap what you sow, that your chickens eventually come home to roost, and that when you think that you’ve made it high enough to be invincible from the laws of basic civil society, you’re usually about a millisecond from being snapped back to earth. And on Halloween—while I was trying on the ultimate fringed jacket—not only had Don Vito gone down, but there was a similarly strange and savage entity that was being reined in for losing sight of the law as well; it was the Democrats

In the name of democracy, these savages had abused the courts, the electoral process, the power of attorney, and the citizens of the United States in a way close to that in which Vito had abused the pure and virginal secondary sexual organs of three young girls. They had simply believed they were entitled, because for so long no one had found the guts to explain to them that they weren’t. Like Vikings laying siege to a hamlet, they did their best to burn, pillage, slash, smear, assault, rape, rob, and riddle—with tremendous displays of intimidation and harassment—an attempt by a third- party candidate to run for the 2004 Presidency of the United States, and if they had thought about it, they would have likely slapped him on the ass and grabbed his crotch while they were at it.

On Halloween, consumer advocate and former Green Party and Independent Presidential candidate Ralph Nader sued the Democratic Party accusing them of filing “groundless and abusive litigation” for the sole purpose of bankrupting his presidential campaign. The suit also names the Kerry-Edwards campaign, the Service Employees International Union, the Ballot Project, and other Democratic-affiliated interest groups. The allegation states that over 53 private law firms and 90 attorneys hired by the Democratic National Party and allied interest groups filed a total of 24 lawsuits against Mr. Nader’s campaign, as well as six complaints with the Federal Elections Committee (FEC)

According to Mr. Nader’s attorney, Carl Mayer, the vast majority of these lawsuits and all six FEC complaints were dismissed through the work of Mr. Nader’s volunteer legal team. The suits were primarily focused around the process of submitting petition signatures to get on the ballot in different states, and eventually resulted in Mr. Nader being removed from the Presidential ballot in at least 18 states. The most formidable allegations are as follows:

(1) Democratic operatives posed as Nader supporters in order to fill out petitions with false signatures such as Mickey Mouse, Fred Flintstone, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, and, most frequently, Ralph Nader. Then, knowing that fictitious names existed on the petitions, the Democratic legal team sued the Nader campaign for signature irregularities.

(2) Private lawyers telephoned ‘real’ Nader petitioners and threatened that they would be charged with a felony if they personally failed to validate each and every signature. On occasion, Nader supporters were even visited at home by private detectives hired by the defendants and menaced further.

(3) At an Oregon nominating convention in which Mr. Nader needed to get one thousand signatures to qualify for the ballot, hundreds of Democratic operatives posing as Nader supporters were deployed. Taking the place of real supporters, they then refused to sign Nader’s petition, thereby preventing him for getting on the Oregon ballot.

(4) Democratic operatives intentionally signed Nader petitions in incorrect places in the hopes of getting them disqualified.

Nader and his attorney claim their case is “tremendous” and have stated their intention to depose Democratic strategists of the likes of Toby Moffet, Terry McAuliffe, Elizabeth Holtzman, and others. In a 2004 interview with the Guardian, Moffet tacitly admitted that the Democrats used the weapon of endless, frivolous litigation in order to prevent Nader from getting ballot access.

“I think we had a role in the ballot challenges. We distracted him and drained him of resources,” Moffet claimed, adding, “I’d be less than honest if I said it was all about the law. It was all about stopping Bush from getting elected.”

Clearly a staunch believer that the ends justify the means, Moffet seems particularly proud about his role in impeding democracy in the 2004 Presidential election. Maybe, now that his blind political warfare has ended and Mr. Nader has named him personally in a lawsuit, he will realize that the election process is supposed to be about citizens making a choice for an elected leader, not high-priced lawyers filing abusive and groundless litigation to prevent a candidate for being on the ballot.

If not, someone should dress him up in a cheerleader outfit, tie a twelve- pack of Budweiser and a piece of raw meat to his skirt, and roll him headfirst into an 8 by 11 cell with Vincent Margera. I’m quite certain they would have wild and spirited conversations about what it’s like to feel above the law.

“How many ways to get what you want
I use the best
I use the rest
I use the N.M.E
I use Anarchy”

-The Sex Pistols, “Anarchy in the U.K”

Clad in a feathery tunic resembling a jail smock, Johnny Rotten joined The Sex Pistols on the stage of The Tonight Show last Tuesday and dutifully screamed his lungs out during “Anarchy in the U.K.” Afterwards, he exchanged a genial handshake with Leno, and his guest, Presidential candidate Ron Paul. The idea that Paul, who spent the early stages of the campaign fending off vehement attacks from Republicans and the conservative media for his anti-war views, has recently taken on the role of cult hero and potential spoiler is wild on its own. But, the fact that the 72-year-old physician and free-market champion ended a prime time interview by smacking palms with the self-proclaimed king of vitriol anarchy is enough to make any seasoned political junkie quiver. Ron Paul and The Sex Pistols? Why not, stranger things have happened and will, in a political primary season that becomes more bizarre by the moment.

In Tuesday’s Presidential debate at Drexel College in Philadelphia, the Democratic brethren seemed willing to try anything up to lawless anarchy in the hopes of taming the virtually unstoppable ascent of frontrunner Hillary Clinton. Who could blame them? Mrs. Clinton’s campaign appears to grow more awe-inspiring by the moment, and has shown itself to be invincible to attack. The weak spots in the Clinton armor have been clear-cut from the beginning, but how to exploit them is a mystery to the host of Presidential hopefuls trailing the former First Lady in the polls.

The ineptness has been led by Illinois Senator Barack Obama. Despite his foresight in condemning the Iraq War, his reputation as an honest and non-partisan leader, and his glorified public persona as a hip, charismatic intellectual—who purportedly spends his nights listening to Miles Davis on a scratchy record player while reading a dog-eared copy of Emerson’s “Self Reliance”—Obama has been unable to gain ground. In recent national polls, he still trails Hillary by between 25 and 30 points. Even more damning, he is losing the African-American voting block to Hillary by 10%, a demographic that is absolutely crucial to his success.

Ironically, it is his image as a reform candidate that has crippled him the most. Obama’s “Politics of Hope” have handcuffed him in his efforts to draw a real distinction between himself and Clinton. In fact, any attempt by Obama at harshly criticizing Clinton draws an immediate and predictable tongue lashing from her handlers, who love nothing more than accusing Mr. Obama of engaging in ‘attack politics.’ For this reason, Obama has been forced to resort to gently stressing his policy differences with Hillary instead of deriding her character, which is where she is the most vulnerable.

But one can only be gun-shy in politics for so long before ending up on the wrong end of the bullet, and on Tuesday it appeared that the other Democratic hopefuls had endured just about enough of Mrs. Clinton cakewalking her way towards the nomination. In addition, debate co-moderator and Meet the Press host Tim Russert was publicly known to have an unquenchable lust for tripping up the Hillary Clinton machine. In the last debate, he had viciously sandbagged her with one of the last questions of the night.

Continue reading “The Four Headed Monster Strikes at Hillary… Johnny Rotten Makes a Convincing Case for Anarchy….Mike Gravel is Forced to Debate His Reflection as it Wails in the Mirror”