COLD NEWS #10

PROFILES IN PROFILE

WillardMittRomney (in one long run-on sentence)

Draft dodging, Ayn Rand loving, cognac-swilling schmoozologist to the really rich, 47% hating, survival of fewest possible, billionaire by other means, magical trickle down faerie

Non-fact spewing robot or obfuscating modular conviction unit

Loves America, but hates Americans, self deporting off shoring tax evader who would gladly pay more taxes if someone  really really made him, some of his best friends are women and corporations are women too, biggest Bain for the buck, but now just a Bain in the ass.

MEMORY HOLE #11

MEMORY HOLE #10

COLD NEWS #9

THE USUAL SUSPECTS: A PARABLE

Andy Mellon, such a decidedly friendly name for the misanthropic man who put the Pluto in plutocracy. “Pluto” being the Greek god of the underworld and “-tocracy” being the ruling elite.

Andy owned most of Amerika, the richest land in all of the world. Andy owned towns, factories, farms, ships, and banks. He owned most everything worth owning. He literally set the gold standard for owning stuff.

While America grew poorer during the Great Depression, Andy grew richer. He was worth more than the entire country. While half the people were homeless, Andy resided in castles. While the majority had little food, Andy held Roman bacchanals for his friends.

Andy was not a generous kind of guy; in fact, he was more “a don’t owe you a turd on Christmas” kind of guy. Once, his goddess Ayn “The Merciless” came to him in a dream and told him to kick those beneath him further down. Ayn said, “believe in yourself and only yourself.”

So Andy did. He compounded his worth daily and walked among the poor house, soup line masses like a Darwinian god. In his mind, he was the crown of his own creation. Ayn had justified his greed and gave him direction along the path to his manhood, and he would be foolish not to follow.

But even as Andy got his hubris on, Fate, as it usually does, was making other plans. Despite his position and power, he was still only a man. People need a village. He was only a member of a cult.

True, it was a very rich and influential cult, including the generals of sado-capitalism, J.P. Mortgage,  Pres Bush, and Henry “the Ford,” friend of Adolf, to mention only a privileged few. They were also followers of Ayn “The Merciless” and her teachings of selfishness.

When Fate acts, it is often ironic. Sometimes it gives you all you need, sometimes more or less, but there is usually an ironic twist involved. In Andy’s case, it came when he discovered he was just a man. No more intelligent or stupid then most and definitely not demigod material.

The biggest downer for Andy and most sobering was the realization that the social contract Ayn had derided as a show of weakness for the powerful, still held him in sway. When he died, he shared the most common bond with the most common people. The bond was as strong or weak as love or hate but still the connection was undeniable from egg to genome: “No man is an island.” He was far from a self-made man.

Memory Hole #9

Memory Hole #8

COLD NEWS #8

Eastwooding Nixon or Talk to the Chair 

(Cause There’s No One There)

Among all the airless theatrics found in Tampa nothing surpasses Clint Eastwood’s prolonged conversation with an invisible Obama. Not Condi Rice’s magical reappearance or Eddie Munster’s smiley faced speech or Ms. Mitt’s class identification crisis or Ayn Rand’s ghostly presence.

Beyond the worship of the wealthy vibe and the let’s get Obama narrative of the racists of the Tea Party, Dirty Harry’s improvisational screed was old school political performance art. Bill Mahr said it was the perfect metaphor for the GOP, “a confused old white guy talking to an invisible person.”

So, as a form of postbuttal, I’d like to offer some insight into some of the least talked about and still dead Richard M. Nixon, sort of a post mortem Frost/Nixon interview.

Nixon was smart, sleazy, savvy, and power hungry, with a five o’clock shadow that screamed, go fuck yourself to both friend and foes alike. He approached the shredding of Constitutional protections like the honey badger, he just “did not give a shit.”

Hunter S. Thompson famously described him as “speaking to the werewolf within us, on nights when the moon comes too close.”

MATT: Mr. Nixon, of all the Presidents who no one wants to talk about, why are you #1?

NIXON:  Well, I think you are absolutely wrong about that. No one wanted to talk about Bush Junior or Barry Goldwater or the brain dead Jerry Ford, not to mention Ronald Reagan, whose sole accomplishment seems to have been taking naps. By comparison I was the last real winner in the Republican Party.

MATT:  What do you think about Mitt Romney?

NIXON:  He’s just one of those frat boy bullies the GOP likes to push out every four years. Vengeful nerds with a lot of money and no balls.

I’ll tell you the difference between me and them.

They used to call me the “DARK PRINCE,” shit I even scared the hell out of that pansy J. Edgar Hoover. I was the master of vendetta, you didn’t fuck with me or you’d end up with the IRS in your business or the FBI tapping your phone. Hell my “enemies list” included the Kennedys and Martin Luther King and look what happen to them.

MATT:  What do you think is your greatest accomplishment?

NIXON:   I led the way for the GOP to become what it is today.

MATT:  What’s the most disgusting thing you did while you were in the White House?

NIXON:   I never wore underwear, I was 100% commando.

MATT:  What was your biggest secret?

NIXON:   I really was a werewolf.

MATT:  That would explain the beard. What do you have to say to Mitt Romney?

NIXON:   Go dirty early and think of me when the moon is full.

MATT:  Thanks Dick, go roast in Hell.

Memory Hole #7

COLD NEWS #7

 

MITT THE MACHINE

Why do the Republicans have to keep “humanizing” Mitt Romney?

And what the hell is he, if not human?

Is he from another world, and is there intelligent life on his home planet? Does he need an “Earther” certificate or a technical manual?

During his entire career, first as a CEO at Bain Capitol, then as governor of Massachusetts, Romney and his controllers have attempted to humanize, reintroduce and reinvent him. His consistent image problem, of being an automaton or robotic mannequin has followed him everywhere.

There is the ever present need to re-reinvent and create a positive “Mitt-making machine” to counter the observations of journalists, and friendly observers that even when he looks genuine, he still seems fake.

It’s as if he is a new or previously unknown species of human/machine hybrid that has infiltrated the human community and people can smell his machine-ness.

Keep in mind that synthetic humans have been the fodder of sci-fi writers from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to 250 years of futurists dating back to the Industrial Revolution. But Mitt is more than “extra” human or “uber” man. He could be the product of Detroit, separated from the rest of us by add on parts and hostile programming to become the perfect 21^st century Manchurian Candidate. Is “Mitt the Machine” the product of his dad’s defunct American Motors, remember the always unreliable and aptly named Gremlin?

Perhaps that’s why he constantly blurts out some inadvertent candor like a misfiring machine or bad robot. When he tells people he’d enjoy firing them is it bad wiring? When he reminds people that corporations are somehow like them, is it the result of systemic inauthenticity?

How can we tell if he is, literally, a piece of technology or just a badly programmed sociopathic “people person.” Remember the human hunting cyborgs of Terminator were only detectable by dogs, who could smell their machine-ness. Maybe that’s why he tortured his dog by chaining him to the roof of his car. Maybe Mitt couldn’t pass his dog’s sniff test, and the dog was about to blow his cover.

Memory Hole #6

Memory Hole #6, artwork by Matimal

TOP TEN BUMPER STICKERS SEEN ON LIMO'S IN TAMPA

15. I Break for Billionaires

14. Piratize Social Security

13. Caution! Carl Rove In Trunk

12. Your Blood, My Oil

11. Bush, Who?

10. Ted Nugent: No One Cares Tour 2012

9. War Rocks

8. Corporate Vultures Are People Too

7. I (Heart) Amnesia

6. In Our God We Trust, All Others Pay Taxes

5. Kill The Old, Eat The Poor

4. I (Heart) Amnesia

3. Big Baby On Board

2. Romney + Ryan; I B Buying

1. Mitt Happens

COLD NEWS #6

THE GOP: A FICTORIAL ACCOUNT OF A CONSERVATIVE COVEN OF THE USUAL SUSPECTS AND THE RUNNING DOGS OF THE 1%, Y’ALL    

The GOP convention opened in Tampa to the thunderous applause of comedy writers and prostitutes everywhere. 

I personally could not take my eyes off the minions of amnesia as they partied like it was 2001, or 1968, or 1980. 

It was a scene that portrayed a militant indifference to reality that would have been shocking, if we hadn’t seen so much of it during Bush’s eight-year misadventure or Cheney’s casual dictatorship. But then they ignored Nixon’s police state or Reagan’s indifference to everything except a homespun view of America.

This gathering had everything. There were lots and lots of white people, old white compassionate conservatives, wealthy white strict conservatives, really white neocons, socons, ecocons, and nearly white guys in both black and brown. There were real feminazis, and of course, the Ayn “survival of the fewest” Rand cultists, a reanimated Patrick Buchanan, Nixon’s head in a jar, a talking parrot named George Will, and Queen Of The Whip Condi Rice, trying to reinvent her reign of incompetence.

Beginning with the man who most resembled the Hindenburg, Governor of New Jersey Chris Christie, the Repugs opened with their “bench,” i.e., somebody with no criminal record or obvious paper trail of corruption. How rare is that? As an ironic aside, the Hindenburg crashed in New Jersey.

It was all uphill from there. Happy faces and apocalypse, newly discovered concern for debt reduction, and the usual NRA induced fear the UN or lots of black people were coming for their assault weapons. Fear, fear, fear, and did I mention fear?

What’s worse, they never got enough of it.

Then like a parody of a satire of a jalapeno suppository, fascinating, terrifying, ferociously delusional, Mitt and Paul’s straight-faced dedication to the middle class rivaled Bush’s first “Mission Accomplished,” except they believed they nailed the credibility thing.  But hey, aren’t they the same middle-classed people that Bain Capital tried to decimate over the last 20 years. Go figure?

The echo of Newt’s “Contract on America” and Ryan’s “Path to Prosperity” resonated throughout with thinly veiled social Darwinism. Mitt, who Maureen Dowd described as “a political bully marketed by political mercenaries,” came off like a guy who had forgotten that he enjoyed firing people.

I haven’t laughed this hard since the opening ceremonies of the London Olympics.  Giant inflatable babies, once again the Christie metaphor, dancing doctors saluting national healthcare, and stone age capitalists standing in awe of pollution, industry, inflatable sheep and slave labor. Mitt and Paul’s acceptance speeches were funnier by far.

So much left unsaid. Iraq War, Afghan War, Terror War, Patriot Act, Bush Depression, both I and II, the Vultured Economy, Hedge Fund Pirates, overly friendly Saudis (see 9/11), Homeland Insecurity, Orwellian Spying (see Patriot Act), TSA (naked grannies at check points), and vampire capitalism run amok (don’t ever expect any Repug to talk about that, ever).

I would feel sorry for the sadistic bastards, but they’re responsible for everything bad that’s befallen America. Remember, if you can, the 90’s economy before Bush, Jr., drove it off the cliff. I could compare it with what Hitler did to Germany, but at least Hitler brought their economy out of the Great Depression. That’s the reason Condi and her spiked heels went huge with this crowd.

Oh the humanity!

CONSIDER THIS A PRAYER

BETTER ANGEL

Going down the road

feeling dreary.

17 years after

we’re still missing Jerry.

Has it been that long?

Time is pretty hairy.

but not if there is an endless solo

we listen to remember, feeling Jerry.

So if you’re blue about Eternity

uncertain of a Promised Land,

with the endless solo

we’ll  meet in Winterland.

At the melodic center

where soul and music go

at the eternal new year

Jerry opened the show.

Where he’s playing

“ah death where is thy sting.”

He’s just gone to meet his finger,

to help him do his thing.

NAKED IN WINTERLAND

Immaculate souls spun,

arms raised,

Sufi rhythms driven, dizzy fluttering

in beautiful clouds.

Birds in spirit

flying away from their minds.

Abandoning need

the true religious reflex.

Things flowed

stuff stretched

hums were heard.

All the secret gardens were opened

sun suffused, so all could see

with new eyes

Subversive in mutinous optimism.

But nothing lasts, nothing lasts,

including nothing.

Going around to come around

Immaculate memories spun.

Memory Hole #3

COLD NEWS #3

Commentarian: “Pain + time equals humor.” 

Lenny Bruce

            To paraphrase Jane Fonda, it's just as important to laugh at your opponents as it is to argue. That is the essence of a winning strategy when it comes to confronting the narrative laid down by Regressives.

            As a Southerner born and raised, I've lived among racist white guys most of my life and they have no sense of humor, except, ironically enough “black humor.” “Haters” don't laugh, except with a Bushian smirk and caustic Rovian edge. This is a natural but self-destructive vent for people who are neither self-aware nor self-effacing. Their hatred eats them up, not just because they need to feel superior over “the others” but because they have a blind lock-step narrative blotting out the voice of their own “better angels.”

            Now Regressives are very good at declaring war against anything they don't like: communists, drugs, abortion, liberals, unions, public education and women,but their galvanizing narrative, meant to “rally their base,” lacks the human touch—in other words they are all stick no carrot. In the 21^st century, they're only speaking the language of the 23%-ers, the Cheney wing of the Regressive Party.

            Progressives have always had the edge when it comes to funny. Regressives have Dennis Miller, the Ted Nugent of comedy. We've got a  vast array of humorists, male and female, a people's army of words versus a narrative of fear. This is our strength, we can laugh at ourselves. They can't, or their mask of authority will crack.

            I believe Saint Colbert is our most potent weapon. He is the guy who put the photon torpedo into the Bush Death Star. He went into the teeth of the industrial media's 9/ll narrative, turned it inside out and captured it. Saint Cobert be praised! He introduced word substitutes like “truthiness” into the modern lexicon. As a personal note, I'm trying to invent “piratize,” “Regresssives” and “commentarian” as my own word substitutes, no small task there.

            To those of us brought up on “1984” and Orwell's newspeak, we know that the stark language of authority is designed to limit. With a reduced language the proles could not revolt because there was no word for revolution. Talk about controlling the narrative, Big Bro had control over the dictionary and the media. Today's industrial media mirrors old school Stalinist language control enhanced by 21^st century technology.

            Slang produces new words, ultimately producing the language of tribes, cliques, ethnic minorities, and interest groups, also enhanced by the social media, which is inventing words at a faster rate than the “dictionary” can absorb them.

            To the Progressives, follow in the footsteps of Saint Colbert, and create your own narrative, using your own language. Remember the words of George W. Bush, “a mind is a terrible thing to lose.” Unless you lose it while laughing.

Memory Hole #2

COLDS NEWS #2

When the COLD NEWS first appeared, we, America and me, were in the middle of the first Bush Depression. Bill Clinton’s boom was over and the Regressives were  getting ready  to  piratize  the public  sector,  big time. LIKE all good things Clinton’s  efforts to spread  the  wealth,  by economic  diversification  and  relative  peace,  would  end with  the  “need for greed’’,  Bush   administration.

COLD SOUP, a dinner theatre, started in the summer of 2003. Thus, the COLD NEWS, an integral part of CS, was born of progressive discount, popular rage. 9/11 had been used to silence Bush’s critics. Protesters were put in “FREE SPEECH ZONES,” guarded by riot cops and photographed by plain clothes but obvious agents of homeland security.

Not unlike the anti-war movement during Vietnam, protests became “un-American.”  Bill Maher and Cynthia McKinney were attacked, marginalized, and dismissed from the public eye.  Max Cleland, a triple amputee Viet-war hero, was run out of office by Saxby Chambliss, a draft dodger, because Cleland wasn’t sufficiently patriotic enough.

The industrial media always eager for war, got in line immediately. Hollywood and public broadcast “self” censored, hiding behind “objectivity,” like a drunk hiding under the covers because something scary was going to happen if they ever uttered the name Bush.

To the point, anybody who merely objected to Regressive policies, were relegated to nonperson status and silenced while the war lovers prepared to profit. These were dark days.

In 2005, COLD SOUP produced The Much Anticipated, Long Awaited, Karl Rove Goes to Hell, my personal fave.

As far as the COLD NEWS went, I modeled my style after the honorable Lewis Black, as translated by John Stewart, a deranged news man out for deep irony with a big slice of snark on the side. My fan loved it.

Only good taste restrained me, but then not often. When the COLD SOUP crowd had drunk all the wine and were scarfing down dessert, the street lamp shone behind me and the vox populist could be heard baying at the full moon.

Memory Hole #1

THE BEST OF THE WORST, assembled 2012

Cold News:The Vox Populist Putting the 'real' in “really”

            To follow in the  foot steps of the honorable essayists and comic pundits Mark Twain, Hunter Thompson, Jon Stewart, Saint Stephen Colbert and Lewis Black, the Cold News will report on the counter-intuitive nature of Americans'  love of contradiction, i.e., the less we see of  Kim  Whatshername, the more there is of her. I don't know...maybe it's existential thinking...or not.

         When I took my one and only journalism course at Georgia State University, the associate professor warned us sternly about “going gonzo.” Aspirations were crushed immediately—“there would not be any more rogue journalists” allowed to exist in the industrial media. Really? 

         Hunter S. Thompson or Raul Duke or Dr. Gonzo, whichever you prefer, was paid to punctuate—the  screeds of insight were free.  They were  high velocity blasts at the Evil One, Richard Nixon, and his War on Drugs, which Dr. Gonzo took personally.

         Mark Twain went gonzo over 19^th century Jingoism. Widely regarded as America's best spokesperson when he wrote about Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn's life on the Mississippi. But he fell out of grace with the Hearst empire over the Cuban and Philippine wars.

        

         Jon Stewart took on both Fox News and George W. Bush.  Stewart made the entire propaganda machine squeal like a war pig.

        

         When Walter Cronkite  declared the Viet Nam  war over, it was all over. When Saint Stephen  Colbert told the Washington press corp and W to their faces that the Bush presidency wasn't at all “like  sailing on the Titanic, it was more like flying on the Hindenburg,” it was pretty much over for Iraq.

          So, as Twain said, “There is no defense against laughter.” Really!