DR. BULLSHIT SPEAKS
SEPTEMBER 25, 2010. This is a red-letter day. Welcome to the inauguration of a new column. Save them. Some day, they’ll be worth millions. Millions of what, I don’t know.
From high above the media tombs of New York and Washington DC, I, the good doctor, offer a different slant on the news…
I received my PhD in Bullshit from a prominent Ivy League college many years ago, when the world was young. My thesis focused on political bullshit, although I also dabbled in the fields of a far denser brand: medical bullshit.
I traveled the world and, first-hand, reveled in astonishing varieties of bullshit. Israeli bullshit, Arab bullshit, Asian bullshit, African bullshit, European bullshit, South American bullshit, and of course the premier vacuumed-packed government-inspected American bullshit. Several times on my voyage, I was on the verge of concluding there were Demons of Bullshit who were infecting the whole human species. But I finally pulled back from that, one night in Tangier when, when standing at the bar of the old decaying version of the Hotel Tanjah Flandria, I received a revelation from within: people loved bullshit. They loved listening to it, watching it, feeling it, handling it and propagating it. They wanted it.
That changed everything…
ITEM 1: Steaming barrels of fetid rhetoric re gay marriage and straight marriage keep pouring on to the air waves. “The sacred institution should be reserved for a man and a woman and a penis and a vagina.”
Yeah. Well, if it’s so sacred, get married in a church and have the dude in the cloak make up his own certificate and sign it. I may be wrong, but did the early Pure-it-tans in Mass. stand in line at some log cabin city hall and apply for a license on a rainy Tuesday afternoon? Did they take a number? Is that what they needed to justify their nuptials?
The state never had any business sticking its morbid nose in marriage, which by the way is not an institution at all, except in the overheated minds of moral pundits. And forget special government benefits for the married, too. That’s a load.
You want to get married? Man to man? Woman to woman? Woman to man? Man to Buick? Woman to Macy’s? Do it yourselves on your own and shut up. Now, of course, if you’re of a mind to stone or hang or decapitate your wife because you imagine she cheated on you, we’re in a different pew. That’s felony murder special. Guerney, straps, and IV. But I digress. Point is, nothing about marriage implies that government should be the slightest bit interested, concerned, or involved, any more than it should be involved in mapping wrinkles on old people’s asses.
ITEM 2: This one you actually have to read. Take your time. Breathe.
Rawsome, a natural health food store in Venice, CA, was raided this summer by local cops BRANDISHING WEAPONS. The crisis? Store was selling raw milk. Have to use guns in a situation like that. A kid might pull an AK out of a block of cheese.
Parallel: New study out of Germany (authors from Robert Koch Institute et al): “A commercial cheese (acid curd) made from pasteurized milk caused a large listeriosis outbreak in Germany from October 2006 through February 2007…Of patients with available detailed information on cheese consumption (n=47), 70% reported to have consumed the incriminated cheese product. Recent European food safety alerts due to Listeria-contaminated cheeses more often concerned products made from pasteurized or heat-treated milk than from raw milk…”
Do we need a pop quiz for this?
ITEM 3: Yesterday, Stephen Colbert testified before the House Subcommittee on Blah-Blah about migrant farm workers. Reporters and most committee members were miffed at his in-character presentation. Well, they would be. Do habitual fakers enjoy seeing a conscious faker?
Rule number one in politics and journalism: don’t break the trance. The river of crap flowing out of Washington moves in stately profundity. Do not turn around and point at the source. “We’re the professional fakers. We don’t want this kid coming in here and stealing our thunder.”
But steal it he did. Colbert is a liberal who plays a conservative on TV. Next time, bring in Ann Coulter impersonating a liberal. Come on. Live a little, you pussies.
ITEM 4: Washington DC. Every morning at nine, up on the Hill, an inveterate craps player from Atlantic City with a solid cocaine habit rolls the dice in the rotunda. By a predetermined system, the numbers on the dice are correlated with phrases in the novels of James Joyce.
After 75 rolls of the dice, these phrases are connected in order. That will be the Bill debated on the floor of the House and Senate.
At 3PM, two Victoria’s Secret models—one in the White House and one on the Hill—fart, and everyone goes home for the day.
ITEM 5: The other day, I was listening to some talk-show host starting to work up a lather about excessive taxes. Outrage was building in him. Clean honest outrage, like wind sweeping clouds off the city. Then a woman called who was a charity worker, soup organizer, and she said, “I hear anger in your voice.” This was a goody-good putdown, you see. She heard anger. O gosh oh gee, the game is over, because the host is angry, and that means he can’t be on the right track. He must be mired in his own ISSUES. She’s the shrink, and he’s the patient. The woman was getting away with it. The host said, “I’m not angry.” That was his stupid mistake. She wouldn’t quit. She kept coming, like some kind of dental drill out of a Unitarian save-the-world-I’m-giving-everything-to-everybody-and-I-love-you-too-even-though-you’re-a-selfish-prick riff. I could hear that dental drill going at the end of her snake’s tail. Slithering bright snake of her own Lord in the grass. Sociopathic altruism. A beautiful thing. When a big foot finally comes down on it, the blood that flows isn’t red, it isn’t blue, it’s an inhuman green. Like lubricating fluid in a machine.
ITEM 6: All over this country, you can find playgrounds and ball fields empty. Nothing happening. Aside from TV, video games, and obesity, want to know why? Insurance policies. If soccer mom’s precious little Kyle falls down rounding second base and gets a boo-boo and mommy isn’t there to kiss it and make it better, her hubby can sue the school for half a mil without blinking—and the insurance won’t cover it. Because the “activity” wasn’t “supervised.” It was just kids playing like they’re supposed to. Now they have GPS chips behind their ears. “Oh look, little Harry’s crossing the street against the light. Call out the SWAT team.”
“Hi honey. Did you have a good intramural game today?”
“It was okay. We lost.”
“WHAT? They kept score? Wait ‘til I tell your father. He’ll have the firm all over those motherfuckers. Do you feel damaged?”
“Somewhat depressed, mom. It may be a transient event. Hard to say at the moment. But I’m certainly registering the sensation of being abused.”
“Of course you are! I’m going to take some photos. Stand over there by the fireplace. Then I’ll call Dr. Blitzkrieg and arrange an emergency session. Do you have your Zoloft in your Fannie Pack?”
“No. Don’t you remember? You scarfed down the last few yesterday. Then, in an entirely unrelated incident, you tried to stab the fucking dog.”
DR. BULLSHIT