Last night at ComixNY, Marc Maron talked up a seamless 55 minute set of pain and insight and commentary about the human condition, but mostly his condition. As he said, the pain is so palpable that it rolls out onto the first couple of rows of the club and doesn't dissipate into the funny till around row 3. This show was intense, passionate, real, and political...and he didn't really address politics directly at all; but then, I find everything to be political or to fall into the political pattern, and the big feeling of despair that has descended over so many of us. This is basic stuff about having your foundation torn apart and your world tipped over. Its also about the decisions that we make and what its like to grow up in this delicate world.
From Scottish haggis as Soylent Green, complete with
Charlton Heston on top of a truck, to the impossibilities involved in relationships and forging on in this life, it was an hour packed with some sort of hilarious dismay and common understanding of being thoughtful in a world that is moving a little too fast these days.
I'm looking for the one man show and book coming out of this evolving set...he is honing something with new takes on old bits and newer new bits, and its only a matter of time before some smart producer backs an off-Broadway show, and at least, that we hear him back on the radio full time!

Don't miss Marc and Sam Seder on Tuesdays doing their Vod-cast Marc Vs. Sam Show live at 11AM EST at Sam's page....available as a Vod-cast after the fact too!





Anne Coulter and her ilk want to clean things up...

This story is not about a specific smear job perpetuated on a kid, or some failed attempt to ruin the career and life of a candidate. Its more about the M$M giving time over and over again to a cabal who want to use the "news" pulpit to disseminate false information in service to their own bank-books and a doctrine that is built on corrupted theory and clearly not the laws of this country. It is about actions that are so far outside of what is socially acceptable, even in this time of mind numbing cacophony of information and entertainment, that has dulled the senses and lowered our standards of what we put up with.
This is about about the putrid atmosphere that we are living in, where any pundit can do the equivalent of yelling fire in a movie theater and then claim that it was only their free speech talking. Its about harassing small children, sick people, and small sick children.

Our Constitutional rights take for granted that we are not animals. We are free to speak within reason, yes, but where does reason end? Clearly, there are certain things that, when said, can be so deeply disturbing and meant to hurt, and cause anguish to other people on enough levels as to neuter any sort of response or action, that they incite to action others who are the lowest form of racist, bottom-base of our kind; the low hanging fruit, to quote a philosopher dressed in a comic's threads.....who would keep the muck of their slime-pit for themselves in the way that a certain cretin whines "mine, mine" from the bottom of it's pit.
This is why its not freedom of speech to hang nooses from whites-only trees, and this is why libel laws protect people who are wrongfully smeared publicly. This is also why reporters used to want to have real sources before they put stories on the air and in the newspaper. When did that become the exception rather than the rule? When did the likes of Anne Coulter become a pseudo-intelligencia specialist reporter, rather than a hack who should be working for the News of the World's alien abduction section?



We live among animals who lack basic evolutionary movement beyond instinctual knee-jerk separation based on superficial aspects of each other which might have, at some point in the prehistoric days, served a Darwinian purpose for breeding and tribal safety, but in this time of creature comforts and education, mean nothing more than one's protection from the sun and what size of nose or texture of hair they have...
The bible assumes that all humans are as out of control and...bad...as these people are in their do as I say sitcom foibles in the government. Why is it that the ones spewing the most vile concepts and values, are the ones most in need of the rules from an unseen father in the sky who offers an unseen reward to a chosen few? Yet those few seem to live most outside of any basic tenants of kindness and giving ever preached by any faith. Its almost as if the label if believer is more a label of one who needs that much structure or they might spin out of control and do horrible things....and they do horrible things.

from the Greenwich girl, Anne Coulter, who seemingly has never lived up to what shes wanted so badly, or gotten what shes needed in life,(why else is someone so snobby, elitist and in need of citing their college and brand over and over; jealousy makes for an ugly disposition.)

How disappointed her friends and family must be to see what a monster their daughter, sister, friend has become; that is, if she is able to have relationships. There is a certain Barbara Bush things to her, where she talks down to the little people. Those who think they are her "fans" or "in" on her blog, think again; you are all the little people in her world. She hangs with the Palm Beach and Greenwich crowd...you will never approach her golden palace.
She sits like an unsteady reptile, on high stools for uber leg exposure, dressed like the art whores of the NYC Soho gallery scene of the 80's, or like a Robert Palmer robot girl with that shiny stiffness, Adams apple bobbing....she is on TV sets, under lights, flipping golden hair, with the mocking surety of the truly weak who try too hard to seem assured. She doles out "truths" that are mind-bendingly, numbingly, obviously, as untrue as they are hurtful in a way meant to shred and destroy the opponent. If asked about confirmation or any basic reporting, she shrugs it off as opinion or puts it off, as in this-story-is-about-to-break-you'll-see...and by then, shes gone...not that any of the softball flirty pundits who always wanted to be with a real man before, would follow up anyway. Those soft white dough boys ask silly follow-ups in all seriousness, like this is a person who should be taken seriously.

This hard woman, who might surprise us all if she is able to have human relationships at all, beyond her fag-hag retinue with BFF-Drudge and his ilk, plys her trade in pure pulp shock, and uses what will plainly translate into book sales and money, to create publicity and an aura around herself of ...talent?...No, real talent comes out of substance, real life, and a feeling for the world and those who survive here. This smirking cretin has no substance at all.

There is a certain pure place that we all strive for in our own way, and there is something, through age and experience, that settles in each of us where the battle is clearly fought, less by tearing down your perceived opponent than by accepting yourself and others and looking at your own footprint in this life, and how much air you take up in any room. Its giving up the fight in favor of the battle, and natural empathy which cannot be developed or bought; its just there.
The kind of badness that Coulter represents is not only negative to the world and our development as human beings, but hurtful to the specific individuals that she attacks. These include children, widows, and whole groups of people who have lived through enough persecution to know bullshit when they see it. Strange that the real man in this tale ends up to be Donny Deutsch, but there you have it. Yeah, watch her backpedal frantically, but, its not gonna work this time. You may be able to get away with alot, but the Jews don't fuck around, girlie. She is exactly the sort of Nazi that we're all on the lookout for these days, Jews, half-Jews like me, and every other American of any ilk with an ounce of smarts or feeling for where humanity is heading.

Clearly Coulter is some sort of Sociopath. She seems to lack boundaries regarding what is appropriate in social interaction. I can see her watching herself and mocking and snickering, while she chips away at the lives of others and spreads her own brand of pain, all the while counting the dollars pouring in because shock sells.
Its a shame and it takes away from any discourse that we might have been able to have.

I've noticed that alot of us have rage-fatigue, and are feeling really used up and limp lately. How many times can you be smacked in the face before you just stay down? Maybe the devolving of the Bush administration came in a little too clearly, a little too extensive and huge. We could've guessed this string of events, but on 9-10 no one would have believed any of this...I can't believe alot of it now, even as I would believe anything these days.

Driftglass, one of the best writers on these internets, brings it home for me:

"And it reminded me that when I pause and take the time to open that clench of anger and the snark that fuels a lot of what I write and look inside, there in the center I find grief.

A sadness around which I have girded cleverness and rage....
Because it’s absolutely no fun loathing your leaders -- Honestly don't understand how the Right can grow so fat feasting on such a thin, bilious gruel decade after decade.

It is, in fact, just terribly sad to look out at your country and see an insane asylum.

Terribly sad to see monsters and madmen smashing the finest, most precious heirlooms in your country’s treasure house to atoms. And to see their followers in their millions clap and dance in the ruins as they do it....
I, too, so very much miss being able to look across the political divide and see anyone on the other side who has not been bred to believe that selfishness, mercilessness and misanthropy are virtues.

And when we talk of tolerance?

We are told to fuck tolerance.

Step by unholy step, theirs has become a Party and a Movement that makes an outright sociopath like Ann Coulter their Goddess, and uses “tolerance” as a smirking, eye-rolling epithet....Hey, dickhead: tolerance doesn’t mean I have to love you or agree with you. It means that my vision of democratic civilization demands that I make allowances for people I do not love, and with whom I do not agree.

It means that some of my tax dollars will go towards paving and grading the roads that allow you to drive in safety and comfort from your doublewide in Swinefuck all the way to the Pixley Bijou so you can see “The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause” in Dolby on the Big Screen.

And it means that some of your taxes will go to pay for public defenders, health insurance, and a measure of security for the elderly, the weak, the poor and whole lot of other people you despise for various reasons....

The question is, how is it possible on the eve of the turnaround, that the network news and talk shows still have a spot for her and that O'Reilly and Limbaugh and Malkin and their ilk, still spew their filth daily?
Ratings be damned! Tucker Carlson has a tiny audience...too tiny to warrant his continued spot in the prime news-time of MSNBC early evenings interspersed with Chris Matthews...it reruns, 2 times, no less! and he is who invites his "great friend" Coulter onto our airwaves...He is who elevated the absolutely talentless Willie Giest from hack producer to television personality of the most base and frat boy extreme.

Ive been waiting for this change for so long...So, why is it so hard to get the programmers to at least cut out the wingnuttia? The American people turn on what is on. If we dont let the programmers know that we have had enough, how can we expect it to get better?
What information do we get from Coulter's book tour? What does anyone gain from Coulter getting on TV and calling all democrats stupid? The fact that there is a market for this indicates less that humans are into this sort of thing, and more that the education system is fucked in this country, and the media follows suit, so this is all that people have access to if there is no regulation...and then it sells, and around we go!
viewerservices@msnbc.com
Tucker@msnbc.com
Dan Abrams stays out of the contact whirl over at the home ship at MSNBC, but Im sure that Viewer Services gets to him...these are his decisions after all.





Drifty is a gift...and I hope that he realizes that there are people out there of the same mind...even though I myself have been planning my semi-retreat from the grid with my chickens and some plans of solar panels and my healthy-so-far Artesian well. When I see the cruelness of human discourse these days I go limp...when I see how hard people in the real world are struggling, I cant find my breath....I don't understand why things happen the way they do, but I do know that alot of what is going on is manipulated and planned. I don't mean that in a tin foil hat sort of way, but in a deliberate, blatant, we-are-doing-this-to-you-and-you-have-no-way-out, sort of way.

Its kindly grandpa Reagan standing there reading his cards saying"why would corporations need regulation? They have ethics, They can police themselves."
Like, yeah, we are all grownups here, no one is reaching under the stall of anyones potty in this place... Then come to find that just about everyone has one hand or another under the stall door somewhere for something.... But the dies is cast and we cant go back....

Yeah, there is plenty to worry about..plenty...
as long as Condi Rice is scouring the planet for more feathers to ruffle. I don't know what to say about it anymore, except, enjoy the ride. Its gonna be nothing if not interesting.

cross posted from RIPCoco with pictures!!

Labels: Ann Coulter, despair, Marc Maron, wingnuttia