Soup Nazis

When I first heard the rumors about Hot Soup and its high-minded malarkey, I thought they must have been some alcohol-induced hallucination. Which was odd, because I haven't taken a drink in years.

But apparently Hot Soup exists. Julia has the details on Hot Soup's Gerald Ford Challenge(TM), which reads as follows:

In honor of Gerald Ford, his decency, and the tremendous sacrifices he made to heal this country at a time of division, I pledge to spend 2007 working towards a similar depolarization – by cooperating with peers from opposing camps, by putting my countrymen's needs before my party's, and by making sacrifices if necessary. We stand stronger when united, and I pledge to lead my country by good example, just as I have been led by Gerald Ford's good example. I pledge to spend 2007 working towards that strong unity, and I dedicate that work to Gerald Ford's memory.

I don't have any great dislike for Ford, but the legacy of Gerald Ford is not a legacy of putting his countrymen's needs before his party's or making sacrifices. The Nixon pardon was what the Republican Party needed, not what the country needed, no matter how many thousands of Beltway monkeys type that line for a thousand years. Ford may have sacrificed his own chance to be elected President (which were non-existent at best before he was named V.P.), but his pardon immunized the Republican Party from the disclosure that its corruption was party-wide and deep, and not localized to the White House.

As for Hot Soup, I don't need a bunch of p.r. firm whores to tell me how to think about America. Those clowns wouldn't know sacrifice if it was rammed up their expense-account-padded fat asses.

Right now on Hot Soup (no link for you!) such unity-minded, self-abnegating non-partisans as Newt Gingrich and Mary Matalin are addressing the pressing issue of what they would do if Bill Gates gave them $10 billion dollars. (Playing along, Newtie and the Beast don't mention their dream of a privately-funded nuclear annihilation of Teheran.) For the Soup Nazis, partisanship is a character deficit exclusive to those you don't break cocktail weenies with.