Discover more from Wonkette
Thursdays with Tina: We Aren't Inaccurate So Much as Unreliable Edition
Back after an unscheduled hiatus. (Sort of like Tina herself!) Let's never speak of last week again.
TinaSpeakWhat it meansDemocrats in New York are bummed. . .People still say that, right?Bad news has been raining down on Bush in torrents, but his popularity seems waterproof.I have successfully maintained a metaphor for an entire sentence. Also: The Ritalin must be working. Every time you go out to dinner in Manhattan, someone at the next table is anxiously parsing a poll.This Atkins thing is getting totally out of hand.In the city of Seinfeld, Letterman and Bette Midler they choose "Body Heat" sex bomb retiree Kathleen Turner to introduce Teresa Heinz Kerry, and the dryly cerebral former Treasury secretary Bob Rubin to introduce the candidate.I have not watched TV or seen a movie in 15 years.There is nothing to reflect the fierce buzz in the room about the president's scary stubbornness and tongue-tied evasiveness in his news conference the night before. And Kerry's hair seems to be a problem again.At least I have my priorities straight.(The CEO of an advertising company tells me he is going to advise the senator to get a buzz cut.)I need a CEO of an advertising company to tell me this.
DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe understands that perfectly. He bounds around the Sheraton ballroom like a big Irish setter, bragging about the money pouring in.Talking dogs! Run away!But for the sake of The Others -- the increasingly mysterious, incomprehensible swing voters Out There. . .Where they train the gigantic talking dogs. . .Surely politics, like fashion, trickles down from the metropolis -- doesn't it?What's a trucker hat?There was hope that Bob Woodward's book "Plan of Attack" would provide the unassailable smoking gun -- a fake-WMD skeleton in Scooter Libby's closet, or an up-close moron moment with the president vivid enough to power negative reinforcement forever on late-night TV.The Ritalin is wearing off.How CIA Director George Tenet is the kind of chunky, bonhomous boss-pleaser . . .Mmmmm. . . chunky boss-pleasers. . .A dinner party Woodward memorably describes at Cheney's house with all the neo-con cronies dumping on Powell feels like a trolls' convention in the Hall of the Mountain King, but then nobody ever thought a night at Dick and Lynne's place would be a fizzy edition of "Dinner for Five."I am told these are references to something.. . . [H]is assortment of faith-based buzzwords -- terror, resolve, freedom -- and just repeated them like VH1 pop-ups aimed at the channel-surfing voters he wants to reach.Pop-Up Video! Everyone watches that.The images of horror from Iraq, the agonizing testimony of the 9/11 hearings, the declarations of death from the caves of Afghanistan, the arguments about the war -- nothing penetrates that roar except one-syllable words and punchy phrases.I'm sorry, I wasn't paying attention.