Proud Americans, and Other Demographics Liberals Don't Understand

So much ridicule, so little time. Today might be a two-fer on postings, both because I’ve got a lot of time on my hands over the next four days and because I’ve still got Krugman’s article from yesterday backlogged. Collins is an easier target though; she doesn’t even strive for thematic fluidity or logical consistency anymore. Someday I’ll get tired of shooting the proverbial fish in a barrel. Not today.

Sacred Cows, Angry Birds

By GAIL COLLINS

Published: February 18, 2011

The House of Representatives has been cutting like crazy!

Sweet! There’s a pun in here somewhere about Democrats in Madison “cutting class,” but I can’t get a handle on it. Oh well. Win some, lose some.

Down with Planned Parenthood

Would Democrats have ever funded the organization if it didn’t offer abortions? Trick question! Of course. Democrats will fund anything.

 and PBS!

Also known as “that channel that’s taking up valuable space between Fox and the History Channel.”

We can’t afford to worry about mercury contamination!

Actually, that’s more of an acknowledgement that the EPA is chock full of self-righteous lunatics. I just can’t imagine that I have anything in common with those assholes—except the self-righteousness.

Safety nets are too expensive!

The deficit is approaching 10% of GDP both because of Obama’s misguided stimuli and ballooning entitlements. I would say that yes, they are most certainly too expensive.

But keep your hands off the Defense Department’s budget to sponsor Nascar

It’s NASCAR. Thanks.

racers.

It seems like the military should have the money to recruit for the armed forces. The determination of where to spend that money should be theirs. As long as you throw in a few auditors to make sure there’s no abuse or waste, I’m good with them spending that money on whatever they believe is acceptable.

“It’s a great public/private partnership,” said Representative Rodney Frelinghuysen, a New Jersey Republican.

I believe that’s another way of saying “it works” but spruced up in the ludicrous vernacular of the leftist wing-nut to make it digestible to rhetorical wunderkinds like Collins. (See, it’s funny both because she’s and idiot and because she’s old.)

The Defense Department claims racecar sponsorships are an important recruiting tool for the Army. The House agreed — although this might be news to the Navy and Marines, which decided a while back that a Nascar

NASCAR!

 presence wasn’t worth the money.

This isn’t complicated. There is only one pool of potential military recruits that watch NASCAR. By crowding the market with three service branches, each has opened itself to the likelihood of diminished returns. The fact that the marketplace can only support one service branch to be cost-effective doesn’t diminish the cost-effectiveness of the advertising medium. What’s more, the Navy and Marines willingness to break from an unfruitful partnership implies a strong tendency for fiscal discipline within the military’s recruitment vehicle. This concept eludes the whizzes at Planned Parenthood and PBS.

“What makes U.S. Army’s motorsports initiatives successful?” Ryan Newman, driver of No. 39 U.S. Army Chevrolet asked his Facebook readers as he urged a show of support for the program. “In a 2009 study among fans nationwide, 37% feel more positive about the Army due to its involvement in motorsports.”

NASCAR races average some 3 million viewers for important races. That’s 1,110,000 viewers per race that are reminded that there exists another door for their lives or their childrens’ lives. Army commercials in the past few years have been geared more towards parents than children, which suggests that recruitment has been strongly impaired by family reticence towards the dangers inherent to military service. Unlike recruitment centers, which offer effective one-on-one interactions between military recruiters and potential recruits, sponsorships give the military the opportunity to tailor a message to the people that have the ear of potential recruits on a daily basis.

Let’s stop right here and think about this posting. Is it likely that racing fans would think less of the Army for sponsoring racecars?

No. But it’s a virtual certainty that they would think about it less. What’s more, it’s entirely possible to support the military wholeheartedly and still feel that it’s not the best opportunity for yourself or your child. That’s why the reminders from the Army are essential:  That it molds strong young men and women, That it pays for college, That it gives the opportunity for kids to develop life-long career skills. Basically, there are elements of the Army that are just like college, without the inane ramblings of a English 101 class.

Actually, wouldn’t you expect the percentage to be higher?

All advertisements are hit-or-miss.

Also, how many of you believe Ryan Newman actually wrote those sentences.

I do, but that’s because I don’t think all NASCAR drivers are illiterate hicks.

Can I see a show of hands?

Don’t be jealous that he’s got a stronger grasp on sentence composition than you. It’s not like you pretend to be a professional writer anymore.

Representative Betty McCollum of Minnesota, who sponsored an amendment eliminating the military’s Nascar

NASCAR. You don’t write Mlb or Nfl.

connection, said it could save taxpayers “tens of millions of dollars.”

You would think she’d be able to be a little more precise. There is a finite cost to the sponsorship. In fact, it’s pre-determined in a contract. $7mm per year.

She got a flood of angry letters and one death threat.

It takes some chutzpah to bitch about death threats with what’s going on in Madison.

Also, her amendment was rejected, 148 to 281.

Meh. Truth be told, I wouldn’t have been upset at all if the Army had been forced to pull its NASCAR sponsorship. We need cuts.

The opponents didn’t bother with much debate.

It wasn’t worth much debate. It’s a tiny amount of money in the federal budget and it wasn’t a serious proposal—much like the proposal to cut off funding to Obama’s teleprompter. That one was at least funny though.

“This amendment is about politics in certain districts for certain groups of people,” said Representative Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, a tad obliquely.

So pick a better quote.

McHenry was probably

No. Pick a better quote instead of embarrassing yourself by trying to interpret this one.

referring to the Democrats, who’ve often been branded by the Republicans as tennis-watching snobs.

Actually, she did a pretty good job. Democrats don’t “get” real sports.

The Obamaites actually spend vast amounts of time and money trying to woo “Nascar dads,”

First, that term hasn’t been used since 2004, which means it was John Kerry doing the dude-wooing (and really, is anyone surprised?) Second, in a column about fiscal discipline regarding NASCAR money, you’d think Democrats would be demanding a higher return for their efforts. The “NASCAR dad” demographic would still spurn Democrats if Republicans campaigned exclusively on outlawing Slim Jims and Keystone Light. Third, maybe the party would get some more traction in the demographic if it understood that it’s NASCAR, an abbreviation, as opposed to Nascar!

 although given car racing’s sinking popularity, it might make more sense to target some other fan base.

Good luck with baseball fans. We still remember that Obama throws like a girl and can’t name a single player from his “favorite team.”

What about all the people who play games on their cellphones and iPads?

Social-network gamers don’t count as a “fan base.” They barely count as people. I guess it’s good that 90% of them don’t get to vote.

Make 2012 the Year of the Angry Birds Dad or the Brickbreaker Aunt.

Are you trying to get me to punch a political strategist in the gut?

But I digress.

Yes. You do. Very often. It’s not charming or interesting. It’s just sloppy writing.

On Friday, the House was working its way through 129 amendments to its continuing budget resolution. There would have been 130, but Representative Steve Womack of Arkansas retracted his proposal to cut off financing for President Obama’s teleprompter.

That one still makes me chuckle. Props, Arkansas.

The majority did vote, however, to eliminate money for a park in Nancy Pelosi’s district. The former House speaker has been demonized to the point that it’s safe to do anything to her short of kidnapping the family dog.

Nah, I’d be cool with that. That dog has probably seen some terrible, terrible things. He deserves better, America.

Let’s give Speaker John Boehner credit for keeping his promise to give members more chance to debate and offer amendments. Really, if things get any more open, the members will start throwing themselves off the balcony.

So openness and transparency is only sort of a good thing sometimes?

But not such high marks on consistency.

Please show your work.

The newly ascendant Republicans have been howling that the deficit is so big, so threatening, that no target for cutting is sacred. “Everything is on the table. We’re broke,” said Boehner.

I’m digging me some Boehner these days. I immediately regret how dirty that sounded.

But the table is mainly crowded with stuff the Republicans didn’t like to begin with.

Is this supposed to be inconsistent?

Family-planning money and environmental protection,

This is what’s known as “low-hanging fruit.”

but not oil tax breaks

As soon as we quit subsidizing wind farms and ethanol (which, has been inflating food prices, in case you hadn’t heard) I’m so far down with eliminating tax breaks for oil companies it’s not even funny.

or Nascar

NASCAR.

sponsorships. “Sesame Street” is fair game,

Sesame Street is popular. I have no doubt that the program would get picked up by Nick Jr. or any one of 227 other channels designed for incontinent viewers.

 but the Daytona 500 is untouchable.

Untouchable, no. Our elected officials simply believe that it is an acceptable use of military recruitment funds.

“Spending is out of control,” cried Jim Jordan, the chairman of the Republican Study Committee, who argued for additional cuts in all nonsecurity discretionary spending — except aid to Israel.

They’re our staunch allies and they have been under siege for 60 years as the only stable democracy in a region dominated by fanatical neo-Neanderthals. For that alone they deserve consideration for their yeoman’s work to further our interests in the region.

In Wisconsin, the new Republican governor, Scott Walker, wants to strip state employees of their collective-bargaining rights

Now you’re confusing state debts with federal debts. See, I know this because you’re talking about a governor, who has absolutely no say in federal affairs (unless you’re talking about states ratifying amendments to the federal Constitution, which you clearly aren’t).

because: “We’re broke. We’ve been broke in this state for years.”

The difference is that Walker can’t print money to cover the government’s debts.

Wisconsin’s Democratic state senators went into hiding to deprive the Republican majority of the quorum they need to pass Walker’s agenda.

In other words, they whined like little girls, spat on the people of Wisconsin, and actively attempted to undermine the impact of last year’s elections and the democratic process in general. Who was it that said “elections have consequences?” Oh right. The guy who throws like a girl in the White House. Wait, that’s not specific enough…

The Senate majority leader, Scott Fitzgerald — who happens to be the brother of the Assembly speaker, Jeff Fitzgerald —

CONSPIRACY!!!

believes the governor is absolutely right about the need for draconian measures to cut spending in this crisis. So he’s been sending state troopers out to look for the missing Democrats.

The troopers aren’t out there because they want the proposed law. They’re out there because they value the rule of law and the legislative process. Democrats in Wisconsin have shown themselves to be irresponsible brats.

The troopers are under the direction of the new chief of the state patrol, Stephen Fitzgerald. He is the 68-year-old father of Jeff and Scott and was appointed to the $105,678 post this month by Governor Walker.

For the chief of the state patrol? That’s very reasonable. Chicago beat cops make $64,374 plus a few add-ons for various responsibilities.

Perhaps the speaker’s/majority leader’s father was a super choice,

I have no idea, and neither do you.

and the fact that he was suddenly at liberty after having recently lost an election for county sheriff was simply a coincidence that allowed the governor to recruit the best possible person for the job. You’d still think that if things are so dire in Wisconsin, the Fitzgerald clan would want to set a better austerity example.

The man runs the state troopers. $105,678 is not unreasonable in the slightest.

And if Big Bird goes, we can spare the U.S. Army Chevrolet, too.

No. You  don’t get to do that. You have strayed so far off-topic that you don’t get to come back around and make a cute little one-off about NASCAR. The Wisconsin issues has virtually NOTHING to do with the federal deficit talks, at least until Boehner and McConnell decide that they have the juice to take on the federal public unions. (I’m crossing my fingers, but not holding my breath.)

What’s more, there is no link between Big Bird and the Army. One is federally funded because…well no one knows why a show that’s perfectly viable on the open market is federally funded. The other is funded by the military with full knowledge of the other options and a full set of market constraints. What’s more, my guess is that if you cut $7mm from the Army’s annual recruitment budget that they would still keep the NASCAR sponsorship. That is how you know that one is about politics and the other is about cutting fat.

A version of this op-ed appeared in print on February 19, 2011, on page A23 of the New York edition.

Some Day I'll Quit You, Gail Collins

Gail Collins is at it again, and I'm here to dutifully document my disdain for every word she writes. It's addictive. 

Falling Off the Bandwagon

By GAIL COLLINS

Published: December 8, 2010

Dear Answerperson:

Oh dear God, she’s doing Dear Abby.

My boyfriend is a liberal Democrat and ever since the president announced his tax deal with the Republicans, he has been impossible to live with.

So…pretty much par for the course?

First he burned his “Audacity of Hope” sweater.

Did his mother knit it for him for Christmas? Who has a political sweater? Is Jimmy Carter back in vogue on the left?

Then he began messing up the cat’s litter box,

Try the literary classic “Everybody Poops.”

claiming he needed to draw “lines in the sand.”

Wah waaa (that sound effect doesn’t work as well in text)

Now he wants to call off our wedding

Don’t read into it that you just happen to have put on five pounds.

because he says that when you put your trust in people, they break your heart.

Miserable Moderate

All moderates are miserable. It’s the natural condition of being without a spine.

Dear Miserable,

Ask your boyfriend if he would rather spend the entire holiday season wondering what Senator Joe Lieberman will do next

I pitched that game show five years ago. It involved Joe Lieberman running through a series of puzzles based on cryptic clues from mimes. NBC wanted it, but really, who wants to put a show on NBC? That and I couldn’t find a non-creepy mime.

and whether Olympia Snowe will vote for cloture.

This game show pitch was far less successful.

Then he will turn pale and offer to take you out for a nice dinner.

But don’t ask him if you look fat in those jeans.

Answerperson

***********

Look on the bright side, Democratic base.

At least she understands who the Times’ readership base is.

You’ve been urging President Obama to get really mad.

IMAGE:

Ever since the inauguration, you’ve been waiting for him to take a stand, point fingers at the people who are blocking progress and demand that they get the heck out of the road.

He did that. He got laughed at. Really, for someone from the South Side of Chicago, this guy is incomparably wussy.

And this week he did it! Yippee!

Of course the liberal Democrats did not really plan on his getting mad at the liberal Democrats. But you can’t have everything.

“You’ll take what we give you and like it” also happens to be the Democrats’ tax policy.

“This isn’t the politics of the moment. This has to do with what can we get done right now,” the president said heatedly as he defended his tax deal with the Republicans against outrage from the Congressional left.

It takes a lot to make President Obama incoherent.

Specifically, technical issues with the teleprompter.

I think the vision of trying to corral 60 votes in the Senate

Also known as “his job.”

on the night before Christmas

Like last year?

sent him over the brink.

The lame-duck Senate has been extremely busy not passing a range of legislation.

Yet another example of productive obstructionism and necessary partisanship.

The votes on two Democratic proposals to extend the Bush-era tax cuts for everybody but the rich were 53 to 37 and 53 to 36. Of course, under venerable Senate tradition, that means they failed entirely.

Outrage in 2004; Sarcasm in 2010. Remember back when the Senate threatened to use the “nuclear option” to push through Bush judicial nominees? Gail Collins was all for the venerable Senate tradition back then.

It was at that point that Obama announced a deal with the Republicans to salvage unemployment benefits for the long-term jobless and create a sort of ministimulus bill with tax cuts for everybody, including the working poor, besides the dreaded, hated giveaway to the undeserving wealthy.

I can’t even tell anymore. Is this sarcasm?

“The American people are outraged!” said Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

Judging the American people by what goes on in Vermont is like trying to get a pulse by grabbing someone’s little toe.

He wanted the president to draw that line in the sand,

Alternately, cat litter.

let the unemployment benefits lapse,

Agreed.

the tax code fall into limbo, and hold out until public opinion forced 60 votes to come around.

Which might eventually happen, but only after the left dwindles to a  House with 25 Democrat members in 2013.

If you really wanted the American people to rally around no-tax-cuts-for-richies,

And really, what’s more unifying for the citizenry than pilfering from certain citizens?

shouldn’t we have had this conversation before the election?

We did, but judging from the issues that Gail was talking about, I’m guessing she missed it.

It’s a lot easier to send Washington a message at the polls than on a protest march in a sub-zero wind-chill factor.

I really want to show my disdain for wealth, but I can't very well do it in my $185 North Face fleece.

No, we waited until now because the Senate leaders left the timing up to their members who were running for re-election, and the Democrats in question said they’d rather not have to go on the record.

Profiles in courage.

O.K., I’ve got to admit it. I’ve fallen off the line-in-the-sand bandwagon.

Speaking of falling off the wagon, this column makes me thirsty.

For one thing, opposing the Obama-Republican deal puts you on the same side as Sarah Palin,

::Play Darth Vader music from Star Wars::  THE HORROR!

who sent out one of her twitters

Much to just about everyone’s chagrin, the term is “tweets.”

from hell

“Helltweet” would be a pretty decent name for a metal band.

on the subject, and Christine O’Donnell, the former Senate candidate.

“Helltweet Minion” would be even better.

At a Tea Party meeting on Dec. 7, O’Donnell announced that it was a day of sorrow and “Tragedy comes in threes: Pearl Harbor, Elizabeth Edwards’s passing and Barack Obama’s announcement of extending the tax cuts, which is good, but also extending the unemployment benefits.”

Still not as bad as saying that there are 57 states.

(I am happy to note that O’Donnell has announced that she’s got a book deal and a new political action committee. Really, I don’t know what I’d do if she went away.)

Plus, the Senate has worn me down. The filibuster rule makes it impossible to do anything more difficult than passing rules against tainted food,

A bill made famous for banning school bake sales. When only outlaws have cupcakes…

and the Democrats have not made any serious attempt to get rid of the filibuster rule. So work around them, I say.

Exactly. Vote Republican.

We have no idea if Obama’s unheroic

Speaking of unheroes/antiheroes, doesn’t Obama remind you of a new kind of Holden Caulfield who is so angry at the world for not being as he believes it should be that he is literally unable to function in reality?

attempt to get a deal done is going to pass. The Democratic senators who totally failed to exempt the wealthy from a tax-cut extension are outraged at the president for giving up on them.

“This is beyond politics. This is about justice and doing what’s right,” said

Soon to be former

Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana as she slammed

Slammed? Not so much. Try the following: whined, squawked, rambled, droned,

“the almost, you know, moral corruptness” of tax cuts for millionaires.

Which is almost, you know, coherent.

It was a stirring statement,

It was stirring, yet Collins had to pluck a quote where she droned and fluffed more than a mousy freshman in his first communications class. The only thing she was missing was poorly scrawled note cards and her hands jammed defensively in her pocket. No wonder they were so enamored with Obama’s (snicker) godlike oratory.

and would have been even more so if Landrieu had not been one of the few Democrats who actually voted to put the tax cuts on the books in the first place in 2001.

Props to research! It’s fun to see how these dolts vote when they’re no longer terrified of being voted out of office.

Senator Harry Reid has already warned that members of his caucus “have concerns” that will need to be addressed.

Was this before or after he spent 10 minutes on the Senate floor droning on about Nevada beating Boise State?

He has one himself about legalizing online poker, a matter that the casino interests in his state of Nevada are very excited about.

Meh.

So this is what it takes to put the drama in Obama.

Well, that and Fox News. 

Gail Collins. Again. (I Hate Myself)

I feel like I should apologize. I don't mean to pick on Gail Collins any more than the other imbeciles at the New York Times. But MoDo punted this week, letting her brother write her column for her. Friedman keeps the globetrotting act up, forgetting that no one over here cares enough about Myanmar--or is it Burma?--to read his attempts to milk the last dregs out of The World is Flat. Paul "The Bearded Wonder" Krugman has been a broken record warning off deflation and condemning austerity measures for months. It takes Gail Collins' brand of idiocy to break through the intellectual malaise over there.

What Everything Means

Alternate title: “The Meaning of Life in 811 Words.” I have found my new spiritual guide in Gail Collins.

By GAIL COLLINS

I can’t stop thinking about the elections.

Fun exercise: Read this article with "elections" changed to "Justin Bieber" and it actually starts sounding like it was written by a tween. 

I worry that I'll never be able
to respect this generation.

Also, you've got to replace "Congress" with "Degrassi: The Next Generation," and "Republicans" with any interchangeable member of the cast of Jersey Shore. (Two Jersey Shore references in one week? That's right. I'm about 6 months behind the pop-culture curve.)

Last weekend I saw “127 Hours,” and all I could think about was that this was a metaphor for the lame-duck session of Congress.

She’s so up on her pop culture. And how about that James Franco kid!

 “127 Hours” is the hot new movie

Is it just me or does this sound like that crazy aunt telling you in 1998 that the Neo-Geo was some “hot” newfangled gizmo. 

Thank God I came of age on the Sega Genesis.
The bosses looked much less like penises.

Granted, this may be because I’m already bored with 127 hours and it just came out.

about Aron Ralston, a real-life hiker who 

went on the grand adventure of selling the movie rights to his story...I'm getting ahead of myself.

went for a jaunt

Yes, the movie has the upbeat and jovial tone befitting a jaunt.

through the Utah wilderness and fell into a hole, where his arm was pinned under an 800-pound boulder for, um, 127 hours.

…Backstory backstory backstory…

Then he sawed off his arm with a really, really dull knife,

It's her fluency with words that keeps me coming back.

rappelled 60 feet to the canyon floor and walked several miles in the midday desert sun before being found by a family of Dutch tourists, who gave him water and two Oreo cookies.

Excellent nutshelling, but I’ll just watch Open Water 2. It's much cheaper. And has sharks, or something.

Float harder!

So I just sat there free-associating about politics.

The red lights in my head just went off. This is going to be disastrous.

The boulder was the deficit,

I’m with you so far.

and the arm was the Bush tax cut for the wealthy.

There it is.

While he was trapped, Ralston was tortured by a lot of buzzing, stinging and biting insects, all of whom resembled Mitch McConnell.

Please excuse me while I purging my consciousness of profanities and slightly darker thoughts.

If you get obsessive enough, everything you hear carries a postelection message.

Okay I’m back and I feel much better. One can not, in deference to intellectual honesty, claim that repealing the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy (a colossally misguided distinction in and of itself) will simultaneously be a panacea for the debt crisis and have no measurable drag on the overall economy. If the cuts don’t amount to much, they can’t impact the debt; if they amount to a lot, then pulling this money out of the economy must be a draining force. What Collins and her woefully misguided ilk misunderstand is that tax cuts have the added benefit of growing the economy and the tax base for years to come. If it sounds like a good idea to hamper that growth for insignificant immediate revenues, then you might be a liberal.

The Carnival Cruise ship is adrift! And isn’t America exactly like a boat full of vacationers who thought they were on a luxury trip to the Mexican Riviera?

Again, I’m with her so far.

Then, all of a sudden, they’re standing in line for Spam and hoping somebody will tow them back to San Diego.

Recessionproofing

Only Mexicans try to go to San Diego. The rest of the country migrates away from that municipality-train wreck.

No wonder Ohio turned red.

As an expatriate son of the Buckeye State, I couldn't be prouder. It’s one more thing that separates the great state of Ohio from the great armpit of Michigan. (That and Ohio actually has a good football team.)

The moral of the George W. Bush TV interview this week with Matt Lauer involves the fact that it got terrible ratings.

That’s not even close to a moral. It may not even qualify as a piece of trivia. Factoid is more apt.

This could mean that the public wants to forget all about the first eight years of the 21st century and just blame Barack Obama for wrecking the economy. Or that while the country is divided in so many ways, we’re still one big family when it comes to our national exhaustion with the previous president.

Alternately: conservatives have long since learned that NBC is a wasteland of liberal bias and listened to the Bush interviews on both Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity (and probably other conservative outlets). I, for one, was astounded at how emotional I got when I heard President Bush recount the events of 9/11 on the Sean Hannity Show. It was an exceptional interview.

Although if people had known he was going to tell that story about how his mother put the miscarried fetus in a jar and made him look at it, perhaps more viewers would have tuned in.

Missed that one, but I guess that's the point.

Or maybe not.

Yeah, I don’t want to hear about that.

The whole interview was confusing. When the first George Bush was president, the White House seemed to go out of its way to drop hints that Barbara Bush was pro-choice.

Why would they do that? Laura Bush legitimately is pro-choice. That reminds me that I haven't read Mark Morford in a while. Should be good for a laugh.

Did they know about the fetus jar story?

Also, didn’t it seem as if George W. was way more upset about Kanye West calling him a racist during Katrina than the fact that he invaded the wrong country?

Which would be relevant, unless (WATCH OUT FOR DOUBLE-NEGATIVES!) President Bush didn’t invade the wrong country.

And did you notice that Bush kept calling Kanye “Conway?”

No.

But I digress.

You can't digress if you don't actually have a point.

To be honest, the interview did not get bad ratings because of the national malaise. It got bad ratings because it was up against “Dancing With the Stars.”

Also, conservatives tuned in through their own news outlets.

In which Bristol Palin has made it to the final four. Once again, traditional Republicans were run over by the grizzly contingent.

What happened to taking back momma grizzly?

Bristol is not very good as a performer, but, as her mother put it, “She’s never danced before, and here she’s learning the steps really quickly.”

Really, where is this going. You just acknowledged your digression, and now you wander into the wilderness of incoherence with the elegance of a blindfolded toddler on an obstacle course.

Bristol is up against Jennifer Grey of “Dirty Dancing” fame,

Fame might be an overstatement. I simply remember her in fragments from my “Crazy for Swayze” phase. Also, she was an original Charlie Sheen groupie in Ferris Bueler’s Day Off. God bless you, John Hughes.

Now there's a guy who knows his hookers.

who’s been doing great even though she’s 50 with a bad knee and a plate and four screws in her neck.

Still, she learned from the best. Some would construe that as a distinct advantage.

Yes, he will roundhouse kick you.

If Bristol wins I think we can take the whole thing as a metaphor for Russ Feingold’s Senate race in Wisconsin.

So…the inevitable beat-down of a tired old hag who has lost all connection with his/her constituency? Actually that kind of works.

Finally, when popular culture can’t explain what’s befallen us, there’s always historic reference.

I’m going to need to walk away from the computer pretty soon. I’m just warning you ahead of time.

David Kennedy of Stanford University theorized in a postelection Op-Ed in The Times that we’re reliving the late 19th-century Gilded Age,

No way! This guy just happens to be a historical expert from the late-19^th to early 20^th centuries and he sees parallels? Eerie.

when all the presidents proved to be hapless, Congress switched back and forth madly as voters threw the bums out over and over again,

You'll notice that Republicans had congressional control for 12 years before the moderate policies of President Bush led to a four year relegation. That bears repeating: it took only four years of Democratic control of congress, and two years of Democrats running the country for the American people to recoil in horror.

and the country experienced a raft of critical problems and impending crises, combined with “abject political paralysis.”

This was also the age when Progressivism was introduced into the American political scene. And by Progressivism, I am of course using a euphemism for "the cause of all of our political problems."

The Gilded Age also happened to be the time when the media was wildly fragmented,

Jesus, she’s coming back around to a disdain for those damned newfangled interblags, isn’t she?

with thousands of small, underfinanced local newspapers all yapping frantically to try to make an impression.

It must’ve been hell to have free expression that rampant. The marketplace of ideas can be brutal. Good thing Collins and the Times did everything they could to coalesce power and introduce barriers to entry for the marketplace. That is, until the internet and all those interblags (I’m going to keep using that term as a shout-out to Collins’ tech-savvy) came along and ruined EVERYTHING.

This produced a climate of semihysterical sensationalism, along with some of my all-time favorite headlines. One about Gov. Oliver Morton read: “A Few of the Hellish Liaisons of, and Attempted Seductions by, Indiana’s Favorite Stud-Horse.”

*Crickets*

This sounds so familiar that I am pretty sure Professor Kennedy is right.

End of discussion. We are now officially in 1896, Who’s up for invading Cuba?

I wrote my first research paper on how the Spanish-American War permanently  realigned the geopolitics of the Western Hemisphere and remained the United States' only foray into imperialism. This simultaneously established the United States as a world power and weakened the Monroe Doctrine's role in American foreign policy...Holy crap, I'm recreating the paper in a caption.

So the message is that we should hunker down and wait for the next Teddy Roosevelt to come to our rescue.

Jesus, she really thinks Teddy Roosevelt was a political rescuer? You do know that he was a Republican, right?

And then it will almost be time for Prohibition.

I was kidding about the Cuba thing.

On the other hand, the Gilded Age had Mark Twain

With you so far…

and Eugene Debs

Pining for a socialist union leader isn’t helping your case…

and Lillian Russell, who exemplified a beauty standard that extolled fleshy women.

Maybe with a change in those damnable standards for beauty Gail can finally wrangle herself a husband. Yes, I know Gail Collins is married, but seriously…this effete imbecile looks like he gets flop-sweat when girl scouts aggressively peddle Thin Mints.

A Virginia City man writing to a friend about a tightrope walker named Ella LaRue said admiringly: “Great ‘shape’ — more of it than I ever saw in any female. Immense across the hips — huge thighs.”

Is this even approximately related to anything other than Gail Collins' crippling insecurities?

Maybe it won’t be so bad after all.

Yes, it was a time where a writer could make outlandish statements in quick succession without even bothering to link the two together with any semblance of coherent thought. Writers called it Shangri-La.

Thank you, Gail Collins, as always, for your unique brand of bat-shit crazy.