• Home
  • About
    • Straight Up
    • Jan Herman
    • Contact
  • AJBlogs
  • ArtsJournal

Straight Up | Jan Herman

Arts, Media & Culture News with 'tude

CHOICE CUTS

November 2, 2005 by Jan Herman

We called him the Pick with an ‘R’. Doug Ireland calls him Alito the Hun. “[I]t’s hard to imagine a more reactionary judge,” Brother Doug writes. He begins his dissection with a couple of choice cuts:

Theocratic pit bull Gary Bauer, the dwarf former presidential candidate of the Christer hard right, crowed that the appointment of Alito was “a grand slam,” and crackpot antediluvian Phyllis Schlafly — who called Bush’s corporate flunky Harriet Miers a dangerous “feminist,” of all things — likewise gave her enthusiastic blessing …

More from Brother Doug’s terrible swift scalpel: The Hun “would gut Roe v. Wade,” if given the chance, and he’s homophobic — see his decision “in a case involving a disabled kid who was repeatedly a target of nasty anti-gay epithets.” He “doesn’t have much use for the Bill of Rights’ guarantees of freedom from unwarranted searches and seizures,” either. So “you can kiss a lot of your rights and liberties goodbye — permanently” if “Holy Joe” Lieberman and other right-wing Senate Dems “vote to short-circuit any filibuster” of the nomination.
Trouble is, unless we miss our guess, the Pick with an ‘R’ is too damned mainstream to rate a filibuster. Forgive us, lawd, our jaundiced view.
— Tireless Staff of Thousands
Postscript: In re: Iraqi Official Aims to Refurbish Image:
TOP OF THE SAND HEAP
Let bygones be bygones and let’s not be snobby
In welcoming back Mr. Ahmad Chalabi.
So he led us astray quite memorably
With fanciful tales of WMD,
So what if he gave the U.S. a black eye
By serving as a double or triple spy.
On this range there’s no chance of a perfect rider
Especially when he’s a D.C. insider.
He’s now the Iraqi deputy prime minister
And apt very soon to be something more sinister:
The actual prime minister, the top of the summit,
A position from which he’s unlikely to plummet,
For he’s coming to confab with Ms. Condi Rice,
Whom he bamboozled once — so, pray, why not twice?
— Leon Freilich

Share on email
Email
Share on facebook
Facebook
Share on twitter
Twitter
Share on reddit
Reddit

Filed Under: main

Jan Herman

When not listening to Bach or Cuban jazz pianist Chucho Valdes, or dancing to salsa, I like to play jazz piano -- but only in the privacy of my own mind.
Another strange fact... Read More…

About

My Books

Several books of poems have been published in recent years by Moloko Print, Statdlichter Presse, Phantom Outlaw Editions, and Cold Turkey … [Read More...]

Straight Up

The agenda is just what it says: news of arts, media & culture delivered with attitude. Or as Rock Hudson once said in a movie: "Man is the only … [Read More...]

Contact me

We're cutting down on spam. Please fill in this form. … [Read More...]

Archives

Blogroll

Abstract City
AC Institute
ACKER AWARDS New York
All Things Allen Ginsberg
Antiwar.com
arkivmusic.com
Artbook&
Arts & Letters Daily

Befunky
Bellaart
Blogcritics
Booknotes
Bright Lights Film Journal

C-SPAN
Noam Chomsky
Consortium News
Cost of War
Council on Foreign Relations
Crooks and Liars
Cultural Daily

The Daily Howler
Dark Roasted Blend
DCReport
Deep L
Democracy Now!

Tim Ellis: Comedy
Eschaton

Film Threat
Robert Fisk
Flixnosh (David Elliott’s movie menu)
Fluxlist Europe

Good Reads
The Guardian
GUERNICA: A Magazine of Art & Politics

Herman (Literary) Archive, Northwestern Univ. Library
The Huffington Post

Inter Press Service News Agency
The Intercept
Internet Archive (WayBackMachine)
Internet Movie Database (IMDb)
Doug Ireland
IT: International Times, The Magazine of Resistance

Jacketmagazine
Clive James

Kanopy (stream free movies, via participating library or university)
Henry Kisor
Paul Krugman

Lannan Foundation
Los Angeles Times

Metacritic
Mimeo Mimeo
Moloko Print
Movie Geeks United (MGU)
MGU: The Kubrick Series

National Security Archive
The New York Times
NO!art

Osborne & Conant
The Overgrown Path

Poets House
Political Irony
Poynter

Quanta Magazine

Rain Taxi
The Raw Story
RealityStudio.org
Bill Reed
Rhizome
Rwanda Project

Salon
Senses of Cinema
Seven Stories Press
Slate
Stadtlichter Presse
Studs Terkel
The Synergic Theater

Talking Points Memo (TPM)
TalkLeft
The 3rd Page
Third Mind Books
Times Square Cam
The Tin Man
t r u t h o u t

Ubu Web

Vox

The Wall Street Journal
Wikigate
Wikipedia
The Washington Post
The Wayback Machine (Internet Archive)
World Catalogue
World Newspapers, Magazines & News Sites

The XD Agency

Share on email
Email
Share on facebook
Facebook
Share on twitter
Twitter
Share on reddit
Reddit
This blog published under a Creative Commons license

an ArtsJournal blog

Copyright © 2025 · Magazine Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in