A spoof of the movie “Office Space,” starring Richard Clarke in the Ron Livingston underling role, is causing giggles around the blogosphere. Here’s an excerpt from the “script” — with President Bush sounding an awfully lot like America’s boss from hell, Bill Lumberg:
BUSH: Heeeey Clarke. Whaaaat’s happening.
CLARKE: Uh, hi, Mr. President.
BUSH: We need to talk about your WMD reports. Yeeeeah … we’re really trying to punch up our Iraq intelligence. Did you get a copy of that memo?
CLARKE: Uh, yeah, I got it, right here. I’m sorry. I was going over all the intelligence and I just couldn’t find anything indicating that Iraq had any weapons of mass destruction … but I promise I’ll do better next time.
BUSH: Yeeeeah. It’s just that we’re really trying to make it clear that the U.S. was in imminent danger from Saddam Hussein and everything, and he might have had a connection to al-Qaeda … so if you could just start putting that in your WMD reports, that’d be great.
CLARKE: But I don’t think that —
BUSH: And I’ll make sure you get another copy of that memo, m’kay? Thanks a bunch.
Right Wing News has some satire of its own: a story claiming the “Polls Show Bush Unpopular With Grandchildren of Nazis” — not to mention Spanish communists and unemployed British soccer hooligans. Says Sidney R. Martin, chief strategist for the Democrat Party Central Committee, ominously: “This is very bad news for Bush. It clearly shows that Bush is limited to his core constituency of registered American voters …”
Yesterday, we wrote about Suburban Guerilla outing Sean Hannity’s dubious claims of an “exclusive” interview with the ubiquitous Condi Rice. Now Hannity’s Fox counterpart Bill O’Reilly is parroting on his website an exclusive with Bush advisor Karen Hughes — who appeared last night on Charlie Rose and will be the guest on tonight’s Daily Show. Fox, it seems, has about the same definition of “exclusive” as Wilt Chamberlain.
Meanwhile, according to the oft-dismayed Kevin Drum, rumors abound that Dick Gephardt “currently has the inside track to be Kerry’s pick for vice president” — and the Political Animal is not happy about it. “If it’s true this is inexplicable,” says Drum. “Gephardt obviously doesn’t have much resonance with voters (he’s run for president twice and done poorly both times), he doesn’t really help Kerry much regionally, his record as House majority leader is pretty uninspiring, and he’s yet another longtime Washington insider. What exactly does he have going for him?”
And finally, Howard Kurtz, in the Washington Post’s “Media Notes Extra,” lists ten reasons the Richard Clarke story has legs. Our favorite is number 10: “The Martha trial is over and the Kobe case is unfolding behind closed doors.” Now that Clarke’s stepped into the celebrity vacuum, we can’t wait for the inevitable collectible doll.
–Brian Montopoli
Brian Montopoli is a writer at CJR Daily.