Pandagon’s Jesse Taylor is more than a little agitated today about Ted Sampley, the head of Vietnam Veterans Against John Kerry, for Sampley’s latest hack job on Sen. Kerry. Taylor offers his own parody of Sampley’s charges: “Apparently, after [Kerry] got done having sex with every female at the Vietnam Memorial in broad daylight (while having a vasectomy performed on him), he gathered up a group of schoolchildren and flipped off Ted Sampley. …”
(To be clear, Sampley only charged Kerry with the latter infraction.)
In the same way that Ted Sampley excels in telling stories, Langston Hughes excelled in penning poetry. So much so that the Kerry campaign borrowed its latest slogan from the Hughes poem, “Let America Be America Again.” Nathan Newman thinks the poem’s “[e]nd lines are the highest demands for change possible” noting that “It’s a bit like Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Born in the USA’; some will mistake it for chauvinism, but others will understand the depth of subtle assault on Bush’s greedy destruction of this country.”
From parody to poetry to television we come, with Billmon’s takedown of CNN’s Justice Department correspondent Kelli Arena. In a May 27 broadcast, Arena speculated, “al Qaeda believes it has a better chance of winning in Iraq if John Kerry is in the White House.” Arena’s comments brought this response from Billmon: “[I]t seems at least possible to me that CNN is emulating Fox News (again) and has started equipping its ‘reporters’ with pre-packaged GOP talking points each day.” Billmon’s contempt continues, “So I have this picture in my head of Osama bin Ladin, somewhere in the Hindu Kush, watching CNN on his satellite TV and yelling the Arabic equivalent of ‘Go baby, go!'”
Next, Billmon turns his disgust toward Tim Russert, who questioned Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi about the message she was sending to the troops by saying the president is an inadequate leader. “It’s funny, but I don’t remember Russert being so solicitous about the troops the last time he interviewed Bush or Cheney. Next time, maybe he could ask them what kind of message they think it sends to the troops when they learn they were sent to fight and die by the lies of an Iranian double agent.”
There’s more Russert bashing over at the Daily Howler where Bob Somerby writes, “Instead of challenging the merits of Pelosi’s remarks, Russert kept scolding her for having dared say them.”
Finally, we make our way to radio, which former Liberterian candidate Gary Nolan says will be his new home after his surprise loss to constitutional scholar/computer programmer Michael Badnarik of Texas at the Liberterain Convention in Atlanta. Nolan fully supports Badnarik and rallies the flock with this sign off: “Now for the sake of liberty let us all go out and seize the day!”
–Thomas Lang
Thomas Lang was a writer at CJR Daily.