The Week In Wonkette

• Su Lin? Straight up OWNED. Butterstick? Currently keeping scientists busy recalibrating all known measures of cuteness.

• Michael Lenehan proposes a Year Without Journalism after dissing pioneering web-based content efforts. Big words for a guy who only gets read on slow-loading PDFs.

• If you thought that Abramoffukkah didn’t have a cream-filled center of sex gone wrong in the corridors of power, think again.

• The selective stupidity of public servants on full display.

• Ticking time-bombs make for compelling television, idiotic public policy.

• Michael Scanlon’s ultra-weird adolescence, REVEALED. And how.

• But the most important moment of the week: After a few days of dawdling, you learned that your beloved Ana Marie Cox would be elevating to Editor Emeritus. It may feel like a hole has been torn in the Blogosphere, but remember: OG Ana built this domain on the premise that the leaders of Washington DC’s main industry roll into town on the wings of high ideals and then proceed to behave as if they were participants in some kind of Feyian slambook cliqueria, with the aesthetically pleasing likes of LiLo and Rachael McAdams replaced by grizzle-haired overexcitable coots and shrill, claws-out harridans. The premise is unimpeachable—no matter how many Sensenbrenners you throw at it. And while change is coming to Wonkette, there’s always one thing you can be certain of: those fuckers NEVER learn. Godspeed you, Ms. Cox. Long live Wonkette.— DCEIVER

READ MORE: Announcements, abramoffukkah, ana marie cox, bloggers, blogging, butterstick, crazy as hell, cries for help, domestic espionage scandal, michael scanlon, tom delay, torture, wonkette

The Continuing Saga of Michael Scanlon’s Freak-Ass High School Career

After posting about the young Michael Scanlon’s bizarre hormonal explorations, we were sent a note from another of his contemporaries who experienced his high school reign of terror. Wishing to remain anonymous out of concern for a future of peaceful area shopping, our tipster assures us: “I can completely vouch for this. I was one of the black-clad girls he tormented at WJ (I was 5’ 6” in high school, though, so he didn’t mess with me much — he mostly went after the shorter girls).”

She goes on to describe an incident in which a loved one nearly escaped the young master Scanlon’s attempt to flush his head down a toilet, but that’s far from the most disturbing detail of her account:

The only direct tormenting I was ever victim to was having to sit near him once and listen to him incessently sing the chorus from “Oh Sheila” over and over and OVER — which never sounds good, but which sounds especially bad coming from a wanna-be surfer dude.

Now that’s downright harrowing.— DCEIVER

READ MORE: abramoffukkah, cries for help, michael scanlon, top

Remainders: Every Little Thing He Does Is Scaring The Bejeezus Out of Me Edition

• There’s a king on a throne with his eyes torn out. There’s a blind man looking for a shadow of doubt. Dick Cheney’s closely guarded, much beloved, iPod playlist. [Attytood]

• Karl Rove indicted in leak scandal. The worst leak scandal of all! [The Onion]

• Merry Christmas from everyone’s favorite illiterate, intoxicated bastard. [Slate]— DCEIVER

READ MORE: christopher hitchens, cries for help, dick cheney, karl rove, turd blossom, war on christmas

Decoding the Note: Syllogisms of the Mad

Is it our imagination, or have the recent ADD-style efforts of the White House to recapture its fabled “message discipline” permanently frazzled the reasoning powers of the Note’s Gang of Language Manglers? Witness today’s entry, which kicks off with the now-standard non sequitur masquerading as an echt-insider rhetorical question: Behind the Locked Double Doors: Which Came Out, the Lady or the Tiger?

Why, we don’t know, Note. Because actually, the fable you’re referencing concerns the finality of a fatal choice, and we can’t puzzle out what choice you’re talking about. Drop-kicking Jack Murtha? Posturing indignantly over the “irresponsibility” of critics of prewar intelligence? Boxers or briefs? What, Note, what?

More Notely musings after the jump.

But of course, our brave Halperinites press on, heedlessly:

You should know that every Republican politician with a pollster knows where public opinion is on the war.

And that every Republican politician with a communications director realizes where the media is on the war.

And that every Republican politician with a TV set realizes that Secretary Rumsfeld didn’t fully engage on the facts-on-the-ground questions he got on the Sunday shows.

Ooh! Could it be that Notesters are building to an actual critical conclusion, however gassy and obvious, instead of cooing “Shiny!” and “Pretty!” over each new White House press release that crosses their virtual collective desk. Well, no, actually:

What will happen in Iraq (and with the Iraq political debate in America) today, this week, this month, next month, and in the next eleven months?

That query is a rhetorical nod both to The Note’s powerlessness to actually puzzle out 2006, and to The Note’s “facts on the ground are all that matter” mantra.

Poor Note! Brought to the brink of an actual conclusion—e.g., “the Bush White House is melting down” or “Rummy sucks”—it withdraws into near paralysis, a state in which it can only nod—and even then only rhetorically, mind you, a literal nod apparently demanding too much from its enfeebled consitution—at its own powerlessness. Never mind that no one ever knows, really, what the next eleven months will bring—or that “facts on the ground are all that matter” is much too banal a sentiment to ever serve as an actual mantra—the technical purpose of which, after all, is to attain enlightenment. What the Note is awakening to, apparently, is the notion that reality exists elsewhere. Hence it quivers like a foundling birdie expelled from its nest in a raging storm. And so on its behalf, we implore: Hold the Note, Mr. Bartlett! Tell it that it never has to be frightened about knowing anything ever again! Be both its lady and its tiger!
— HOLLY MARTINS

The NOte: Behind the Locked Double Doors

READ MORE: cognitive disorientation, cries for help, the note

Decoding the Note: A(n) (Owl) Cry for Help (?)

All right, our Note-induced case of the vapors has subsided long enough to review the responses to our plea for assitance in deciphering today’s Halperinite headline-for-one, “The Owl Flies West (?)” Responses were gratifyingly varied and imaginative, but it’s been our experience in such unnerving cases that it’s best to hew to the most straightforward explanation. To wit, the enclosed from Reader D.S.:

Oh, poor benighted Wonkette scribes. How foolish you are to misapprehend the significance of nocturnal predators. The owl, of course, is traditionally a symbol of wisdom. West is the direction in which the sun sets, terminating the day. The sun also is a symbol of wisdom and intelligence. It is clear then, that “The Owl Flies West(?)” is a reference to the fact that the wisdom and intelligence of the Note is dying. In short, they all is going bugfuck crazy. Indeed, the parenthetical punctuation suggests that like Hamlet, the Note is unsure of its own insanity, perhaps holding out hope that it is not nuts, and some bird somewhere is actually westward bound. And the one Note Reader for whom the message is intended? I’ll give you a hint: it begins with “p” and ends with “sychiatrist.” (?) Let’s hope the Note makes a speedy recovery(,) D{s}

And here we thought we had it worked out that “Owl” was code for “Matt Cooper,” perched in the precarious upper limbs of Scooter Libby’s turning “aspens.” Or that Harriet Miers was set to resume feeding on small rodents in the Texas plains. But we confess, “bugfuck crazy” does seem to fit better with the evidence. We, too, wish the Note a rapid, restorative convalescence. Our prescription: 350 mg of Zoloft, a DVD compilation of soothing Dan Bartlett talking points, and a copy of The Treason of the Senate. Oh, and no punctuation privileges for at least 60 days. —HOLLY MARTINS

READ MORE: cries for help, professional aphasia, the note, unintelligbility